35 Comments
author
Nov 25, 2022·edited Nov 25, 2022Pinned

FYI on comment threads: I banned someone from commenting here, and refunded her, because she pretended to be offended because I sometimes swear (as if anyone who followed me on Twitter or has read my Substack could have failed to notice this) and then pulled a stunt my parents pulled, diagnosing me with a disorder that they themselves actually had. I have made absolutely no secret of my psychiatric diagnoses. Indeed, I comment on them with great regularity. The idea that whipping out an amateur diagnosis that's inaccurate will work to make me pretend that a stupid argument is anything but stupid is silly, but then again, this is the internet.

I likewise refunded someone a couple of days ago, a smarmy asshole who pretends to believe that children don't have a biological sex. That anyone could imagine arguing to *me* that children aren't fully human would go over well is farcical. After he started that crap here I was notified by more than one person that going from female writer to female writer engaging in sophistry to gain the fuel of replies is one of his years-long habits. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Both of their emails now go straight to trash without being seen by me, but narcissists gonna narcissist, so it's likely that one or both of them will turn up here again. I'll keep an eye on it and keep refunding and banning until they get the point.

Expand full comment

Thanks Holly for shaking this out and for calling it as it is!

Expand full comment

Amazing what the woke/cluster b abuser class are doing to swing the narrative https://twitter.com/freakoutery/status/1595403365399379968?s=46&t=ajyxyDBWf5EdLUwwrAM4GQ

Expand full comment
author

FFS. Also, FYI, starting with the question mark, you can trim it and everything that comes after it from any Twitter URL. It stops Twitter from tracking you, what links you create, and who clicks on them.

Expand full comment
founding

Always always always trim that stuff off links. Twitter, Amazon, FB. Everything. Most sites are using resftul api's that have realy clean initial paths (a thing like a "status" or a "deal" or an "order" and then a numberic id. And then everything after the ? is crap that you don't need.

Twitters, like many user-based, is https://twitter.com/USERNAME/status/STATUSID

If you want to share an Amazon "deal" you only need this:

https://www.amazon.com/deal/c88a3e2b

Not all this:

https://www.amazon.com/deal/c88a3e2b?moreDeals=RandomeLookingCrap&ref=MoreRandomLookingCrap

Expand full comment

Great read. Straight to the point. It can be maddening to hear people talk as if the whole non-binary thing is real. I think some of our disgust with this comes from those of us who never fit into those stereotypes to begin with and so we reject the "identity" people are now placing on others like us.

Expand full comment
author

Amen.

Expand full comment

I think the point here is that the man's motives were being portrayed in the media as anti LGBTQ, but since he identifies as PART of the LGBTQ community, obviously the reality is a bit more complicated than the Narrative. Not that many aspects of the community are contradictory and rely on stereotypes, which they are and do.

Expand full comment
author

If "non-binary" is "part of" the alphabet community, then it means nothing. It includes literally every human being.

Expand full comment
Nov 25, 2022Liked by Holly MathNerd

Agreed. The significance of it however is that it destroys the Narrative that this guy hated LGBTQ. Non-binary is part of the LGBTQ, and I agree it is stupid and describes everybody, but I think you miss why people are talking about it. It's not because they agree with it, but that it destroys the "straight white male hates on the Rainbow Coalition" story the press made up the instant they saw the color of his skin.

Expand full comment
author

No, I really didn't miss it. I *object* to it. It pre-supposes that "non-binary" is a real thing, and that what matters here is whether or not the guy sincerely believed in this real thing and had a legitimate, authentically felt, "identity" as being this real thing. That is the ballgame. That's it. That's reifying the idea that "non-binary" is a thing, and whether or not he agrees with it authentically is what matters.

Expand full comment

No, you missed it. Your reply proves it.

1. You are 100% correct that he is wrong with this non-binary nonsense.

2. You are 100% correct that he is wrong with this non-binary nonsense.

3. You missed that this doesn't matter to most people pointing this out.

4. What matters is that by espousing this non-binary falsity he is identifying with the group people say he is against, hence exposing that their argument is also nonsense.

5. That is the point most are making.

6. This does not mean they agree with the non-binary identification.

7. You are 100% correct that he is wrong with this non-binary nonsense.

Expand full comment
author
Nov 25, 2022·edited Nov 25, 2022Author

I am not sure how much clearer and simpler I can make this, but I can try.

The ENTIRE GODDAMN POINT is that it doesn't matter to most people pointing it out. That's it. THAT IS THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT. We are arguing whether or not he sincerely believes himself to be a member of a non-existent group. That's it. It doesn't matter if he's "identifying with the group people say he is against," because the group DOES NOT EXIST.

Reality matters. I refuse to concede that it's ok to focus on whether or not someone sincerely believe he's a member of a group that does not exist in reality BECAUSE that is conceding the point that they want -- that the group exists, is real, and whether or not his identification is sincere actually matters.

Please don't make me lock the comments by keeping this nonsense up. It's tiring, and if you're willing to CONCEDE REALITY to "own the libs," that's what Twitter is for. Jesus Christ.

Expand full comment
Removed (Banned)Nov 25, 2022·edited Nov 25, 2022
Expand full comment

One day, probably not that far into the future, if we've survived the idiocy that seems to prevail, this gender fantasy stuff will be relegated to the same category as witch trials, tulip bulb mania, dancing mania and all the other nonsense humans can find to cause trouble. The human capacity to be absurd is never-ending.

Expand full comment

This is beautifully logical and clear. In several non-American cultures, it’s common for male friends to hold hands, as just one example. In Israel, everyone serves in the military regardless of gender. I love baking and sewing but I’ve also built a deck. My husband was in the police and the military but he also knows how to knit. There’s an awesome male YouTuber I follow called The Quilting Marine: he quilts as a therapeutic art to deal with his PTSD.

When supposedly progressive people insult “normies” with this kind of language manipulation, I instinctively feel like, fuck off.

Expand full comment

In most of Latin America people greet each other with a cheek kiss. Typically it’s male-female and female-male but in Argentina it’s also male-male. Nobody bats an eye.

Expand full comment

You built a deck? I took a nap.

https://youtu.be/LHVjLEr8Mx8

Expand full comment

Lol that’s a great special

Expand full comment

Yeah, I like that guy.

Expand full comment

I get it. You’re in effect saying “there’s some binary, B, and if you non-binary people are saying that you’re ~B, well, fine, but nobody is B.” that would lead immediately to a re-definition of B. In other words, the binary is whatever it needs to be for them to not be it. 

it’s an identity whose basis is exclusively the self-declaration of that identity – it doesn’t rest on anything else. It’s a little bit like if I said, that tree across the street’s name is Snorful. Trees don’t have names in that way, but nobody can stop me from making that declaration.

Expand full comment
Nov 25, 2022Liked by Holly MathNerd

I identify as quaternary, and I can prove it.

I’m often told that I’m unreal.

Expand full comment

Thank you! I've been screaming this at the TV since I first heard!

Expand full comment

PS I like Miracle on 34th Street, but the older version is my favorite!

Expand full comment
founding

Non-binary is definitely nonsense.

But, I assumed that he (or his lawyers) claimed it to get sympathy from the public and the courts. Is that what you mean by trolling? B/c i think of trolling as something else, and i think of the sympathy, and lesser punishment, that he could acheive to be quite a reasonable expectation. Doesn't he have a real chance to be incarcerated for life with women rather than men? Colorado doesn't appear to have a death penalty.

Also, i glanced at a Matt Walsh comment where said something like (paraphrased!) "_I_ don't have to agree that he is non-binary, but you loons that believe in the concept certainly do". Which I'm somewhat sympathic to as offhand snark, but agree that it is a complete waste of time to argue about what any of that means. Because, per above, you would be arguing about nonsense.

Expand full comment
author

Walsh is usually smarter than this, but I get the temptation. It's the same temptation to argue that they're being sexist or ableist when they treat me badly, or homophobic when they go after my friend Josh, etc. It **never** works, because their bullshit is flexible enough to allow for this. They declare conservative blacks to be "skinfolk, not kinfolk," not *really* black, and that's it. Likewise I don't count as *really* a woman, or deaf, etc.

What this does is elevate "non-binary" to a similar status, which is handing them a MAJOR victory since unlike being a woman or deaf, non-binary isn't actually REAL.

Expand full comment
founding

Very similar to the mostly mindless observations that "dems are the real racists".

Expand full comment
author

Exactly. Only Democrats are racists are both things that exist, so it's not handing them a HUGE, earned victory to take that tactic. It is, in this.

Expand full comment
founding

I see from some comments that you seem to disagree not with my guess that he or his lawyers did it for practical benefit, but that it would actually be of practical benefit.

Expand full comment
author

If it is of practical benefit, then we're even more fucked than I thought. If this nonsense gets him put into a women's prison, then there is probably no more reason for hope.

Expand full comment
founding

He could easily be thinking that if some of these lesser male criminals can get away with it, why can't i? And i say "lesser" because I immediately get hits on rapists when i google "worst crime male put into female prison". But, I'd have to think real hard about whether i think rape really is lesser than murder.

And I wouldn't put it past these loons to let it happen. But, keep your chin up!

Expand full comment

Succinctly put. ‘News’ media has long since thrived on making ‘news’ rather than reporting it clearly, so the last thing that they would want is to downplay any narratives are getting traction. Yell, whine, point fingers in righteous indignation, yes, but never dismiss the noise as the sound made by the epidemic of narcissism in its insatiable quest for being seen as special. The people would be far better served if the 24-hour news programming was cut to 30 minutes a day.

Expand full comment

The people who've been pushing the assertion gender is on a spectrum, there's an infinite number to choose from, and if you disagree you're the devel, are the same people who are questioning whether the Q shooter is faking as a legal strategy, and he isn't really non-binary - they never question anyone else's assertion. Plus, there's evidence "Mx." Aldrich isn't a new persona.

Maintaining the approved narrative is as much of an obsession to Democrats as the Ring is to Gollum - my precious.

Expand full comment

Thank you so much for your first point: non-binary vs. binary is in fact, a binary lol.

Expand full comment