Saturday Miscellany

First, count this as a footnote to yesterday’s column about transmania. Daniel Black offers this:

“Gender identity” was invented to give a medical excuse for sterilizing confused people. It’s not science. It’s branding. Wrap it in rainbow flags, call it progress — and rake in billions.

And also,

You can’t actually change sex. But you can create lifelong medical patients. The industry knows this. That’s why “transition” is so profitable — and detransition is ignored.

I trust that that clarifies the issue, once and for all.

Second, from the inimitable Chaya Raichik, the latest on the Chicago school system. You might recall that Chicago has the least popular mayor anywhere, apparently with reason.

New report from ProPublica shows that 47 Chicago schools are operating at less then 1/3 capacity. About 150 schools are half empty.

One school has 28 students enrolled at a cost of $93k a student.

Chicago schools are failing and not a single student can read at grade level in 30 Illinois schools.

As it happens, Mayor Brandan Johnson was the preferred candidate of the teachers’ unions.

Third, John Sexton reports on Hot Air that conservatives are largely happier than liberals. You already knew it because I have already reported it.

Naturally, we all want to know why this is the case. Sexton offers some hypotheses:

If the foundations of your movement are a) the belief that humans are destroying the planet past the point of no return, b) the belief that everyone is racist and all of society is designed to oppress minorities, c) the belief that women are victims of the patriarchy who are one short step from the Handmaid's tale and d) the forces of evil are ascendant in America—buy into all of that and you're probably not going to be a happy-go-lucky person. 

Fourth, here's another fun fact for today. If you use ChatGPT, it will damage your brain. So, let’s not get too hysterical over the chance that AI is going to take over the world.

Rachel Scully reports in The Hill.

ChatGPT can harm an individual’s critical thinking over time, a study released this month suggests.

Researchers at MIT’s Media Lab asked subjects to write several SAT essays and separated subjects into three groups — using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, using Google’s search engine and using nothing, which they called the “brain‑only” group. Each subject’s brain was monitored through electroencephalography (EEG), which measured the writer’s brain activity through multiple regions in the brain.

They discovered that subjects who used ChatGPT over a few months had the lowest brain engagement and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels,” according to the study.

Fifth, I realize that it’s not a nice thing to say, but the Harvard Law Review has gone woke. It judges submissions on DEI grounds. From that we conclude that we no longer need to read it.

From Newsmax:

Despite past denials, the Harvard Law Review eliminates more than 85% of submissions for publication based on "author diversity," according to The Washington Free Beacon.

In May, the law review responded to a Free Beacon report by claiming it "does not consider race, ethnicity, gender, or any other protected characteristic as a basis for recommending or selecting a piece for publication."

However, the Free Beacon reported Thursday that the Review eliminates most submissions using a rubric, or set of criteria, that includes asking about "author diversity."

"And 40 percent of journal editors have cited protected characteristics when lobbying for or against articles—at one point killing a piece by an Asian-American scholar, Alex Zhang, after an editor complained in a meeting that 'we have too many Yale JDs and not enough Black and Latino/Latina authors,'" wrote Free Beacon's Aaron Sibarium, citing meeting minutes from the law review's articles committee.

Sixth, from Linda Tropp at SciPost, some comments about the need for social connection. And about its relation to mental health and emotional well-being. 

It’s one of my favorite topics. I last wrote about it on Thursday:

Humans are social beings: We desire to feel connected to others, and even connecting with strangers can potentially boost our mood.

Though recent technological advances afford greater means for connection than at any other moment in human history, many people still feel isolated and disconnected. Indeed, loneliness in the American population has reached epidemic levels, and Americans’ trust in each other has reached a historic low.

At the same time, our attention is increasingly being pulled in varied directions within a highly saturated information environment, now commonly known as the “attention economy.”

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that so many Americans are experiencing a crisis of social connection. Research in social psychology helps to explain how the small behaviors and choices we make as individuals affect our experiences with others in public settings.

What happens when your social connections are frail?

One unfortunate consequence is that a person may end up treating interactions with other people as transactions, with a primary focus on getting one’s own needs met, or one’s own questions answered. A very different approach would involve seeing interactions with others as opportunities for social connection; being willing to expend some additional mental energy to listen to others’ experiences and exchange views on topics of shared interest can serve as a foundation for building social relationships.

As social creatures, it’s natural for human beings to want to be seen and acknowledged by other people. Small gestures such as eye contact or a smile, even from a stranger, can foster feelings of connection by signaling that our existence matters. Instead, when these signals are absent, a person may come to feel like they don’t matter, or that they’re not worthy of others’ attention.

Let’s see-- small talk, superficial contact… these will do you a world of good. Don’t believe me? Try it. But, do not get confused and imagine that you are going to be bosom buddies with everyone you meet, or that you need to confess all of your sins to someone you just met on the subway.

Seventh, good blue Democrats are tormenting themselves over this question: how did they lose the man vote? Why have men turned away from the Democratic Party, in favor of MAGA Republicans.

One answer is quite simple. Manliness is now being defined in terms that smack of therapy speak. As more men go for therapy, they become more feminized. They learn girl talk; they are in touch with their feelings; they are empathetic, if not pathetic. And then the political world cannot figure out why the Democratic Party has lost men.

The New York Post reports that more and more men are now doing therapy. One reason is, they are trying to learn how to adapt to their feminist girl friends, women who have learned that masculinity is toxic. Thus, true love means sacrificing your manliness on the altar of therapy:

“Women want to be with men who are self-aware, emotionally intelligent and good listeners, with the capacity to notice, feel, validate and step outside of themselves to really see and care for the other,” said Ginsberg.

“They want to be with men who have both humility and confidence and are not afraid to reflect, grow, call themselves out and communicate.”

One is not going to repeat oneself too many times here, but these therapists are teaching men to get in touch with their feminine side. It’s emasculation central:

Psychotherapist Dr. Kathryn Smerling said a man in therapy is seen as a “green flag” to many young women, showing that they want to understand themselves more.

“They are interested and curious about ways they can better themselves, which means they can then bring that emotional intelligence and care to a romantic relationship,” she went on.

“We also hear a lot more now about the importance of men embracing their emotions and not bottling things up — that it is necessary for men to be vulnerable if they want to have a healthy relationship.”

Embracing emotions; being more vulnerable. For the record, try that one out in the workplace and see how far it gets you? And see how much your true love likes it when you miss out of promotions and bonuses.

“We are no doubt living in a time when masculinity is being redefined, and men are seeking guidance to navigate a rapidly changing social, political and economic landscape. But we can succeed and thrive if we aren’t afraid to seek support.”

In certain segments of the population masculinity is being defined out of existence. No more male chauvinist pigs; no more toxic masculinity; touchy-feely males who are in total touch with their feelings.

I do not mean to say that men should never do therapy or coaching. Yet, if you are a male and if your therapist is working to make you more like a woman, decamp immediately.

Eighth, to its eternal credit, the New York Post reports on what happens when a woman is dating a well-therapied castrati. The answer is: nothing good.

So, as a counterpoint to its article about men in therapy, the Post offers this:

Turns out the real reason she’s not texting back might be because you treated her like your shrink.

A recent study from Stanford has officially named the emotional labor sucking the life out of straight women: “mankeeping” — and it’s driving them straight out of the dating pool.

The term refers to the exhausting, unpaid gig of managing men’s moods, stress and social lives — all while trying to keep their own mental health afloat.

From decoding their partner’s emotional constipation to playing middleman with his buddies, women are being cast as live-in therapists, social secretaries and emotional scaffolding.

And they’re over it.

You might consider this as showing that there is something wrong with therapy. As I said, if a man’s therapist is telling him to get in touch with his feelings, he should decamp immediately.