Friday Night Slights

Why does it have to be weird?

By

Christine Rosen, senior fellow at AEI and—alleged—cohost of the Commentary podcast, makes an overdue Remnant return today. In this obstinate exercise in counter-programming, Christine and Jonah discuss just about every topic you could imagine besides Fox News’ settlement with Dominion. From the growing influence of the transgender debate on American politics to Ron DeSantis’ chances in the coming primaries, the two bounce between topics so controversial and toxic that poor David French might just get canceled by association. 

Show Notes:

-Listen on YouTube

–Christine’s page at AEI

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  1. Shadraq

    Excellent guest - loved her views about treating everyone, even those with whom we vehemently disagree, with respect.

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  2. Francislyo

    In the pod’s discussion on trans, the key point for me was Christine’s statement that she is far less concerned about sports than about spaces where women’s bodily security is at real risk. She related that women prisoners are being raped by trans women prisoners having male genitalia. I was dismayed, somewhat skeptical, and needed to check. Now I’m horrified.

    Prison rape, of women and men, has long been a major concern for me. Incarcerated people have a tough time getting justice when they’re raped, particularly when done in places without cameras (cells, showers) or when guards/staff are doing, arranging or overlooking it.

    Although extremists on either side of the culture wars can’t see the obvious, we do need to protect the vast majority of women who are cis, along with trans women. Incarcerated women, among the most vulnerable citizens, *are in our care*. There is no way they, cis or trans, deserve to be raped/brutalized as part of their sentence.

    I guess it could be a nothing burger for those who don’t know a single woman who has ever gone to jail, but most would consider such people elite and heartless. And those who aren’t the least bit skeptical when a man claims to be a woman only after he is indicted/incarcerated could be seen as clueless.

    When people think we want to throw women under the bus to meet, without discussion, extremist trans demands, we drive them into Trump’s arms. This is a democracy! You have to discuss in order to win hearts and minds. Independents and moderates will swing the vote. We need to listen and talk, not shut down concerns with name calling.

    It makes sense to avoid situations where rape is more likely, yet for some reason common sense practices aren’t policy. (Ex: Avoid pairing cellmates where one is much larger, one objects that the other is a known/convicted predator or is harassing them. Avoid having known/convicted predators shower with the general population).

    We also should avoid, but recently don’t: placing people who have male genitalia as cellmates or showering with people who have female; and placing trans males as cell mates or showering with females. Avoid placing biological men in women’s prisons just on a claim to be a woman, yet having changed neither body nor hormones. A certain subset of these men will think the woman “wants it” no matter how much protest, and a larger subset will be brutal to get what they want.

    People can picture their daughter, sister or wife in the place of the victim in a prison cell with a rapist - and the thought horrifies them. They think it’s brain-dead to place women in such risk. They don’t understand why we should get upset when someone refers to the rapist as “he”, since most Americans would agree with that pronoun for a conveniently-equipped perp, regardless of what he claims to be. Both those who refer to the rapist as “she” and who refer as "he" are generally far more worried about the potential harm to incarcerated women than the proper pronoun for the rapist.

    If you can’t discuss common concerns for safety, then people won’t vote to put you in power.

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    Ben Connelly

    What bothers me most about the trans activists is that anyone to the right of Liz Warren is a fascist to these folks. I’m not a father, but I am a brother and the “males in women’s locker rooms” thing triggers all the protective signals to cause any man with female relatives to go into a blind rage. What really bothers me is that a statement of that fact (in much more polite terms than I just put it), is “extreme bigotry that’s killing people” according to these activists.

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    Ben Connelly

    This was really good! Looking forward to the Matt Continetti and Abe Greenwald episodes!

    Suggestion: It would be awesome if you could get George Will back on to talk about the free speech debate. I would be fascinated to know if he has changed his mind since Skokie.

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    Marianwcates

    Christine as a guest - what a treat. I follow the Commentary podcast and read her articles regularly. The podcast was excellent.

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  6. Mmorrissey001

    Excellent guest. Good discussion.

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    Silvertide

    Jonah,

    I'm not sure you read any comments anymore but mark be down as one who found your reference to Trans people being comparable to black face as rude and disgusting.

    You also mentioned the locker room fear again. If you have a problem with trans in various bathrooms or showers then I'm guessing you must feel the same way about gay and Bi people as it's about someone being attracted to another's genitals. So do we need all these groups to have unique bathrooms for each type? What happens if a straight guy looks at another straight guys penis does that mean he needs to use another shower.

    I just find this talk so reminiscent of how gay students were treated and talked about during my school days and it saddens and depresses me to see how far away we are from just letting people be themselves.

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      George.Skinner

      I don't think you're listening to what was being said. Some people clearly have an issue with male genitalia in a women's change room. The more significant issue is that a lot of women have concerns about their safety by allowing people with male genitalia in a place like a change room. People with male genitalia commit most sexual assaults. Women have disproportionately been the targets of those sexual assaults. They don't know if the person with male genitalia is there because they identify as a woman, or if they're looking for an opportunity to be around women in various states of undress for nefarious purposes.

      Is this likely to happen? Maybe not, but there have been instances of it occurring. You can't preclude the possibility, especially given the way that bad people will tend to exploit opportunities to do bad things. The way to deal with this is to engage with the problem, figure out how to address concerns about safety, and DO SOMETHING to address it. You can't just harangue them to chill out, that it's no big deal. Maybe it means adding a 3rd changing room that's not gender-specific; maybe it's adding booths with locking doors, combined with some sort of security system.

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    CynthiaW

    It was fascinating to hear Jonah giving the #OurPeers spiel about Twitter. It supports my theory that the only audience that truly matters to journalism persons is other journalism persons.

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  9. Zackary.Frank

    The righteous insistence on acting like a middle school bully by referring to trans women as men (let alone "womanface") is extremely off-putting. If the school called and told me my kid was doing that, it'd be time to have a talk about treating people with basic human decency, even when you think they're strange. It completely undercuts any attempt at "reasonable debate" about the issue, at least as much as calling someone transphobic for having concerns about policy.

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    Jeff Walden

    A thought on the t-shirt Christine mentioned someone wearing: a t-shirt that reads "Suck my dick" is nothing if not the purest distillation of "rape culture".

    Right?

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