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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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If an institution gives preferential treatment to individuals based entirely on their identity, it’s absolutely understandable why someone would fake it if all it takes is self-declaration.

It’s completely the prison’s own fault if Nazi inmates are pretending to be Jewish so that they don’t eat the standard prison slop, and I have little sympathy for the abusive, violent institution that is the US justice system. If they wanted to “fix” the problem, they should make the kosher food as unpalatable and inconvenient as the rest of their offerings, not test inmates for Judaism.

Personally, my preferred solution would be to limit or remove the circumstances where individual identity matters at all. For instance, my preferred solution to the pronoun issue would just be to remove gendered pronouns completely; in languages like Hungarian or Turkish for example, they don’t exist and people communicate just fine, while romance languages go further than English and have almost every single noun and adjective be gendered. Obviously this is not always practical but the general goal should be towards less identity politics, not more.

Personally, my preferred solution would be to limit or remove the circumstances where individual identity matters at all. For instance, my preferred solution to the pronoun issue would just be to remove gendered pronouns completely; in languages like Hungarian or Turkish for example, they don’t exist and people communicate just fine, while romance languages go further than English and have almost every single noun and adjective be gendered. Obviously this is not always practical but the general goal should be towards less identity politics, not more.

Reshaping the entire English language in order to deal with a novel form of identity politics doesn't seem as practical as simply refusing to recognize that novel form of idpol at all. It seems to create a pretty bad set of incentives.

It seems to me that "less idpol" means not chasing after the compromise point between the status quo and whatever new idpol (including the ludicrous notion that a man imprisoned in a prison with men - I assume you want to keep it this way - is somehow so not-a-man that we need to play this pretend game of eliminating gender distinctions...while maintaining the central distinction that keeps them in that jail in the first place) has now been spun up.

make the kosher food as unpalatable and inconvenient as the rest of their offerings

Or, they could make their regular food better.

Hahaha. More seriously, the kosher food is explicitly noted to be prepackaged meals that may have more calories, probably because they’re prepackaged. This is probably also not great food, and prisoners prefer it because it’s packaged, not because it’s better.

If they wanted to “fix” the problem, they should make the kosher food as unpalatable and inconvenient as the rest of their offerings, not test inmates for Judaism.

Given what I know of Ashkenazi food, this is much easier done than said.

It’s completely the prison’s own fault if Nazi inmates are pretending to be Jewish so that they don’t eat the standard prison slop

No, it's the court cases taken to force the prison system to cater to such extremes instead of being allowed to judge on a case-by-case basis of "Okay, Shlomo here really is Jewish but Darrell is just taking the piss".

Remember our dear friend Demi Minor, the 'woman' who got two women pregnant when transferred to a women's prison? In compliance with the law suit taken by the ACLU New Jersey (who are all about that decarceration) to force the New Jersey Department of Corrections to allow self-identified trans people to be jailed in the 'appropriate' prison:

New Jersey has adopted a policy that requires state prisons to house transgender people according to their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth.

The policy change is part of a settlement the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey announced Tuesday, and it puts the state among the handful of others with similar policies.

The ACLU of New Jersey and attorney Robyn Gigl of GluckWalrath LLP sued the N.J. Department of Corrections and its officers in August 2019 on behalf of a trans woman who went by the pseudonym Sonia Doe in court documents.

Prior to Doe's lawsuit, the department's policy was to house people according to their genitalia, according to Tess Borden, an ACLU of New Jersey staff attorney on the case.

...As part of the settlement, which the ACLU of New Jersey filed in the Mercer County Superior Court on Tuesday, the department will adopt an agencywide policy meant to protect people in state custody who are transgender, intersex and nonbinary, according to a press release.

In addition to the policy change, the department will pay Doe $125,000 in damages and will pay her attorney fees.

...New Jersey is now one of a handful of states that have passed laws or implemented policies requiring that inmates be housed according to their gender identity. Borden said the state's policy goes further than most others, though, because it includes provisions that will help the department of corrections implement the policy.

"The purpose section includes the word 'dignity' — that it's the purpose of this policy in the New Jersey Department of Corrections to recognize the dignity of transgender, intersex and nonbinary people in its custody," she said. The policy also requires officers to use a trans inmate's proper pronouns, including gender-neutral pronouns such as they/them, and the gender neutral honorific "Mx." instead of "Mr." or "Mrs."

Funnily enough, Tess and ACLU NJ had nothing to say when contacted about the Demi Minor case. Odd, that.

There's not much a prison governor can do even if they think "this is damn stupid" when informed "yeah well the judge ruled we gotta do this, oh yeah and make sure the wardens use 'Mx' when addressing the violent drug addict rapist murderer, you have to respect their feminine dignity".