.
.
Identity Crisis
I used to think my body was all woman,
My fruitful womb refused to be dismissed.
But now I’m not so sure I’m even human—
I’m not a fully trained biologist.
I’m failing at cisgender recognition
In times when genitalia count for naught.
But I can’t count, I’m not a mathematician—
The thought of naught is apt to leave me fraught.
I heard guys came from Mars and gals from Venus.
For that I make a grave apology.
I do not know my elbow from my penis
And didn’t major in astronomy.
Don’t ask me what the future holds in store,
My crystal balls lie busted on the floor.
.
.
Susan Jarvis Bryant has poetry published on Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Light, Sparks of Calliope, and Expansive Poetry Online. She also has poetry published in TRINACRIA, Beth Houston’s Extreme Formal Poems anthology, and in Openings (anthologies of poems by Open University Poets in the UK). Susan is the winner of the 2020 International SCP Poetry Competition, and has been nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize.
I must say I find it hilarious that a retired grade school teacher, weak in debate, is questioning the credentials of the Honorable Senator Ted Cruz because he reads children’s books to his children.
From Wiki:
“ Cruz studied public policy at Princeton University, graduating in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts cum laude. While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society’s Debate Panel and won the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship. In 1992, he was named U.S. National Speaker of the Year and, with his debate partner David Panton, Team of the Year by the American Parliamentary Debate Association.”
I may be weak in debate, Mike, but you are no great shakes yourself. Another case of the pot/kettle/black syndrome. I never questioned the credentials of the senator from Texas. I questioned his obsession with the political ramifications of children’s literature. I have no problem with him reading children’s books to his children. That is endearing. But does he have to read to them from the halls of congress instead of from the home.
No. The senator does not get his credentials from Wiki (God forbid) nor from his skill as a student debater, skills that are now in abeyance as a recent embarrassing public debate with Tucker Carlson proved. He gets his credentials from the citizens of Texas who, fairly and freely and deliberately voted him into office. It is a pity that he won’t accept the credentials of the current President who was fairly, freely and deliberately voted into office by a greater majority.
I don’t mind the insults you throw at me. I have a thick skin. But lay off my profession – your snide condescending comment about a retired grade school teacher is an insult to educators everywhere. They are every bit as honourable as senators. And lay off my country.
As you say yourself: stop it.
So, you’re returning to that pot/kettle thing?
I can’t believe that you recommend Jimmy Kimmel who used blackface in his comedy… yes racism, and his ‘The Man Show’ was unquestionably misogynistic. Trevor Noah has also told racist and sexist jokes. Heck even Stephen Colbert loves him his misogyny.
That’s three of the five comedians you recommend… you, the paragon of modern propriety.
Look, I’m no debater, I’m a retired plumber. No one gets more jokes about their job than I do.
As for being snide and condescending about schoolteachers, I was not. I said it’s funny that you think your debating skills are anywhere near those of Ted Cruz OR Tucker Carlson’s, for that matter. I think Tucker edges Ted, but Dr. Salemi wins today.
Was the current Resident fairly, freely and deliberately voted into office by a greater majority?
https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2020-02-13/majority-of-americans-dont-trust-elections-poll
That will be for Americans to work out, not you or the untrustworthy mainstream media. The MSM is trusted by less than half of Americans.
Did I say something bad about Ireland? I love Ireland.
Mike, many thanks for continuing to respond to my posts. I thought you would be sick of me by now. Just to clarify, I did not “recommend” Kimmel or any other comedian. I told you I found the five I named funny (they are.) I even asked you then, as I am asking you again, to recommend even one conservative comedian I can add to my curriculum of political comedians. I could do with a good laugh.
Two things genuinely perplex me about you (and other dogmatic conservatives.)
1: You rail against what you call the MSM, the main stream media. But, at the same time, you call Tucker Carlson a great debater. From a European perspective, Fox News, like CNN, is a major news organisation with millions of viewers and therefore solidly mainstream. Explain.
2: Why are you (and other dogmatic conservatives) so convinced that Republicans are legitimately elected but not Democrats? If there was widespread electoral fraud by one side only, surely it would extend to elections other than the Presidential election? You rather undercut your own argument when you reveal that Steve Kovac is a conservative party activist and not an independent journalist. They do exist, you know.
1) I said that Tucker, no conservative, more a libertarian, won the debate on that night.
2) You could have left out “dogmatic” but you still would not have pigeonholed me. As far as public opinions go, the trust numbers ALWAYS change along the lines of party affiliation. You know that.
Our local democrat leader voted twice. JFK and his rum-running father bought plenty of elections. His father, noticing that costs were getting out of hand in some small election, told JFK, “Dammit, you better watch what you’re doing, I’ll be damned if I’ll pay for a landslide.”
And, as corrupt as the Kennedy clan is, JFK said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
If he said that today he’d be assassinated. Maybe that’s WHY he had to shuffle off…
Oh… for absolute delight George Carlin is great… not conservative at all and not even alive, but he is still playing on YouTube. His tombstone reads per his instructions, “He was here a minute ago.”
We’re here for a minute or so too.
Also Dave Chapelle, The Closer.
Don’t tell your friends you laughed.
Mike, it’s late on a Friday night and I am tired so, excuse me, but I haven’t a clue what your last two posts mean. But it appears that you are recommending a conservative comedian called Dave Chapelle. I will certainly look him up. Thanks for the heads-up.
Conor,
I withdrew from this debate thinking it was going nowhere. Having read your latest comment, I’d like to mention a few points that might get us back on track. I don’t believe everything should be judged on a political basis. I give much more credence to whether one thinks an idea is just. I don’t believe the government has any business in our children’s sexual development. I don’t trust any authority that serves to gain from a “program” that is abusive. I believe puberty blockers are abusive. I also believe the skewing of the term “woman” leads to unfair, dangerous, and abusive acts where biological females are concerned… hence my satirical poem.
Many found my poem humorous. It was meant to be, while also making a serious point – just as Ricky Gervais did at the Golden Globes awards. Ricky is left… the old fashioned left… a dying breed. We’ve moved on since the days of left and right. To my mind we live in a world where we mistakenly believe government-paid “experts” and big pharma-paid politicians have all the answers. I don’t believe in their divisive tactics for power-grabbing purposes. I draw upon the wisdom of my research, my heart, and my conscience to come to a decision. My decisions are not always fixed. Living in Texas for eleven years has been an eye-opener… for the better. I am always willing to listen and to learn, but when women and the children they gave birth to are being abused, I’ll stand up and fight their corner. Please answer the questions above that I asked of Paul Freeman. I’d like to hear a straight answer on my valid concerns and I’ll listen with interest and an open mind. It’s only then I might know this exchange has been worth it… for me, at least.
THE NOMINEE
Ketanji Brown Jackson
In women’s rights actions
Applies Title IX
To what she can’t define.
Perfect, Russel, it looks like definitions really do matter… the question really should be answered. Perhaps she could recuse herself from any case which involves the fairer sex, even tangentially.
Just a quick note:
Conor Kelly has indeed insulted Susan Bryant twice, in his post of March 29. Let’s look at the textual evidence. He writes:
“Susan, your efforts to corral the definition of ‘woman’ must leave you feeling, at times, like King Canute trying to repel the waves encroaching on your native Britain.”
(Basic translation: Susan, you are just as big an idiot as King Canute in his foolish compulsion to do the impossible.)
He writes further:
“Paul and Frank above are right to question the relevance of the term to the Supreme Court hearings, unless you are of the same intellectual inclination as the Texas politician whose beachside reading in Cancun is not Shakespeare, Joyce or Proust but Doctor Seuss and kindergarten books. Sadly, like many in his party he has not progressed from the children’s section of the library to the adult section.”
(Basic translation: Senator Cruz and many in his Republican Party are idiots who only read children’s books, and you are obviously of the same intellectual inclination.) Conor Kelly will most likely try to finesse his way out of this one by claiming that the “you” in this sentence is the impersonal usage, and does not refer to Susan herself. But a clearer impersonal usage would have been “one” and not “you.” I think Kelly definitely intended to insult Susan, but he tried to cover his arse here by artfully making the pronoun ambiguous.
I am not as artful as you suggest and don’t need you to provide a translation, basic or otherwise, of what I write. I stand by my comments and opinions just as you stand by yours and Susan, no doubt, stands by hers. I find it amusing that you, the crown prince of insults, should call out anyone for being insulting.
By the way, if you paid more attention to the mainstream media that you despise you might not be as ignorant and abusive as to accuse the Irish people of being stupid for voting to remain in the European Union. No such vote ever took place. The referendum was in Britain. Facts matter.
I did not write that the Irish had VOTED to stay in the E.U. I wrote that they were stupid to STAY in the E.U. At least the British people had the gumption to force a vote on Brexit, and get themselves out of that sick tyranny of arrogant Germans and snotty Belgian bureaucrats.. Actual words matter.
Don’t lie, Joe. These are your exact words – “this is directed at ALL those Irish who voted to remain in the E.U., even though it is clearly just the Smiley-Face version of the Third Reich.” There was no vote on the matter in Ireland. Actual words matter.
Yes, yes, you’re right. I did misspeak in that second post. My mistake. But the bigger issue is this: It is just as stupid for the Irish to STAY in the E.U. as it would be to VOTE to remain in the E.U.
But if you like being lorded over by arrogant Germans and snotty Belgian bureaucrats, I guess your Irish have lost a bit of your manliness.
Election Watchdog Finds 137,500 Ballots Unlawfully Trafficked in Wisconsin
10 trillion unique cell phone ‘pings’ were used to reconstruct the movements of ballot box intermediaries in 2020 election
By Steven Kovac March 29, 2022
At least 137,500 absentee ballots were cast through unlawful vote trafficking throughout several of Wisconsin’s largest cities in the 2020 election, according to research presented last week to the state Assembly’s Committee on Campaigns and Elections by the public interest organization True the Vote (TTV).
Ballot trafficking is an activity in which absentee ballots and votes are solicited, sometimes in exchange for money or other valuables. They are then collected through a process called “harvesting” and delivered to drop boxes by intermediaries (someone other than the voter), who are often paid a per-ballot fee by partisan actors.
“An organized crime against Americans” is how TTV cyber expert Gregg Phillips described to the committee what happened in Wisconsin and elsewhere during the 2020 election.
Based on his 15-month study of election practices in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Michigan, Phillips estimates that at least 4.8 million votes were trafficked nationally.
According to the True the Vote report, 242 intermediaries in metro Atlanta made 5,668 stops at drop boxes during elections in late 2020. In its report, TTV said it obtained 4 million minutes of drop box video surveillance tape that helped to document its Georgia findings.
“Many of the traffickers we spoke with do not recognize what they are doing as being a problem,” TTV spokesperson Catherine Engelbrecht said.
The study found that in Arizona, 202 intermediaries made 4,282 separate visits to ballot boxes in Maricopa County.
Several Arizonans have since been indicted for election law violations, with at least one conviction, according to Phillips.
Phillips told the committee that, in the states studied, TTV purchased from commercial brokers 10 trillion unique cell phone identity signals called “pings.”
Human rights organization First Freedoms funded the time-consuming and costly project.
Using a technique called geospatial mobile device signal analysis, Phillips said researchers are able to reconstruct a four-dimensional “pattern of life” of cell phone holders.
“From these pings, it can be determined where you work, where you sleep, and even what floor you are on within inches,” he said.
The Wisconsin study focused primarily on the Milwaukee County area, with some partial initial data coming from Racine and Green Bay, where the study will soon be further expanded, Phillips said.
In those three areas, TTV’s cell phone ping research found that in the two weeks from Oct. 20 through Nov. 3, 2020, 138 individuals each visited the location of a nongovernmental organization at least five times and made a combined total of 3,588 trips to absentee ballot drop boxes.
“That’s an average of 26 trips per person to drop boxes in the Milwaukee area,” Phillips said.
“Is this evidence of fraud?” committee member Lisa Subeck, a Democrat, asked.
“Vote trafficking is being done through the process. It is illegal,” replied Engelbrecht, who stated that every vote cast illegally cancels the vote of a legitimate voter.
Wisconsin Statute 6.87 (4)(b)1 provides that an absentee ballot envelope, in which the cast absentee ballot is placed, must be “mailed by the elector, or delivered in person, to the municipal clerk issuing the ballot or ballots.” The Circuit Court in Waukesha County in Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, has agreed, holding that use of drop boxes for absentee voting violates Wisconsin law.
Drop boxes, if unattended by a municipal clerk or in an unauthorized location, are illegal under Wisconsin law. The law is currently being challenged in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
In her testimony, Engelbrecht stressed that the TTV report was focused on the process and wasn’t attempting to prove the 137,551 votes were illegal votes.
State Rep. Dave Murphy, a Republican member of the committee, stated: “If you vote in an illegal way, it is an illegal vote. If the process is illegal, the vote is illegal.”
Earlier in March, the report of special counsel Michael Gabelman on voter fraud revealed that some personnel of nongovernmental organizations are suspected of coordinating the 2020 ballot harvesting operations in Wisconsin’s five largest heavily Democrat-run cities—Milwaukee, Kenosha, Green Bay, Madison, and Racine.
When asked by Rep. Donna Rozar, a Republican, to name the NGOs in the study that were repeatedly visited by intermediaries, Phillips declined.
A spokesperson for Micah Inc., a leading Milwaukee nonprofit philanthropic organization, told The Epoch Times that Micah does conduct “voter engagement efforts,” but declined to say more.
Phillips and Engelbrecht testified that enormous nonprofits, such as National Vote at Home, are promoting voting from home and favor doing away with in-person voting on Election Day entirely.
“Most countries around the world vote in person on election day, including Ukraine,” Phillips said.
Engelbrecht argued that some countries have perfected secure blockchain electronic voting and said she thinks U.S. technology is advanced enough to at least ensure accurate election data.
She said that some U.S. election jurisdictions view inaccurate voting rolls as a “feature rather than a bug.”
“Our rolls are abysmal. Bad records are the gateway to fraud,” Engelbrecht said.
“If you can’t verify identity, you can’t do anything else,” Phillips said.
Rep. Ron Tusler, a Republican, asked if TTV could identify the 138 alleged ballot harvesters (also known as “mules”).
“We know the names but are not disclosing them,” Phillips said. “Anyone can buy them commercially. However, law enforcement would need a warrant.”
In the other states studied, government-made video surveillance tapes of ballot drop boxes obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests were used as part of the process of estimating how many ballots were trafficked, along with personal interviews with intermediaries and other tipsters and cell phone ping data.
Engelbrecht told the committee that in Wisconsin, in September of 2020, her organization set up a hotline to receive tips from informants.
Unlike other states where video surveillance footage of the drop boxes was made available to TTV investigators, Engelbrecht said that only one of the 17 Wisconsin localities studied provided TTV with video.
Engelbrecht stated that in the summer of 2020, the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) announced it approved of video surveillance of the state’s drop boxes, as recommended by the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
“WEC did not follow through,” she said.
Neither did WEC provide to localities written guidelines based on CISA’s recommendations for the locations where the drop boxes were to be placed, according to Engelbrecht.
She testified that across the country, the majority of the ballot drops surveilled typically happened between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m.
Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, in January 2020. (Masooma Haq/The Epoch Times)
She told the committee that the removal of 234,000 problem names from Wisconsin’s registered voter rolls, as recommended by the Electronic Registration Information Center, was stopped by a lawsuit.
Forty-nine-year veteran elections attorney James Bopp Jr. came before the committee to provide a legal perspective to the facts presented in the TTV report.
Bopp has litigated 200 election lawsuits and is currently legal counsel to TTV. He is also representing special counsel Gabelman in several lawsuits against him stemming from his investigation.
Bopp testified that filing an avalanche of lawsuits was part of a years-long effort by Democrats “to make the whole system more susceptible to fraud and abuse.”
He said 425 lawsuits were filed across America by Democratic Party operatives or front organizations in the runup to the 2020 election.
Bopp asserted the suits were designed to ensure ineligible people were maintained on voting rolls; to expand voting to every voter on the rolls, whether active or inactive; and “to tear down every other anti-fraud protection, such as prohibiting signature verification and striking down witness requirements for absentee voting.”
Turning to Wisconsin, Bopp pointed the committee to what he called “the corrupt and illegal activity and administration of election laws for partisan ends engaged in by your Wisconsin state government and municipalities designed to maximize the number of Democrat votes.”
Addressing the alleged embedding of partisan get-out-the-vote efforts within local governments in Wisconsin’s largest cities, Bopp said the practice evades federal and state campaign contribution limits of just a few thousand dollars, and gives real-time, hour-by-hour, cost-free access to voter rolls to partisan actors.
Bopp said the practice disguises its partisan nature, disguises the identity of out-of-state billionaire donors contributing millions, thereby violating the principle of transparency and exceeding contribution limits.
“Despite clear and unequivocal state law, drop boxes created the infrastructure to accomplish all of this,” he said. “Drop boxes left unstaffed and located anywhere clearly violated state statutes.”
He criticized what he said was the “grossly partisan, corruptly political, and blatantly illegal” actions of the people administering Wisconsin election laws.
Bopp asserted that the actions in Wisconsin gave significant partisan political advantage to Democrats, exactly the people the plan was designed to help.
“Ruthlessly exploited by large-scale organized and illegal ballot harvesting operations, involving not-for-profits and the people working with them, (the scheme) could very well have influenced the outcome of the 2020 election,” he said.
“What has been disclosed—and, in my view, proven—is that there were sufficient irregularities in the 2020 election that a court, at the time, could have reached the conclusion that the true result cannot be determined. But that time has passed.
“It’s not about overturning the 2020 election. It’s about the future. The situation is crying for reform.”
Rozar reminded the audience that numerous election reforms passed by the legislature have been vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.
Neither Evers nor state Attorney General Josh Kaul, also a Democrat, responded by press time to requests for comment.
Steven Kovac
REPORTER
Steven Kovac is an Epoch Times reporter who covers the state of Michigan. He is a former small businessman, local elected official, and conservative political activist. He is an ordained minister of the Gospel. Steven and his wife of 32 years have two grown daughters. He can be reached at [email protected]
It’s as plain as a pikestaff that the 2020 “election” was fraudulent, and that operatives for the Democrat Party have illegally placed a senile cheat in the White House. He isn’t The President. He’s The Resident.
But Conor Kelly won’t deal with the facts presented above by Steven Kovac at Epoch Times. He’ll just dismiss them as “fake news,” and cling all the more tightly to the religious dogmas that he gets from the BBC and other mainstream media outlets. After all, left-liberalism is now a religion, and a strong fundamentalist one at that.
Okay Joe, it looks like it is time for me to bail out. I have now wandered on to the set of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” This is just to let you know that Nurse Ratched is off duty and the doors are, in fact, open. So you can walk out if you want. I have the feeling you’ll stay.
You claim that “It’s as plain as a pikestaff that the 2020 “election” was fraudulent…” Well, pikes and pikestaffs are not plain. If you study the 1798 rebellion in Ireland, you will know that they are tainted with history. Seamus Heaney has a wonderful sonnet about it called “Requiem for the Croppies”. But somehow I don’t think you are interested in poetry or history. Nurse Ratched will be back soon with the pills.
You call me a strong fundamentalist because I take my news from what you derisively call the mainstream media. So you want me to take the word of an avowed conservative activist who works for a news organisation that, according to Wikipedia, is “a far-right international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement.” And you call left-liberalism a religion.
Not only do I take my news from the BBC, but also from ITV, RTE, Channel 4 and Virgin Media. But, no doubt, these diverse organisations are all part of the mainstream media and purveyors of fake news. Even conservative newspapers in Britain such as The Daily Mail and The Telegraph, who hate Biden and constantly run stories denigrating him and his policies, have never gone down the road of alleging election fraud. So it looks like you and the Epoch Times are out on a limb here.
I can tell you, Joe, what is plain as a pikestaff. You are barking in the dark, you are barking up the wrong tree and you are barking mad. Also, thankfully, your bark is worse than your bite.
Yet again, Conor, you are “bailing out” before answering the poet in this debate. You haven’t addressed my poem, only my “King Canute” character. The only waves I’m battling are the waves of idiocy or evil, take your pick. I’m sure there are many on this site who would like to hear your voice of reason on the rape of women by transgenders on hospital wards, transgenders in women’s sports, and the grooming of our prepubescent children before they’ve had the chance to experience the knowledge of their own budding sexuality. Am I as a biological woman invisible, ignorable, and obsolete before the SCOTUS nominee has been appointed?
Susan, I am not bailing out on you at all. I just can’t take any more of Joe’s mania. I am bailing out on him. I have found your responses very respectful and I owe you an apology. Not for countering your arguments, but for ignoring the poem that inspired this lengthy thread. You say many found the poem humorous but I found it better than that. Let me just pick four things I admire.
1: I’d give anything to write a line as sharp and as metrically coherent as “The thought of naught is apt to leave me fraught.” The internal rhymes give it a real punch.
2: I like the way you offer a clever variation on the not knowing your ass from elbow phrase in the line “I do not know my elbow from my penis.”
3: I like the way you rhyme “dismissed” and “biologist”.
4: I like your mastery of the sonnet form.
I have seen your work in SNAKESKIN and I know from certain rejections I have received that George Simmers does not accept anything other than good, well-written clever poems. Just as we have a dispute over the politically charged term “woman”, I have had a humorous dispute with George over the poetically charged term “azure.”
I am tired. It is Friday night. So you will have to excuse me if I don’t rise to your challenge of addressing the questions you asked Paul. Give me the weekend to recharge my political batteries. and I’ll re-enter the fray.
In the meantime, enjoy your own weekend in Texas.
I suppose that the publications of the White Rose dissident student group in Nazi Germany in 1943 were also “out on a limb,” and clearly insane, since no news agency in Hitler’s Third Reich would have confirmed a thing that the White Rose students reported.
In a world run by demonic liars, truth is a lonely voice. But for you, Kelly, truth is always in the voice of the big battalions.
You know what you are, Kelly? You’re a gutless conformist — what the French call a “bien-pensant.” That’s someone who spouts unthinkingly everything that he reads in mainstream papers, and hears on mainstream broadcasts, and listens to in conversations with his like-minded friends, and who immediately dismisses anything that contradicts the accepted pieties of his comfort zone.
I’m not interested in poetry and history? Wow. Buddy, I’ve forgotten more poetry and history than you know or will ever know.
You said in a previous post that when someone stoops to “ad hominum” [sic] argument, it means they’re losing the debate. What have you stooped to here, with accusations of insanity and “barking” madness and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” references? Is that the best you can do, pal? It’s pretty pathetic.
But it’s clear that you’re wildly anxious to “bail out” of this catfight. Your above posting is barely coherent, and reeks of desperation. OK, let’s call it a day. As for my bite, there are enough of them on your arse right now to guarantee you’ll remember me.
To answer the poet. When you make a comment like: ‘To my mind you’re coming across as a misogynist,’ there is no longer any debate. It’s a clever, some would say sly ploy to cast aspersions on me, dismiss anything I say and unfairly label me. Mike did the same to Conor, with his ‘I think there is more than a whiff of misogyny in your actions’ comment, which came across a bit Witch Finder General-ish (‘a whiff of sin’), I felt.
It’s a bit like someone making a comment like ‘Is it because she’s black?’ to explain why someone is anti Ms Jackson. It would be stooping very low.
For your interest I believe that anyone born biologically male should not be allowed to participate in women’s sport because it’s not an equal playing field.
By the way, there’s a film called ‘The Crying Game’ which looks sensitively at the trans community. There is however a shocking scene when Forest Whitaker, an American, is filmed bowling a cricket ball. The MCC has never recovered.
That’s it from me. I have to do some writing.
Please don’t take me out of context, Paul. This is how the conversation went:
“No need to patronise. Next time you’re interviewed for, say, a faith-based job and the interviewer asks you questions about king prawns, remind me about dumb questions.”
“You’re not being patronized, you’re being asked. Is it okay for a man who identifies as a woman to be exonerated of rape? Give a straight answer for once. The law is being skewed to allow this. To my mind you’re coming across as a misogynist (simile). I am a woman and I know exactly what that means… even though I’m not a biologist.”
You certainly got your big dig in on the “faith-based” job front (ad hominem) before I made my observation, a fair one having spent much time trying to converse with you on the plight of women and rape which you refused to answer. You flame throw and leave. This happened on March 25th. Eight days have passed. You’re confusing me. Does it take you that long to answer, are you hoping to humiliate me, or are you asking for an apology?
Paul, you said, “To answer the poet. When you make a comment like: ‘To my mind you’re coming across as a misogynist,’ there is no longer any debate. It’s a clever, some would say sly ploy to cast aspersions on me, dismiss anything I say and unfairly label me. Mike did the same to Conor, with his ‘I think there is more than a whiff of misogyny in your actions’ comment, which came across a bit Witch Finder General-ish (‘a whiff of sin’), I felt.”
First, you won’t even call Susan by name… “the poet” indeed… hmmm. You’ve been studiously ignoring Susan for eight days… not very gentlemanly… but certainly not misogyny, right?
Second, “… there is no longer any debate.”? Really, Paul? Conor certainly didn’t feel like that. He’s been debating all the time you’ve been sulking, so… no, you’re wrong about that, aren’t you?
Third, congratulations on standing up and (almost) calling me a “Witch Finder General” searching out a “whiff of sin” but shouldn’t that be a whiff of heresy? Oh, of course not… heresy’s home is with the easily-hurt woke.
Fourth, speaking of heresy, Paul, you said, “For your interest I believe that anyone born biologically male should not be allowed to participate in women’s sport because it’s not an equal playing field.”
That really is heresy, but I’m not the one to sniff that one out. You have disappointed so many caring people with that unfeeling pronouncement. Are you transphobic?
You don’t have to answer any of my questions… I fear I may have sent you into hiding for another week.
You have asked me, Susan, to consider your posts and give you “a straight answer on my valid concerns.” As you know I have been joshing around on this page with an often juvenile hurling of barbs – some of them directed at you – and I have been taking pleasure in baiting a certain member of the flat-earth society and watching him wriggle on my fishing line as I reel it in. But you want me to be serious, so I will try.
Lat me begin by saying something that will probably stop you in your tracks and may stop you reading any further. I actually believe that Judge Jackson was as wise as Solomon in refusing to respond to the question of Senator Blackburn and the taunting by Ted Cruz. I also believe – as do certain eminent Republicans – that the honourable senator from Texas is a duplicitous, spineless, conniving, smug, self-satisfied, gutless politician, what Shakespeare would call “a whoreson dog”, what Yeats would call “a vainglorious lout” and what I would call, in American slang, “a sonovabitch”. Enough of that.
Why do I think the judge was wise? If she had answered the question according to what she might espouse (see my comments below) and according to what I would consider her judicial responsibilities, she would have lost all Republican and some Democratic votes. If she had answered as you would have liked her to answer, she would be hypocritically betraying what she believes. So she deflected. Rightly. Let me make one prediction that is already becoming obvious. In time, the judicial, social and political issues surrounding the transgender movement will become as toxic and as controversial in America as those now currently surrounding the pro-choice/pro-life movements. And all the judges will have to confront those issues.
Now for our differences. The problem is what I would call a Galileo-Church problem. Everything depends on where you start from – the sun or the earth. And you and I start from two very different positions. You are a conservative. And, before I go any further, I assure you that, despite what Mike and Joe say, I do not despise, denigrate, feel superior to or condemn the conservative position. I just disagree with it. (After all Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, mentioned tangentially by Mike in his Icarus attack, was a great and noble Irishman.)
As a conservative you believe that certain laws are immutable. To you a man is a man and a woman is a woman. And that is that. You mention genitalia in your poem and chromosomes in your post. That leads you to the positions you take on sports, rape, children, surgery etc.
I think in a different manner. To me most men are men and most women are women. But, and this is where you and I fundamentally differ, there is a small, but significant part of the population that do not identify with their biological status. Their gender and their sexuality diverge. Many simply suffer this. Some deal with it by cross-dressing. And some undergo surgery or other medical procedures to address the problem.
The Welsh writer James Morris climbed Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary and reported back for The Times of London. Later he transitioned to a woman and underwent sex reassignment surgery. He became she, the famous travel writer Jan Morris, and wrote about his/her transition in the aptly named “Conundrum” which begins : “I was three or perhaps four years old when I realised that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl. I remember the moment well, and it is the earliest memory of my life.” As you are interested in poetry, you are probably aware of the American poet, translator and critic, Stephen Burt who, in 2017, transitioned to a woman and is now Stephanie Burt.
I have not the time to deal with all the points you make on this page so I will just consider two of them – sports and rape.
Sports
You ask “If a biological male identifies as a “woman”, is he a woman and should he be able to partake in women’s sports?” That question is not as simple as it sounds. What if the biological male has transitioned surgically to a female? There are, as there always are in life, shades of grey. You are British and you understand rugby. The governing body of the sport has said transgender women cannot play women’s rugby. But the ruling is not based on political or social concerns. It is based, rightly, on safety concerns. Many sports are not contact sports and so those concerns do not arise. Swimming, which has hit the headlines recently over one particular swimmer who transitioned with medical procedures, is one such sport. The question I would ask you is this; should transgender athletes be prevented from participating in sports? I would also make two other points. Much sport is participatory rather than competitive. Plenty of people don’t care who wins. The pleasure is in the participation. And when it does come to competitive sports, it is possible to find solutions. Many mainstream (I hesitate using that word in the presence of Mike or Joe) sports have rulebooks that run to multiple pages with clauses and sub-clauses governing all possible eventualities. It should be possible to address the issue of transgender athletes within the parameters of the particular sport. All that is needed is an open mind and a willingness to accommodate everyone: male, female and transgender.
So, as you can see, I don’t even agree with Paul on this one. He says “I believe that anyone born biologically male should not be allowed to participate in women’s sport because it’s not an equal playing field.” That is far too rigid for my liking. As an ageing teacher I often participated in soccer matches with the flabby over-weight teachers on one team and the fit-as-a-fiddle students on another. That certainly wasn’t an equal playing field. But who cared? It was sport; it was fun; it was competitive; it was healthy. Genuine sports are not about winning; they are about participating. And everyone should be encouraged to pursue some sporting activity no matter what way they identify themselves.
Rape
You ask “If a biological male identifies as a “woman” and rapes a biological woman in a UK hospital and is then exonerated because ‘there were no men on the ward’ – is he a woman? If he is a woman, is that conduct acceptable?” You are actually asking two questions here and the first question is not nearly as significant as the second. Is that conduct acceptable? Allow Frank to answer that one: “rape is forced sex with a woman and whether the culprit is a man or a woman or a man posing as a woman, it is rape and should be punished in a manner that no one would ever think of doing it again.” The problem of biological males committing rape in hospital wards is insignificant compared to (note: I didn’t say it was insignificant, per se) the problem of rape on college campuses, the problem of rape on date rapes, the problem of rape within the family and, dare I say it to you, the problem of a former President facing credible accusations of rape. Rape is a serious problem many women have to confront and the culprits are predominantly male, not women or transgender women.
Also, I don’t see why the statement ‘there were no men on the ward’ could or should exonerate anyone of rape. While rape is predominantly a male crime, it is not exclusively so. It has nothing to do with identity and gender and everything to do with violation. As an Irish person who grew up during the Troubles, I have very little respect for the British judicial system and if they exonerate rapists on spurious grounds, I would not be in the least surprised. After all, Lord Chief Justice Widgery exonerated the British soldiers who murdered fourteen innocent men in Derry on Bloody Sunday. It took years before the Saville inquiry righted that wrong.
I know you have other concerns, but they all boil back to the Galileo-Church divide. You stand on one side; I stand on the other. We might not agree, but at least we can acknowledge our differences respectfully.
Connor, I thank you for taking the time to consider my questions and for getting back to me so promptly.
Firstly, it saddens me to hear such venom from you where Dr. Salemi is concerned. It saddens me further to hear that you have been “taking pleasure in baiting [that] certain member of the flat-earth society and watching him wriggle on [your] fishing line as [you] reel it in.” The fact that you’re having to “try to be serious” with me lets me know I’m also a figure of fun – another member of that irksome society of flat-earthers that you are putting yourself above.
I am, however, happy to answer you. I would like to start with your analogy of perceived differences. You say it’s a “Galileo-Church” problem. You say “You stand on one side; and I the other” yet, you don’t make clear what side that is.
As you’re speaking to my character without knowing a thing about me, I’ll let you know exactly whose side I’m on. I don’t have a church or a political party. I left them. I’m on the side of God and Galileo, and I’ll hazard an intelligent guess here, I think you’re worshipping at the altar of Wokeness – the new global religion. So, we agree on something – it is a Galileo/Church problem.
I have sympathy for those with body dysmorphic disorder. I have sympathy for those whose personal choice of gender doesn’t agree with the settled science. I have no sympathy for a government-funded program that brainwashes, drugs, and mutilates our children. I have no sympathy for a law that allows biological men to take advantage of women in sports, on hospital wards, in bathrooms, or anywhere for that matter.
Galileo Galilei was a scientist who believed in God. He was a man who was up against the inevitable tide of church power, propriety, and piety. Anyone who wishes to embrace immutable truths such as chromosomes is up against the new religion of Wokeness. A religion that embraces puberty blockers, sexualization and castration of children, identity politics, and the list goes on. This church is aligned with global governance and anyone who doesn’t believe that the Woke church is at the center of the universe is a heretic. So, there we go. We’re not going to see eye to eye, because, as I’ve learned, today’s Woke churches have no room for God and no room for science. In the Woke church 2 + 2 = 5 and one X plus one Y chromosome equals whatever the hell you want.
Thank you for your time and your thoughts. I hope next time we meet we’ll have the wonders of literature to discuss. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Thank you for your speedy response. But I find some things a little odd.
Why is it acceptable for you to use satire (and use it more successfully than me) when you cleverly attack Judge Jackson, but it saddens you when I take a satiric approach to someone whose views and beliefs I find as ridiculous as you find those of the judge? Is that not hypocritical? Why does it upset you that I have a small amount of fun at your expense, when you have a large amount of fun at the judge’s expense? Is that not hypocritical?
You accuse me of “speaking to my character without knowing a thing about me.” I haven’t said anything about your character. I don’t know you. I have addressed my remarks to your poetry and to your views. I have not tried to mischaracterise you, yet you extrapolate from my views a picture of my character. “I’ll hazard an intelligent guess here,” you say. If it is a guess, it is a hazard and it is also a slur and it is not intelligent. (Don’t worry; I am thick skinned.) And then instead of acknowledging that I am a traditional liberal or leftist you say that you “think you’re worshipping at the altar of Wokeness.” I don’t really know what that means, but I do know that it’s meant to be an insult rather than a political point. Again, I don’t mind, I’m thick skinned. But I don’t think it advances the argument.
And talking of arguments, you completely ignored them . You asked me to address your points and I did, specifically with regards to sport, to rape and to justice. I discussed the points you made, but you totally ignored the points I made on those topics. Why did you ask in the first place, if you didn’t wish to engage?
You completely misunderstand the point I was making when I talked about the Galileo-Church distinction. But that is entirely my fault as I didn’t make it clear. It has nothing to do with either religion or science. It was all about perspective. Let me see if I can make it clearer. The Catholic Church believed the earth was the centre of the universe and the sun orbited the earth. Galileo believed that the sun was the centre of the solar system and the earth orbited the sun. Two entirely different perspectives. So your penultimate paragraph about Galileo, the Church. God and religion is redundant. But that is my fault for not being clearer.
In conclusion, do me one favour. Stop using that trite insulting word “woke”. George Simmers believes that no self-respecting poet should use the word “azure” as it is overused and therefore drained of any poetic resonance; I believe the same applies, in political argument, to the word “woke”.
woke adjective
\ ˈwōk \
woker; wokest
Definition of woke (Entry 1 of 2)
chiefly US slang
: aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)
But we will only succeed if we reject the growing pressure to retreat into cynicism and hopelessness. … We have a moral obligation to “stay woke,” take a stand and be active; challenging injustices and racism in our communities and fighting hatred and discrimination wherever it rises.
— Barbara Lee
https://www.merriam-webster.com/
Connor,
I don’t want this thread to end on such a sour note, especially in this divisive day and age. I am not a hypocrite. I am a fan of satire and I have a sense of humor. The fun you poked at Dr. Salemi’s expense doesn’t come across as satirical to me. As for the term “woke”, I didn’t mean it as an insult, I thought it apt with this thread of conversation in mind just as you thought it apt to call me a “conservative”. I am hoping we can move on from this distraction to the bigger picture. In this area we may have a couple of things in common.
I’ll start with rape – that’s my main concern. The term “rape” has gone through many changes, but I agree with you and Frank in that a woman can be raped by another woman. Rape is a problem in society. It always has been and always will be. Holding up transgenders as oppressed victims of society who need to be protected by the law and given rights that allow a biological male to take full advantage of a biological female’s vulnerability, will lead to further rapes. This is already evident in schools, on hospital wards, in bathrooms etc. It is why I am having this conversation. It’s not because I’m “conservative”. It’s not because I’m prudish. It’s because I care for the future of women and children. If a transgender has a penis, the women’s prisons, hospital wards, and any other place where those with vaginas are vulnerable should be off limits. Yes, as we’ve agreed a woman can rape a woman, but man is more inclined to do so and stands a far greater chance of overpowering a woman. This is why the definition of “woman” in the legal sense is so important. You are right when you say KBJ was wise to avoid the question. The American people wouldn’t have liked her real answer, and it would jeopardize her chances of becoming a Justice. But she certainly wasn’t as “wise as Solomon” – his response was in the interest of fairness, right and wrong, justice – call it what you will.
This brings me to another important point. You say you “have very little respect for the British judicial system, and if they exonerate rapists on spurious grounds, I would not be in the least surprised.” I share your concerns. Many criminals worldwide have been exonerated on spurious grounds down to a corrupt judicial system. Why then do you hold up this SCOTUS nominee as being ‘as wise as Solomon’ when she won’t answer a question that’s important to the American people? If she believed wholeheartedly in her ideology, why not tell the people how amazing it is? I’ll tell you why. It’s because her answer would upset and appall many people worldwide for the reasons I’ve outlined above.
As for sports, professional sport is a business like any other. People buy tickets to see a fair game on an “equal playing field” (I agree with Mr. Freeman wholeheartedly on this matter). Watching “flabby overweight teachers on one team and fit-as-a-fiddle students on another” may well be fun, but not if you want to sell tickets. There is no fun in seeing a biological male overpower and beat a biological female senseless in a boxing ring, winning only because of their physical differences… unless you happen to have a warped outlook.
The global powers that be have made it clear that they want the powerless to be frightened, compliant, and few. We’re well on the way. They never do anything out of care. Funding transgender programs in kindergarten is as far from caring as one could possibly imagine.
We are not going to agree, but I hope as you said previously, we can acknowledge our differences respectfully.
The humor of this poem is lost on me, but then I’ve never been very good at laughing at someone else’s expense.
If you ask 1,000 people to define love, you may easily get 1,000 different responses.
This question says more about the complexity of modern society than it does about any specific person. Trying to make this woman the scapegoat for that complexity is textbook New Jim Crow. Thinly veiled racism is just that, thinly veiled and painfully obvious to those that are willing to acknowledge the weaknesses of the United States as well as its strengths. In trying to make a fool of her, they have made fools of themselves.
On April 7th, 2022, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of The United States Of America.
Signed,
She Who Laughs Last
Courtney, thank you for your comments – I appreciate your viewpoint.
This poem is pure satire. It is a look at the ridiculousness of a society that can no longer define the term “woman”. It is a look at a tragic subject through a comic lens. It has nothing to do with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sex or color. It has everything to do with her attitude towards society’s view on what it means to be a woman and the impact her attitude may have on the future of biological women. Her reaction to the question is of significance to me and society in general for the reasons I’ve already highlighted above (please read the comment just above yours to give you an idea of where I’m coming from). I NEVER judge a person on skin color, only on the content of their character. Color didn’t enter my head when I created this poem, just as it didn’t when I wrote all my other satirical poems. When I mocked Joe Biden, I didn’t once think of his color, only his behavior and how it impacts all of us.
By reducing my poem to a racist slur, you have missed the most important point. I am fighting for the future of biological women – women in society who are getting raped on hospital wards, in bathrooms, in prisons, etc. by biological men who identify as women. I’m also fighting for biological women in sports who are no longer able to compete fairly.
The term “woman” should NEVER be politicized in the interest of an agenda that is detrimental to biological women. Many would like to think a Supreme Court Justice (regardless of color) had the same views – sadly, this is not the case.
The majority of biological women are far from laughing now. They are wondering what the future holds in a post-truth era where chromosomes count for nothing. I am one of those women… aren’t you?
Dear Susan,
Thank you for this poem! I think when the history of this period is one day written in the future, the issue of transgenderism and people in places of power seeking to redefine what genders are will be a defining mark as to when our civilization had really reached the bottom.
A limerick for you…
Susan Bryant knows women from men
And can count on her fingers to ten;
She’s more qualified
To be glorified
Than those at 1600 Penn.
Evan, you are most welcome. You’re spot-on with your civilization reaching the bottom observation… how low are we all willing to go? And, your limerick gift has made my day! Thank you!