Fraser Sherman's Blog

The Felon administration’s ongoing war against diversity, equity and inclusion is not a principled opposition to racism. It’s an unprincipled opposition to equality, whether between races, between between genders or between sexual orientation.

It’s undoubtedly true that a lot of DEI in corporate America is performative and meaningless, as LGM says. But (as LGM also says) it was never going to stop there. Under Pete Hegseth’s opposition to “divisive” thoughts, the Naval Academy has decided the “blacks are mentally inferior” book The Bell Curve stays on the library shelves; a book challenging The Bell Curve got removed. West Point is in the same boat, and collaborating with Hegseth. Oh, and the Naval Academy removed a display on female Jewish graduates before Hegseth visited.

It’s a combination of Republican’s hatred for education (which shows people reality is against them) and the conviction that military officers are too woke. Meaning, I presume, they’re neither racist and misogynist enough, and not willing to kill protesters the way the Felon wants (there is no greater crime than saying the Felon isn’t the best little baby in the world).

According to Hegseth, “promoting divisive concepts and gender ideology are incompatible with the Department’s core mission,” whereas trying to purge the military of any question that white men are the summit of evolution does not, somehow distract. It’s the same logic some Christian racists embraced during Jim Crow: working for civil rights distracts from evangelism but preaching against civil rights doesn’t do that. Or Augie Boto at the Southern Baptist Conference who claimed dealing with the SBC’s history of predators in pulpits would distract from spreading the gospel. He did not, as far as I know, see a conflict between evangelizing and the SBC working on right-wing politics or against gay marriage.

It’s once again MLK’s words about getting out of Egypt. There was no divisiveness in Egypt when the Israelites were content to sit around and bake bricks as slaves. It was Moses standing up and saying “Let my people go!” that divided everyone and stirred things up! Why can’t blacks and women stop demanding equality? Wouldn’t everything be better? And for the white supremacists, misogynists and homophobes who make up so much of the Republican ranks, it probably would be.

It’s telling that while Republicans continue opposing any sort of refugees entering the United States, they’re quite happy to welcome the poor, oppressed white people of South Africa. I’m pleased the Episcopal Church is calling them out on their shit. Unfortunately American conservatives were in love with apartheid before apartheid was cool (joking: it was never cool).

Also fighting back: New York State. And the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

All those millions of good-paying jobs the Felon is promising? His administration isn’t helping women land any of them. Eliminating Head Start will make it harder for moms to work — why, it’s almost like Republicans want women back in the home or something.

Bizarrely, the administration’s opposition to DEI leads to them dictating other countries must end programs.

“White middle class boys are only slightly less likely to go to college than white middle class girls, with only a 2% college enrollment gap (51% female vs. 49% male). Black male students, meanwhile, comprise just 37% of Black college attendees. Yet the discourse around the “boy crisis” often seems to revolve around the problems faced by white, middle class boys.”

Is the boy crisis the result of pissed-off fathers? Or maybe it’s the right’s increasing contempt for decent male behavior. Or any human decency.

Andrew Tate’s a misogynist and alleged rapist. Our law-and-order administration is keen to set him free.

Missouri wants to create a state registry of pregnant women at risk for an abortion. No way that could be abused, right? Texas to Missouri: hold my beer.

How to be anti-abortion and anti-vax simultaneously: “Certifiable whackjob Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now claiming that there is “a lot of aborted fetus debris” in the vaccine that protects against measles, mumps, and rubella.” You will be shocked, shocked, that he is lying.

Republicans say they hate groomers — but they’re all in on child marriage.

“Feminism is just leftism in a skirt.” — old fart Andrew Klavan who seems to think this is a serious critique.

A cop took a young rape victim for a rape kit, then sexually abused her.

More forced-birther bullshit.

“Of course, the theme in all this is ultimately men creating a sacralized hierarchy that crowns their genitalia at the top. Driscoll once told the men of his church their penis was God’s penis. He said, “Knowing that his penis would need a home, God created a woman to be your wife and when you marry her and look down you will notice that your wife is shaped differently than you and makes a very nice home.””

“It’s always a female human and a male beast.”

Mohler sneered that empathy is “an artificial virtue,” calling empathy “destructive and manipulative. Empathy means never having to say no,” Mohler insisted, attacking the straw-iest of strawmen.”

“Let’s be clear: The Tifton police themselves say this was a miscarriage. They’re not claiming it was an illegal abortion—and even if it were, Georgia law doesn’t allow the prosecution of people who have abortions. So why is this a police matter? Why did they send the fetus to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Crime Lab for a fucking autopsy?”

“The Greens and their supporters (many of whom are, or were shaped by, their support-ees) frame this dispute in a dishonest and self-serving way. They believe that IUDs and emergency contraception are “abortifacients,” they say, because of their religious belief that “life begins at conception.” But that’s a dodge. This dispute is not about the belief that life begins at the moment of conception. It’s about the belief that conception occurs at the moment of ejaculation.”

“Women are presumed to care about other people, and are therefore too emotional to be on the Supreme Court, and even their most blatantly text-based arguments must somehow spring from this well of irrational feeling that sits in their skulls in place of a brain. Men, on the other hand, are presumed to be rational actors, even when they spend most of their public lives behaving with what can only be described as a shocking level of emotional incontinence — behaving, literally, like unruly children, screaming “you’re a dummy!” “no, you’re a dummy!” at one another.”

Remember, though, it’s not all bad: “Things get better and they get worse, at the same time … we’re resisting and we’re being crushed at the same time always, like they’re parallel tracks.” Here’s a look at two women in the 19th century who fought for their rights. And what happened when 90 percent of Iceland’s women walked off the job.