As you may have noticed, here, at the Flickering Beacon, we are color- and gender-blind like earth worms (which makes us racist and sexist in the eyes of the woke). We love (or not) everyone regardless of their immutable characteristics. We also have a passion for truth. And this is what our Chancellor of color’s 2024 Pride Month pan-university letter is missing, or half-missing. Just look at one long sentence from the email, as an example:
Hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced by state legislatures around the country, including…
Let’s see…
bills preventing trans youth from accessing health care; …
Ahh. A future historian would imagine a sneezing transgender kid being denied a pack of NyQuil at a pharmacy. What won’t come to his/her/zirs mind is estrogen or testosterone at the age of 14, mastectomy at 15, and bottom surgery at 17 as per the initial recommendation of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Later, the recommendation was retracted, leaving the “how early” decision to practitioners (see here if you want to know more). No wonder that, given the danger of infertility and other complications, Europe is closing its Trans Health Care clinics for minors and adopting a much more cautious approach, albeit several years and thousands of amputated breasts too late if you ask us. Are they all ultra conservative Republicans over there, across the pond? We doubt it. Here, however, the state is heavily involved in modifying our nether regions.
Going back to our Chancellor’s email. He complains about:
…censoring school curricula; …
Interesting. Among the books expelled from school libraries are:
Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe that includes the graphic sketches of oral sex found on page 167;
This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson that features detailed instructions on how to upload photos to adult sex apps (see page 156).
…prohibiting drag performances; ….
Does our Supreme Leader endorse drag queens teaching little kids twerking and straddling those under 18? The future historian can calm his/her/zirs indignation at this point. On the other hand, if the queens are modestly dressed, and if they behave in a kid-appropriate manner, FB doesn’t want the state to prohibit the shows, even though we still think drags reading bed-time stories to kids is a silly idea. On the third hand, the state shouldn’t use our tax money on those silly ideas either, such as school drag shows: by June 2022, NYC have spent $200,000 on this cause alone. Worry not, Massachusetts still wins because here, our kids don’t get just run-of-the-mill drag queens, but also a bonus “queers for Palestine” drag training camp.
…excluding transgender athletes from school sports; …
Does our distinguished Chancellor mean “destroying women’s sports?”
…and banning transgender students from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
Some men can be “annoying” enough even outside of women-only spaces, but we are talking about inside… and not only bathrooms but rape survivor support centers. Thanks to JK Rowling and others, the safe-for-women shelters do return… to Scotland. Not to our shores. Here, your daughter may still have to share her change room with a set of “male genitalia,” attached to the rest of course. To amend what we said before: keep the state and the unwanted males out of our and our daughters’, sisters’ and partners’ crotches!
Incidentally, our own Boston Pride Parade is in a complete disarray, for the second time in the last four years. In 2022 Boston Pride self-imploded for not being woke enough. From its ashes rose a new organization, Boston Pride for the People (BP4TP). This year it almost imploded again over (are you sitting down?) BP4TP’s apparent co-hosting a film with the Israeli consulate. The complete incompatibility of the absolute tolerance of the Pride founders and the rabid intolerance of the generations to follow is becoming more than apparent. You can never be woke enough, evidently.
This piece of ours is our way to pay respects to the founders of the past and frown upon the impostors of the present. Our Chancellor appears to favor the latter.
Truth knows neither color nor gender. Neither do we.
Spare a thought, Paul, for those whose gender is not to have a gender.
There are NO bathrooms which align with their gender identity. Presumably they have to hold it all in until they get home to their gender-free bathroom which aligns with their gender of not having a gender.
Holding back women from competing in women's sports is deeply misogynistic. We need to let women with the meat and two veg compete because how else are we to prove that the only thing holding women back is social construction and the oppression of men? Once we allow women with the extra equipment down below to compete we'll soon see men's supposed superiority in sports disappear. That has to be good for women, right? Certainly it's good for the women who are packing, maybe not so good for those old-fashioned women who don't come so equipped.
We really have to let women stand proud - or at least those of them that can.
Well presented.