The real “war on women”…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is being waged by the left, and it’s on the very word “woman” and “women” and on the concept itself.

The left has supported transgender political and cultural activism to such a great extent that not only are biological men such as Lia Thomas allowed to enter women’s sports and compete there by claiming to be women, but the word “woman” itself has undergone a transformation for health professionals, who are now discouraged from using it.

Certainly it’s good for medical professionals to be aware that a person who looks like a man or a woman may have biological organs that don’t match his or her outward presentation and that it can be medically important to consider that possibility at times. But that’s a far far cry from eliminating the basic concepts of men and women and surrendering to the reduction of people to their genitalia.

This is what I mean:

The Massachusetts school [Wheaton College] has issued a language guide for professors…

Under the heading of “Natural Sciences,” the instructions explain, “Gender identity has a complicated relationship to biology and bodies.”

“Instructors in the natural sciences who teach about sex differences, sexuality, and/or reproduction may wish to consider using terms that are both more precise and which better account for these bodies and experiences.”

[Examples given are as follows]:

–Penis/testes/vulva/clitoris/etc. instead of “male genitalia” and “female genitalia”
–Assigned [male/female] at birth (AMAB or AFAB), instead of “born female” or “biological male”: acknowledges that which physical characteristics we use to assign sex at birth are determined by social norms and technological capabilities (in the U.S., for example, we rarely test hormone levels or chromosomes unless physical genitalia appear ambiguous), as well as the fact that this is an assignment, not the individual’s own self-identification.
–People with uteruses/people who menstruate/pregnant people/etc., instead of “women” or “females”: helps to specify the relevant organs or biological processes, instead of making assumptions about the identities of the people in question. “People with uteruses,” then, would include most (but not all) cisgender women, as well as many transgender men and nonbinary AFAB people. This specificity matters for trans and nonbinary students in class, but also for anyone who, for example, might become a healthcare worker — inability to access competent and sensitive medical treatment (not just transition-related health care, but also basic preventive and acute medical care) is a persistent problem for transgender people.

Since “women” are now defined only as “people who believe they are women,” actual bodies and their characteristic are excluded, and we must pretend that when we look at someone like Lia Thomas we don’t see a man when we clearly and unequivocally see a man who is in fact a man anatomically as well as chromosomally. But in the real world of health care (it still is at least somewhat in the real world, isn’t it?) bodies unavoidably enter the picture and therefore cannot be ignored. This results in an attempt to change the nomenclature into something tortuously complex with troubles all its own.

Note also that in this rush to defer to a very small number of transgender people (and by no means do all transgender people have any objection to using words such as “women” in a health care setting), actual women who lack uteruses for whatever reason are excluded by certain new definitions. The manual’s suggestion that “people with uteruses” includes “most but not all” of cisgender women (otherwise known as females) is the sort of thing I mean. The number of women without a uterus is hardly tiny, because not only are a very few women born without a uterus, but a great many women have had hysterectomies.

How many? This many:

Every year in the United States, over half a million women have a hysterectomy. By age 60, approximately one in three women in the U.S. have had one.

They’re not “people with uteruses.” But they are women.

The left’s war on language is a war on ideas. The traditional and universal concepts of “man” and “woman” are themselves a threat to the left and must be changed. I don’t even think this is about transgender rights; not really. It’s about something bigger: the desire of the left for control of every factor of society, including (and perhaps even especially) language and thought.

[NOTE: And this sort of insanity is a further example of how bizarre and stupid things have become.]

Just what we need – a recession

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been expected for quite some time. How bad will it be?:

The Fed maintains that it can thread the needle and raise interest rates just enough to clear away that pesky inflation, but not so much as to crush the economic recovery from the catastrophic COVID-19 shutdown policy. But The Street reports:

“Deutsche Bank economists don’t think it will play out that way. Led by Chief Economist David Folkerts-Landau, they see the Fed having to raise the federal funds rate to 5%-6% to get inflation under control. The fed funds rate is now 0.25%-0.5%.

Rate increases, Fed balance sheet reduction and the “financial upheaval that accompanies [them] will push the economy into a significant recession by late next year,” the economists wrote in a commentary.

“Something stronger than a mild recession will be needed to do the job” of controlling inflation.”

That quote is followed by other quotes from other sources saying that there won’t be a recession.

Financial prediction is most definitely not my field of expertise. I’m not even sure that it’s anyone’s field of expertise, but that certainly doesn’t stop a lot of people from making plenty of predictions. I’m not really able to evaluate whether the optimists or pessimists are more correct, but all you have to do is search for the term “recession” and you’ll get tons of prognostications.

Flying the unmasked skies

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter PA Cat asked me: “How does it feel to have the mask mandate on planes ended?” after learning that I’m now home. So I’ll oblige.

I started out yesterday at LAX, which still has a mask mandate even though the FDA does not. The mandate was announced on loudspeakers periodically. But interestingly enough – at least to me – I’d estimate that about 20% of the people in the airport were not wearing masks and I didn’t witness anyone being stopped and reprimanded for that (which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen; just that I didn’t see it).

Once on the plane I was wedged between my ex-husband, who had kindly accompanied me out west to help me out, and a middle-aged woman. He had taken off his mask, but she had hers on. At first I decided, out of deference to her, to keep mine on. But about an hour into the flight I took it off for comfort’s sake, and kept it off for the duration.

In back of us was a very talkative child of about five years old. She kept up quite a chatter, and towards the end of the flight she started talking about COVID. Either someone she knew had COVID, or she had COVID, or some family member did – I couldn’t hear her clearly enough to get the story straight. This made me nervous. But then again, I figure it’s everywhere and I’m probably exposed to it on a daily basis if I’m out of the house, masked or unmasked. It’s just a fact of life at this point.

In Boston while waiting at the carousel for the luggage to arrive, I noticed that – even in that solidly blue city – maybe only 5% of the people were masked. I was actually surprised the number was so low. But I think the explanation is that people are simply exhausted with all of it and have decided to accept its presence on the scene and live more normally, after two years of restrictions. This seems to be true despite politics, at least in Boston.

The flight was great, by the way: Jet Blue, perfectly on time, and pretty smooth. It was jam-packed and I don’t think there was an empty seat. It’s amazing how much faster the west-to-east trip is than the reverse, because of tailwinds. The difference is nearly two hours saved.

On arriving home, just as I thought would happen, I started noticing things in my place that I realize I need to tend to that weren’t noticeable to me before. First up was the bathroom sink, which had looked perfectly clean to me when I left. Now with my operated-on left eye, I could see that it had very faint stains. They were incredibly difficult to get off and took many scrubbings, but I accomplished it. Of course, there was an easier way to make them go away – simply close that eye and looks at them with my right eye.

And then there was the phenomenon of the mirror.

The Biden administration’s…

The New Neo Posted on by

…Department of Homeland Security plans to create a Minitrue:

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified Wednesday before a House committee that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is creating a “Disinformation Governance Board” to combat disinformation and ‘misinformation’ ahead of the 2022 midterms.

What could possibly go wrong?

[NOTE: In case you’re not familiar with Orwell’s Minitrue, please see this.]

The story of my left eye – so far: Part III

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I can be found here.
Part II can be found here.]

“It’s very possible we won’t be able to remove your cataract,” the renowned cataract surgeon at Mass Eye and Ear repeated, and went on for many minutes in that same vein. This was no standard disclaimer of the type that all surgeons mention, in which unforeseen and unusual bad outcomes can happen but are highly unlikely. This was his emphasis, and he kept repeating how difficult my case was.

I felt very alone in that room. Was I hearing him right? I wished I had someone in there with me, or was at least recording what he was saying, because it was so shocking I was starting to wonder if I was perceiving it correctly. I asked him whether he could tell me my chances of success – give me some sort of percentage of likely success.

“No, I cannot possibly do that,” he answered.

This was unique in my experience. I’d had other tricky surgery consults for my back and arm injuries, and doctors had always answered that question. So I asked him again, saying that maybe he could just give me a rough idea.

He refused again. He could not and would not do it.

He barely spoke about the usual things like what kind of lens I might get implanted. It sounded to me as though he had given up before he even began. This was especially awful because I was under the distinct impression that he was someone who supposedly saw tough cases and plenty of them. If he couldn’t fix it, who could?

I felt lost and almost terrified. I had not expected this.

I asked him another question: could the synechiae (adhesions) have occurred because of my iridotomy? “Absolutely, ” he answered.

That at least seemed like the right answer to me, although it contradicted what the previous doctor had told me.

This Mass Eye surgeon added that if the cataract surgery failed, than I would need more eye surgery or perhaps several more eye surgeries of a more complex nature. But don’t worry, he would refer me to other surgeons for that, and Mass Eye had plenty of good eye surgeons.

Here we were, talking about the repair surgery for a surgery that hadn’t even happened yet.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I made an appointment for cataract surgery with him in about two months. At the very end he tried to reassure me by saying that at Mass Eye they usually were successful. After hearing for about twenty minutes how unsuccessful he expected my surgery to be, I didn’t feel the least bit confident.

I wanted to give myself a little time to think. But as time passed, the fear I had of that surgery never abated. In fact, the fear became worse as the surgery date – the first week of March – approached. I couldn’t picture letting this surgeon perform the surgery, but although I did searches for doctors specializing in complex cataract surgery, I couldn’t figure out where to go to find someone to trust. Mass Eye and Ear was supposed to set the standard for eye surgery in New England, and if they didn’t think they could fix it I felt lost and depressed and didn’t know where to turn.

I spoke to my brother and he mentioned he had an eye surgeon friend who might be willing to talk to me and give advice. She was very nice, but told me that most eye doctors didn’t see much of this condition, and that my local eye doctor who’d said he saw one or two a year was fairly typical. She’d try to find out who might be more experienced, and asked me if I was willing to travel to other parts of New England. I said I certainly was, and that I’d be more than willing to travel to New York. I probably should have said I’d be willing to travel anywhere, but I figured that New England and New York – the places she knew best – ought to have enough eye surgeons for her to be able to find one for me. But she didn’t seem to be able to find what I was looking for.

About a week before the scheduled surgery I called the Mass Eye doctor and we talked again. I had to make sure I had heard him right and that I wasn’t letting my imagination and fear run wild. He reiterated the entire message and even explained further. He said again that my case was unusual and especially difficult. My left eye hadn’t dilated at all in his office, and now instead of adhesions in about a quarter of my iris’ circumference – which had been the case six months earlier – now my lens and iris were stuck together for 180 degrees of the lens’ circumference. There also was some sort of extra membrane there.

I asked him whether I was the most difficult synechiae case he’d ever seen. He said “I won’t answer that.” Was that an answer of a sort?

And why on earth had the adhesions, which had involved about a quarter of the circumference of my eye for the previous seven years or so, suddenly doubled in size and scope in six months? I didn’t even bother to ask him that one; I was pretty sure there was no answer to be had.

At the end of the conversation, I told him that to be honest I was thinking of canceling the surgery. He said that I’d better cancel soon if I was going to cancel at all, so that they could schedule someone else for that time. I said I’d let him know within the next twenty-four hours.

You can imagine what those twenty-four hours were like. For the rest of the day and that night I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t see myself having the surgery with him – I really didn’t want him to go near me – but my vision in that eye was so poor and only slightly correctable with eyeglasses, and I felt I had to do something about it. But I had no idea where to go.

The tension mounted and I felt more and more ill. Talk about gut feelings! Around 1 AM, I did a search on my computer – the same one I’d done before I’d ever seen this doctor – for “synechiae and cataract surgery,” and this article popped up. I’d read it before, but that was before my appointment, when I’d still thought that Mass Eye and Ear would solve my problems and I wasn’t really looking for another doctor.

Now I read it again. The title was, “Synechiae can be managed during cataract surgery.” After having heard so much about how mine probably couldn’t be managed, I felt an immediate sense of relief on just reading that title. It was so calm and so positive. Can be managed.

And then it occurred to me to find the location of the doctor who’d written it. After all, he apparently had enough of an interest in the problem of synechiae and cataracts to have written on the topic. I discovered that his office was in Los Angeles, and that fact instantly gave me a good feeling as well. My ex-husband’s family lived there and I know LA very well. In fact, I’d had my arm surgery in LA when no one on the east coast had been willing to take a chance on me. My son had had his shoulder surgery there, and my husband his knee surgery.

The doctor’s name was Uday Devgan, and his website had hundreds of stories from satisfied patients and from other eye doctors. I realize these things can be bogus, but they were so detailed and so heartfelt that I felt buoyed up. Here’s just one example:

At 67 years of age, I had cataract surgery in Rancho Mirage, California. The surgeon botched one of my eyes, resulting in the loss of practically all eyesight in that eye. I consulted SEVEN ophthalmologists to learn the answers to three simple questions: 1) what was the problem, 2) how did it develop, and 3) what could I do about it.

NONE of these doctors could answer any of these questions, and I didn’t want to sue anyone. I just wanted to fix my eyesight. Most of the responses were shoulder shrugs, and a few were downright insulting, for example, one supposedly famous doctor said, “It’s academic at this point.”…

Finally, the last of the seven docs said, “I’m a pretty good surgeon, but I’m not good enough for your problem. If I had your problem, there is only one doctor I’d go to in Southern California. His name is Uday Devgan. Don’t let anyone else touch your eye.”

We beat a path to Dr. Devgan’s door. Low and behold, not only did he have the most and more up to date equipment than any surgeon we had visited, but within five minutes, he had answered ALL my questions. My cataract surgeon had made too large of an incision in my eye that was too close to the center, causing extreme astigmatism.

Dr. Devgan did three important things for me. First, he explained the entire problem and how he could resolve it. Second, his manner and the expertise that shined through gave me hope. And finally, after a year of healing from my botched cataract surgery, Dr. Devgan performed a PRK laser operation on my harmed eye that reshaped it and gave me 20/20 vision two months later in that eye.

I decided then and there at about 3:00 AM, that I would call Dr. Devgan’s office the next morning.

[To be continued….]

Reagan interlude

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I happened to be in the neighborhood of the Reagan Library, and so I visited it.

I’m not a fan of presidential libraries, although I’ve been to three now. I find them a bit boring, sorry to say. The Reagan Library has the advantage of being in a pleasant setting with views of the surrounding hills and low mountains, but it still seems to mostly rehash things I already know – and I’m not unusually knowledgeable about Reagan, although I’m certainly aware of the major events of his presidency (I was a young mother at the time, very busy and quite exhausted).

To me, the most interesting part of the Library – in addition to the view – was Reagan’s Air Force One. It looked colossal in a hanger-like setting, even though it’s really not all that large for an airplane. The inside was surprisingly Spartan: no beds (just some futon-like couches) and no showers. It had the unusual ability – unusual for the 1980s, that is – to be able to communicate from the air with any place on earth.

I found the experience of being at the Library to be sharply poignant and almost painful, because of the contrast between Reagan and who’s running the country today. Reagan’s idealism, his ability to express himself, and the faith he had in America seemed to be a relic of a very bygone age. Was it only forty-ish years ago that he was elected? It doesn’t seem as though forty years should have been long enough to have this country sink as far as it has, and yet that’s what’s happened. His message was faith in the possibility, or maybe even the probability, of America’s renewal, so I’ll try to believe in that.

I was so taken with certain quotes I found in the Library that I photographed a few. I hadn’t heard this one before; it’s quite early in Reagan’s career:

This one is from Thomas Jefferson:

They knew.

Whatever happened to the Iran Deal?

The New Neo Posted on by

Is it possible that it’s dead in the water for now? Dare we hope?

Perhaps:

The US is moving toward ending its efforts to return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, as Tehran continues to make demands without showing a willingness to consider concessions, Israeli diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.

National Security Adviser Eyal Hulata met with his American counterpart, Jake Sullivan, in Washington this week to discuss alternative ways to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon in the event – which Jerusalem views as likely – that the Iran deal is not revived.

Multiple diplomatic sources in Jerusalem shared the assessment that the US is close to abandoning the revival of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal in light of Iran’s demand that Washington removes the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) and its refusal to take reciprocal steps.

The chances of the US and Iran returning to the JCPOA are “slim to none,” a senior diplomatic source said, adding that as time passes, the less the likelihood of sealing a deal.

If this is true – and I’m starting to think it is – what accounts for it? I don’t for a moment buy the assertion that the Biden administration really wouldn’t have removed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and that this was the reason for the deal’s collapse. However, I think it was an indirect cause, in that political opposition to the deal and that part of it as well as general objections to the deal – very significant Congressional bipartisan objections – were the real reason. Congress actually seemed serious about blocking the deal in any way possible, and the administration would have had egg on its face if that had happened and even Democrats supported the block.

The administration has enough egg on its face as it is, and midterms are coming up. Could be that they are waiting till after November to conclude the Deal, but it also could be that it really is over for the life of the Biden administration.

My other question is why Iran would continue to insist on that part of the deal if it really was a sticking point. After all – if leaks are true – Iran was getting so much else out of the deal that it seems to me that they could have dropped that part and still scored an enormous win. That solidifies my notion that the deal didn’t really collapse over just the terrorist part of it, and that the signal from Congress may have been that the deal itself as a whole was opposed by enough Democrats that continuing to push it would represent a big embarrassment for the administration.

NOTE: Not long ago I wrote this piece on why the deal seemed stalled. It includes information on what has been happening in Congress. There’s also been this sort of bipartisan action going on for a while.

On our changing nuclear weapon and defense policy

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a fascinating article about the history of our nuclear weapons policy. It’s way outside of my field of expertise, but I think it offers much food for thought.

An excerpt:

[I]n the 1960s and ’70s, U.S. planners understood that NATO lacked the conventional forces necessary to defeat a Soviet conventional attack. But, they reasoned, the Soviets would realize that we could respond by threatening to escalate the conflict by employing tactical, theater, or even strategic nuclear weapons. Deterrence would work because we possessed an advantage at that level, which the Soviets would surely recognize.

But such optimistic assumptions began to go awry in the late 1970s. A watershed 1977 Commentary article by Richard Pipes, “Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War,” laid out the unpleasant truth. The Soviets had begun to deploy theater nuclear weapons and, most critically, to develop powerful counterforce strategic nuclear capabilities, such as the SS-18, that erased U.S. escalation dominance. A U.S. threat to escalate to a nuclear exchange as it was losing a conventional war in Europe now rang hollow.

Beginning in the late 1970s and into the Reagan Administration, the United States responded at the strategic, theater, and conventional nuclear level. At the strategic nuclear level, the United States deployed a whole array of new accurate delivery systems such as the land-based Minuteman III and MX intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), the B2 stealth bomber, and the first components of a strategic missile defense. At the theater nuclear level, we deployed the Pershing II intermediate ballistic missile in Europe. But perhaps most importantly, at the conventional level, we responded by developing true warfighting and war-winning operational doctrines. For the U.S. Army and Air Force it was the “AirLand Battle/Operations,” and, for the naval services, the “Maritime Strategy,” designed to bring naval aviation to bear against NATO’s northern flank and in the Pacific. Some of the capabilities these concepts employed were technological, but the most important changes were doctrinal.

These developments represented a true integration of conventional and nuclear strategy and force structure. This was reflected in U.S. professional military education…

Much more at the link.