Exclusive: Internal Documents Reveal Pervasive Pattern of Racial Discrimination at Harvard Law Review

Will this law review article "promote DEI values"? Does it cite scholars from "underrepresented groups"? Will it have "any foreseeable impac

freebeacon.com

Will this law review article "promote DEI values"? Does it cite scholars from "underrepresented groups"? Will it have "any foreseeable impact in enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion"? And why did one team of editors solicit "only white, male authors"?

Those are some of the questions that editors at the Harvard Law Review asked in internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The documents, which span more than four years and have not been previously reported, include article evaluations, training materials, and data on the race and gender of journal authors. They reveal a pattern of pervasive race discrimination at the nation’s top law journal and threaten to plunge Harvard, already at war with the federal government, into even deeper crisis.

The law review states on its website that it considers race only in the context of an applicant’s personal statement. But according to dozens of documents obtained by the Free Beacon—including lists of every new policy adopted by the law review since 2021—race plays a far larger role in the selection of both editors and articles than the journal has publicly acknowledged.

Just over half of journal members, for example, are admitted solely based on academic performance. The rest are chosen by a "holistic review committee" that has made the inclusion of "underrepresented groups"—defined to include race, gender identity, and sexual orientation—its "first priority," according to resolution passed in 2021.

The law review has also incorporated race into nearly every stage of its article selection process, which as a matter of policy considers "both substantive and DEI factors." Editors routinely kill or advance pieces based in part on the race of the author, according to eight different memos reviewed by the Free Beacon, with one editor even referring to an author’s race as a "negative" when recommending that his article be cut from consideration.

"This author is not from an underrepresented background," the editor wrote in the "negatives" section of a 2024 memo. The piece, which concerned criminal procedure and police reform, did not make it into the issue.

Such policies have had a major effect on the demographics of published scholars. Since 2018, according to data compiled by the journal, only one white author, Harvard’s Michael Klarman, has been chosen to write the foreword to the law review’s Supreme Court issue, arguably the most prestigious honor in legal academia. The rest—with the exception of Jamal Greene, who is black—have been minority women.

That pattern is a stark departure from the historical norm. Between 1995 and 2018, the data show, nearly every foreword author was white.

Harvard sued the Trump administration on Monday after the government froze more than $2 billion in grants and contracts to the school. University president Alan Garber said last week that Harvard had no intention of complying with a sweeping set of demands from the White House’s anti-Semitism task force, including "merit-based admission reform" and an end to all diversity programs.

The documents from the law review could create a new line of attack for the administration as the fight over federal funding escalates, and invite litigation from private plaintiffs eager to join the pile-on.

Such plaintiffs would have no shortage of ammunition. The documents show that the Harvard Law Review continued using race after the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action in June 2023, implementing several DEI measures within the past year.

Just this January, the law review voted down a proposal to make personal statements the only non-academic factor considered in the admissions process for editors, effectively renewing its policy—adopted prior to the Supreme Court’s decision—of making race the "first priority" of holistic review.

The most overt use of racial preferences comes in the selection process for articles, which includes multiple steps designed to weed out authors based on DEI criteria. In a July 2023 training, for example, the journal told editors that they should consider "DEI values"—including the racial diversity of each article’s citations—when giving pieces a preliminary read.

Articles that make it past that initial screen are subject to even more DEI vetting, with each piece assigned to an editor who decides whether to recommend it for further consideration. As part of that process, editors write memos to the articles committee laying out each piece’s pros and cons—including, in many cases, the race of the scholar who wrote it.

In at least seven memos obtained by the Free Beacon, editors argued that an author’s minority status counted in favor of publishing their article. "The author is a woman of color," read one 2024 memo. "This meets a lot of our priorities!"

Another memo, from 2022, said that one "pro" of an otherwise weak article was that it had been "written by a woman of color outside of the T14," a reference to the top 14 law schools that dominate legal scholarship. Still another recommended a piece on the grounds that it would "help advance [the] career" of a "young academic of color on an upward trajectory at UVA."

At least one attorney is already planning to sue Harvard over the law review’s policies. Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general, told the Free Beacon that he is preparing complaints against both Harvard and the law review based in part on the documents.

While the Harvard Law Review is an independent nonprofit and legally distinct from the university, it operates out of a Harvard building, is tended to by Harvard janitors, and employs only Harvard students as editors. It is also advised by administrators and professors at Harvard Law School, including the dean, and some student editors are on federal financial aid.

Mitchell plans to use such facts to argue that Harvard itself—not just the law review—is on the hook for the journal’s DEI policies. If that argument is accepted by a federal court or taken up by the Trump administration, it could have major implications for law schools across the country, even those that claim to be separate from the law journals that bear their names.

"Every law review is engaged in corrupt and illegal DEI practices of this sort," Mitchell told the Free Beacon. "The student editors think they can get away with it and the university administrators look the other way. We’re going to expose it and we’ll keep suing them until it stops."

The pending litigation follows a wave of lawsuits against other elite schools, including Northwestern and NYU, over the diversity policies of their law journals, as well a separate complaint Mitchell filed against the Harvard Law Review in 2018 that was based on publicly available information.

Though all three complaints were eventually dismissed, most of the litigation took place before the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in college admissions. And it did not have the benefit of the breadth of materials reviewed by the Free Beacon, which provide an unusually wide window into the decision-making process of a top law journal.

Some of the most brazen bean counting at the law review comes in the solicitation process for the foreword to the Supreme Court issue. That process, which is separate and more centralized than the one used for normal articles, typically begins with a list of nominees compiled by five people: the editor in chief, two Supreme Court editors, and one representative from each of Harvard Law Review’s two diversity committees, including the "Women, Nonbinary, and Trans Committee." Two other editors were added to the foreword committee this year.

Armed with more votes than the journal’s top editor, the diversity officials help whittle down the list by summarizing the pros and cons of each candidate. In a section titled "Why should they write the foreword?", one 2024 spreadsheet stated that Shirin Sinnar, a professor at Stanford Law School, would be "the first hijabi, Muslim woman to write the Foreword." Other scholars got points for being "one of few Latino professors in this space" or, in the case of critical race theorist Mari Matsuda, "the first tenured female Asian American law professor in the US."

Eventually, the entire law review votes on the list of finalists. To inform the vote, the foreword committee circulates memos on each of the candidates, taking care in many cases to note their race and gender.

"If selected, Rodríguez would be the third woman of color, and the first Latino/a scholar, to write the Foreword," read a 2020 memo on Yale Law School’s Cristina Rodríguez. She was ultimately chosen as the foreword writer.

This process has had a dramatic effect not only on which scholars are selected but on which topics they address. The 2019 foreword, "Abolition Constitutionalism," discussed how the Reconstruction Amendments could be used to bring about a "society without prisons." The 2022 foreword, "Race in the Roberts Court," was written by a law professor at UC Berkeley, Khiara Bridges, who had emerged the previous year as an outspoken defender of critical race theory. The 2023 foreword, by Maggie Blackhawk, was called the "Constitution of American Colonialism."

The choices reflect what some lawyers say is a growing divide between the topics covered in elite law reviews and the actual issues in appellate law. Advocates rarely consult journals like the Harvard Law Review, said O.H. Skinner, Arizona’s former solicitor general, because the journal's obsession with DEI has led to "ever-more-ridiculous levels of academic myopia" and pushed the most pressing legal questions to the side.

The documents from Harvard "show a journal that no longer seems interested in much beyond their own performative score-keeping amongst categories of diversity," Skinner said. "Actual substance comes second to box-checking in discussions of articles’ worth."

That kind of box-checking was on full display when, in 2024, some editors were debating who should be invited to reply to a piece about police reform.

"Four of the five people raised in this message are white men, which I find concerning," one editor wrote in Slack. "Having read the article pretty thoroughly, I think a huge missing piece was that of how race fits into policing and misconduct."

In a separate exchange, an editor implied that a piece should be subject to expedited review because the author was a minority. "POC author," the editor wrote in Slack, adding that the scholar already had a publication offer from Northwestern. "We should send for [review] tonight if we want to move on this."

Harvard did not respond to a request for comment. The law review’s current editor in chief, G. Terrell Seabrooks, did not respond to a request for comment.

Mitchell plans to argue that the journal’s article selection process violates Section 1981, the law banning race discrimination in contracting, as well as Title VI and Title IX, which ban race and sex discrimination, respectively, at schools receiving federal aid.

"It doesn’t matter whether the Harvard Law Review is legally distinct from Harvard University," Mitchell said. "The students on the Law Review receive federal financial aid, and that subjects the Law Review to the anti-discrimination rules of Title VI and Title IX. The Law Review is also violating 42 U.S.C. § 1981, which applies to everyone whether they receive federal funds or not."

Whether Harvard itself can be held liable for the law review’s behavior is a more complicated question, said Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project. It would depend, in part, on the exact relationship between the law school and the law review, which says on its tax forms that it is "functionally integrated" with Harvard University.

The law review has also adopted several policies that, while not racially discriminatory, seem designed to ensure that editors toe the party line. One resolution passed in 2023 called for "Indigenous inclusive citation practices." Another required officers to "make a good-faith effort to encourage use of pronouns" and "include pronouns in self-introductions," adding that "very few editors engage in the standard practice of using their pronouns in conversation."

"As a result, the burden of ensuring correct pronoun usage typically falls on trans and nonbinary editors," the resolution, which passed with over 80 percent of the vote, said. "At the same time, pronouns should not be mandatory. For instance, an editor exploring their gender identity might be unsure of their pronouns."

Part triptych, part theoretical engagement, and part self-reflection, this artist statement flaunts femmegimp strategies for navigating and negotiating cultures of undesirability through the creation of queercrip porn and collective care (Erickson 2015, 2022). Glitter bath! invites us to bathe in femmegimp excess and luxuriate in the very sites of shame which are marked systemically and structurally as the terms of exclusion and erasure. Queercrip porn produced through a framework of disability justice pushes past inclusion and self-love to dream into being collective worth and queercrip flourishing

Women who hate men: a comparative analysis across extremist Reddit communities - Scientific Reports

In the present online social landscape, while misogyny is a well-established issue, misandry remains significantly underexplored. In an effo

Nature

In the present online social landscape, while misogyny is a well-established issue, misandry remains significantly underexplored. In an effort to rectify this discrepancy and better understand the phenomenon of gendered hate speech, we analyze four openly declared misogynistic and misandric Reddit communities, examining their characteristics at a linguistic, emotional, and structural level. We investigate whether it is possible to devise substantial and systematic discrepancies among misogynistic and misandric groups when heterogeneous factors are taken into account. Our experimental evaluation shows that no systematic differences can be observed when a double perspective, both male-to-female and female-to-male, is adopted, thus suggesting that gendered hate speech is not exacerbated by the perpetrators’ gender, indeed being a common factor of noxious communities.

In this work, we addressed the detrimental phenomenon of gendered hate speech online, by conducting extensive analyses across four extremist Reddit communities, two of which openly declared misogynistic and misandric, respectively. We conducted our analysis at a linguistic, emotional and structural level: first, we evaluated the most common words and the content toxicity adopted and shared within each community; second, we compared the prevalent emotions both at a text- and user-level, with respect to negative feelings such as hate, anger, fear and sadness; lastly, we constructed the interaction graph of each community, studying their structural properties.

The performed analyses reveal that no systematic differences can be devised across the misogynistic and misandric communities. This suggests that, in addressing the phenomenon of online gendered hate speech, both male-to-female and female-to-male perspectives should be taken into account, thus recognizing equal importance to both misandry and misogyny.

Europe Really Is Jailing People for Online Speech

From Germany to Britain, citizens are now routinely targeted for what they say.

yaschamounk.substack.com

Imagine this scenario.

The interior minister of a country that considers itself a democracy reports scores of citizens to the police for making critical statements about her while she is in office. Many of them are given hefty monetary fines or even prison sentences.

In protest, a journalist publishes a satirical meme. It features a real photograph of the interior minister holding a sign that is digitally altered so that, apocryphally, it reads: “I hate freedom of speech.”

As if to prove the point, the interior minister reports the journalist to the police. He is duly prosecuted and, after a brief trial, given a seven-month suspended prison sentence.

Would you say that this nation has a problem with free speech?

If you do, then you should be very concerned about what has happened in Europe over the last few years. For, as you may have suspected, this scenario is not fictional; rather, it depicts the true facts of a recent German court case—one that is far less of an outlier than most otherwise well-informed observers recognize.

* * *

The politician in question is Nancy Faeser.

Over her three-plus years in office, the Social Democrat has reported multiple citizens to the police for criticisms they made of her on social media. She is hardly alone in having done so; other members of Olaf Scholz’s outgoing government have been even more aggressive in targeting its critics.

Robert Habeck, a leader of the Green Party, has initiated over 800 criminal complaints since taking up his position as vice chancellor in 2021. One of them was directed against a pensioner who had tweeted a parody of a ubiquitous ad for a German shampoo brand by the name of “Schwarzkopf Professional” which featured Habeck’s face—and luscious hair—under the slogan “Schwachkopf Professional” (roughly: professional idiot). The police duly raided the pensioner’s home at 6am, confiscated his iPad, and started criminal proceedings against him.

It may seem as though this is nothing new. By American standards, Germany’s limits on free speech have long been shockingly restrictive. As a family friend experienced some two decades ago, even a comparatively innocuous interpersonal altercation can lead to a lengthy court trial. One day, this piano teacher at the local music university, a mild-mannered lady who was then already well into her sixties, was cycling to work. When a car cut her off in a way she considered dangerous, she flipped the driver off. A few hours later, the driver was standing at the gate of her university demanding that she identify herself. In the end, a court found her guilty of the crime of “insult,” and required her to pay the equivalent of thousands of dollars in fines.

Things have gotten worse since. Over the past decade, a raft of new laws has further extended restrictions on free speech. First, a law named—as though to confirm all stereotypes about the German language being overly cumbersome and bureaucratic—the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (Network Enforcement Act) required major social media platforms to act swiftly to delete presumptively illegal content ranging from hate speech to personal insults. The law imposed such steep fines on social media networks like Twitter and Facebook that they needed to err on the side of censoring any potentially controversial content in order to keep operating in the country. When Vladimir Putin sought to strengthen his ability to marginalize the political opposition in Russia, he cleverly translated key passages of the German law into Russian, deflecting criticisms of his crackdown on free speech by pointing out that he was merely emulating Western democracies.

Then, Germany’s outgoing center-left government created a new provision which gives special protection to politicians. According to Paragraph 188 of the German Criminal Code, anybody who makes a critical remark about a political figure that they cannot substantiate is subject to enhanced penalties, making them subject to a prison term of up to three years. It is this law that major German politicians now routinely invoke to ask the police to prosecute citizens, from good-faith critics to run-of-the-mill social media trolls—like the man who posted that innocuous parody of a shampoo ad featuring Habeck.

Germany’s past has given it an especially ambivalent relationship towards free speech. In the wake of the horrors of World War II, the country reinvented itself as a “militant democracy,” one that puts special emphasis on using the law to combat extremist forces. As a result, it was one of the first European democracies to explicitly outlaw a range of radical sentiments, from hate speech to denial of the Holocaust. But today, Germany is no longer an outlier within Europe; on the contrary, even countries that have long prided themselves on their liberal traditions have now followed the country’s lead, making it astonishingly easy for the police to arrest citizens who shock or offend.

* * *

At the end of January, six police officers walked up to the front door of Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine, in Hertfordshire, in the United Kingdom. After briefly speaking to the middle-aged couple in front of their young daughter, they took them into police custody, where they would go on to be incarcerated for eight hours under suspicion of having sent “malicious communications.”

The reasons why Allen and Levine were arrested are astonishing. Unhappy about their daughter’s primary school, they had raised questions about the process of choosing a new headmaster in a parents’ WhatsApp group. When the school’s leadership got wind of the criticisms, it referred Allen and Levine to the local police—who promptly sent over half a dozen officers to arrest them.

In the absence of a codified constitution, Britain does not have an equivalent of America’s First Amendment. But protections for free speech have long played an important role in common law, and Britain has always prided itself on its reputation for free thinking. When I myself first visited London as a teenager, I made a pilgrimage to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, and listened in fascination as a parade of cranks, preachers, and extremists made their case to bemused onlookers.

But the times in which Britons could confidently say whatever they wanted without fear of landing in jail are now long gone. It began, as in many European countries, with hate speech legislation. In 1986, the country introduced a prohibition on “publishing threatening or abusive material intending to stir up racial hatred,” which imposed very harsh prison sentences but at least contained a comparatively clear definition of what was being banned. This changed in 2003, with the adoption of the Communications Act. According to Section 127, anybody sending a message over a public communications network can now be imprisoned for up to six months if it is found to be “grossly offensive;” if it is “indecent, obscene, or menacing;” or if it is “false, and sent to cause annoyance or distress.”

As this broad language suggests, these crimes are extremely poorly defined. What counts as “indecent” or “grossly offensive” is very much in the eye of the beholder. To make things worse, British citizens can be prosecuted for such speech in magistrate’s courts, which typically deal with minor matters like public order offenses or drunk and disorderly conduct; in practice, the question of what is illegal is therefore settled by poorly trained police officers and lay judges without any formal legal education. It is now possible—and indeed quite common—for Britons to be jailed for up to six months for tweeting a stupid joke without ever coming into contact with a judge who has a law degree or being able to exercise the right to a trial by jury. (When defendants are threatened with even longer prison sentences under the 1986 law, they do at least retain some of those basic procedural rights.)

As a result of these broad prohibitions and the ease of enforcing them, Britain has quickly become one of the continent’s leaders in prosecuting—and even jailing—people for speech. As the Times of London recently reported, “officers from 37 police forces made 12,183 arrests [under section 127] in 2023.” This means that, on average, over 33 arrests are made every day for what people in the United Kingdom have said on the internet.1

Many of these people have, like Allen and Levine, done nothing wrong. In one particularly egregious case, a 21-year-old woman was criminally prosecuted for referring to a soccer player by the n-word on social media—even though she herself is black. In another case, a Scottish grandmother fell afoul of draconian laws establishing effective no-speech zones around abortion clinics. 74-year old Rose Docherty silently held up a sign reading “coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want”; four police officers promptly arrested her. In yet another case, an autistic 16-year-old girl was manhandled and arrested by police in West Yorkshire on the suspicion of a homophobic hate crime for saying that an officer resembled her “lesbian nana.” (The girl’s beloved grandmother is lesbian.)

In other cases, people who have acted in ways that are indubitably morally noxious have faced penalties that are shockingly disproportionate to the offense. In the highly emotional hours after Axel Rudakubana killed three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance party in Southport in July 2024, for example, Lucy Connolly, the wife of a local councillor for the Conservative Party, posted a tweet that is clearly racist: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care… If that makes me racist, so be it.”

Under America’s First Amendment standard, this tweet would likely count as protected speech. But under the more draconian and less clearly defined British standards, a tweet like this can quickly turn into a lengthy prison sentence. Connolly was sentenced to 31 months in prison.

* * *

European limits on free speech are likely to become even more far-reaching in the near future. In the agreement setting out the policies of the incoming government, the coalition which is set to govern Germany for the next four years writes that “the knowing dissemination of false claims is not covered by free speech,” an incredibly broad standard that could potentially criminalize anything from run-of-the-mill lies to controversial statements the government arbitrarily deems to be “misinformation.” In Poland, a law recently passed by the national parliament would significantly broaden the range of people protected against “hate speech” to include such categories as age or disability. Increasingly, the European Union itself is even mandating that member states censor their citizens.

Germany’s Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz served as the model for a similar law at the European level; to operate anywhere in the European Union, social networks must now rapidly delete posts that could potentially violate one of the 27 sets of rules about hate speech enacted by members of the bloc. Meanwhile, the European Commission has recently proposed including “hate speech” in a small list of “EU crimes”; while the EU does not itself prosecute violations of such rules, it requires each of its member states to make provisions for doing so.

Europe’s embrace of stringent and ill-defined limits on free expression is both a moral and a practical mistake. Some disagreement about where to draw the line between speech that is merely morally noxious and speech that is criminal may—even in debates premised on the validity of the First Amendment—be inevitable. And while I personally believe in the universal value of America’s First Amendment, it is reasonable for other countries with different political traditions to adopt a somewhat more expansive notion of what constitutes incitement to violence or when false statements cross the line into outright slander. But in practice, European restrictions on free speech have long since gone far beyond the realm of reasonable disagreement: they are now so extensive that all of the classic arguments about the dangers of state censorship fully apply to them.

* * *

Philosophers have traditionally made the case for free speech by emphasizing the positive things that this practice facilitates.

As John Stuart Mill beautifully put it, restrictions on free speech always presume the infallibility of the censor; and yet, the fate of some of humanity’s most distinguished thinkers, from Socrates to Galileo Galilei, attests to the fact that what seems ineluctably true today may turn out to be evidently false tomorrow. There is, as Mill noted, even a danger in censoring speech that really does turn out to be wrong; if we are incapable of defending democratic institutions against their harshest critics, we will hold onto them as dead dogmas rather than living truths—and that will, the moment such prohibitions are lifted, make the work of their adversaries all the easier.

Both of these insights have proven to be highly pertinent to our own era. It’s tempting to believe that we are smarter and more tolerant than the censors who persecuted Socrates and Galileo. But over the course of my own lifetime, gays and lesbians were routinely fired from their jobs for publicly acknowledging their sexual orientation, and major social media platforms including Facebook and YouTube banned posts suggesting that COVID may have originated in a laboratory. Similarly, Mill’s point about “living truths” seemed a little abstract to me when I first read it as an undergraduate. But the ease with which people from across the political spectrum who have long paid lip service to liberal democracy have been willing to abandon its basic values in recent years shows just how prescient his worry about the weakness of “dead dogmas” has turned out to be.

Even so, I understand why the positive aspects of free speech can seem like a remote concern at a time when democracy is under serious threat in many countries. Doesn’t the threat of “misinformation” outweigh the benefits of free speech? And isn’t it more important to preserve democracy than to care about the niceties of free speech? That’s why (as I argued in my latest book, The Identity Trap) the strongest arguments for free speech don’t focus on the good things that happen when we uphold the practice; they focus on the terrible things that happen when we don’t.

Sadly, the ways in which restrictions on free speech in Europe have weakened, rather than strengthened, democracy perfectly illustrate this point. The supposed goal of hate speech laws is to protect the vulnerable from offense or victimization. But virtually by definition, those who get to make decisions about what kind of speech is permitted, and what kind of speech is verboten, enjoy a lot of power—whether they be judges and politicians or whether they be senior executives in tech companies. And so it is hardly surprising that many of the people who have been prosecuted for speaking their mind, from a young black student in Britain to an old pensioner in small-town Germany, seem relatively powerless.

Another negative effect of limits on free speech is that they greatly increase the stakes of holding power. A key promise of democracy is that you can make a case for your views even if you lose an election, incentivizing you to accept the rules of the game in the hope of winning the next time around. But if those who are in power can criminalize the speech of those who are out of power, the willingness to accept the rules of the game is likely to decrease significantly. This is why restrictions on speech that have the putative purpose of supporting political moderation often end up fanning the flames of extremism—and the seemingly ineluctable rise in restrictions on free speech has coincided with the seemingly ineluctable rise of the far right.

* * *

The argument for strong restrictions on free speech implicitly rests on the idea that these have historically proven necessary to preserve our democratic institutions, making them all the more justified at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise. But this argument is historical nonsense twice over.

This argument wrongly presumes that past failures of democracy can be chalked up to an excess of free speech when the opposite comes closer to being true. The Weimar Republic, which is often adduced as Exhibit A by people who believe that a “militant democracy” must censor extremists, for example, had far-reaching restrictions on free speech. Indeed, this gave judges significant leeway to favor their friends and prosecute their enemies, contributing to a deep distrust in the neutrality of democratic institutions which accelerated polarization and rewarded extremism.

This argument also wrongly presumes that restrictions on free speech are now serving to stabilize democracy when the evidence, once again, seems to point in the opposite direction. Over the past decades, European countries have become much more restrictive in what they allow their citizens to say, and in how easily they reserve the right to jail those who fail to listen. Over those same decades, hateful views have become much more prominent in public discourse, and extremists have become much more popular.

Correlation need not mean causation. But there is good reason to believe that the two phenomena are related. Censorship doesn’t change what people think. On the contrary, it serves to drive genuine concerns to the margins of public discourse, making it harder for moderate political forces to address them; to undermine trust in the fairness of democratic institutions; and to turn those who are censored into martyrs.

* * *

Few things I do nowadays so reliably earn me stern rebukes from my readers—and sometimes even emails so angry that they might be subject to prosecution for “malicious communications” in some European country or another—than my occasional insistence that Europe has a serious free speech problem on its hands. Instead of responding to each of these comments or emails individually, I decided to sit down and systematically set out my case. Sadly, the shocking examples I encountered in the process of researching that case have made me even more convinced of the severity of the problem. Without a serious public debate about the matter, European countries have slowly drifted into a state of affairs in which the state can, with astonishing ease, jail people for what they say.

Yes, some extremists invoke the cause of free speech for their own sinister agenda. And yes, J. D. Vance’s stark criticisms of European restrictions on free speech reeked of hypocrisy in light of the Trump administration’s own attempts to chill the speech of its critics. But the fact that some of the people who point to a problem aren’t trustworthy doesn’t miraculously mean that the problem isn’t real—and anybody who insists on blindly taking the opposite stance of people like Vance on any issue in the world effectively outsources to him the decision of what they themselves believe.

Europe’s far-reaching restrictions on free speech have already resulted in many serious miscarriages of justice. They now have a significant “chilling effect” on the ability to engage in robust political speech, which must include the freedom to express unpopular opinions and to satirize—whether in good taste or bad—the most powerful people in society. Far from helping European countries contain the extremists now knocking on the doors of power, that chilling of speech has likely turned them into martyrs and grown their public support.

Europe has a serious free speech problem. Instead of taking ever more measures to punish their citizens for what they say, it’s time for countries from Germany to Britain to abolish the deeply illiberal legislation they have, with little attention from the press or the public, introduced over the course of the last decades. To live up to the most basic values of the democracies that are now under threat, the continent needs to reverse course—and restore true freedom of speech.

Gad Saad: Golda Meir, who was the fourth or fifth prime minister of Israel from, I think, 1969 to 1974, has two quotes which I'm going to paraphrase. I don't have the exact quote. She said, if the Jews put down their arms, there'll be a genocide. If the Palestinians put down their arms, there'll be peace. So, just remember that for a second. Second one is, if the Arabs -- and she means in this case the Palestinian Arabs -- if they were to love their children more than they hate ours, then there'd be peace.

So, why am I saying these two quotes? Because this battle is really not about land, And in a sense, we've already addressed this on previous shows where I've come and discussed about some of these Islamic issues. It is an existential affront that the Jewish state exists in the Middle East. So look at all other religious minorities across Arabia. Egypt used to be completely Coptic Christian, 100%, many hundred years ago. Today there are 10% Cops left. What happened to those Cops? There used to be tons of Christians in Syria. What happened to those Syrians? There used to be tons of Christians in Lebanon. There still are some, about 30-35% but Lebanon used to be a majority Christian country.

So, the goal of Islam -- not individual Muslims right, again, I don't need to preface by saying there are are millions and millions of lovely, kind, peaceful Muslims, of course there is -- but Islam as an ideology, does it tolerate others? Well, we have 1,400 years of history that either says it does or it doesn't, right. We don't have to watch TikTok videos. And nothing could be clearer than what the words of Muhammad were, the prophet of Islam who said that you need to rid Arabia of Christians, but certainly the Jews. So the existence of the land of Israel is an affront to that.

One more point and I'll cede the floor back to you. In Islam there's a concept called Dar al-Islam and Dar al-harb. That means "the House of Islam" and "the House of War." Anything that's under the Islamic control is good. Anything that's yet to be under Islamic control is under the House of War. Once a territory is under Islamic control and you lose it, you have to get it back. It is your dominion forever. This is why, for example, Andalucia which was at one point controlled, which is in current Spain, which was controlled by the Moors, an Islamic conquistador, a lot of jihadists will say, inshallah we have to reconquer Andalucia, it is our land. Because once it's under-- so Israel existentially cannot exist.

So why am I saying all this? You can't have peace if you have the other side that truly never wants for you to exist. That's the bottom line. If you can change people's heart where they say, look, I get a piece of land, you get another piece, let's build an incredible vibrant co-society together, you'd have peace. But if you're taught from straight out of the womb that the Jews is the reason for every calamity in the world, you're not going to have peace.

Joe Rogan: But don't you think that there are Jews and there are Israelis that treat Palestinians as if they're less?

Saad: There there is that in in Texas in terms of treating people who are Hispanic. The darkness of the human heart is not monopolized by one group. There are super nasty Jews and there are incredibly lovely and kind Jews. There are super-nice Muslims and incredibly brutal Muslims. So there is no monopoly on the darkness of the human heart. So I can see that. Of course there are Jews that are not very keen on having Palestinian neighbors. But as someone who grew up in the two Worlds, right, I'm an Arabic-speaking Jew, I hang around with tons of Muslims, I hang around with tons of Jews. Have I ever ever heard somebody in my Jewish family say, oh God, I can't wait for us to eradicate the 1.52 billion Muslims in the world? I've never heard that.

Have I heard incessantly all the time about, inshallah, we'll get rid of the Jews? Every second. You just have to say, hi Ahmed. The next line is, godamn it, we got to get rid of the Jews. Now it's it's become a lot--

Rogan: Is it really that common where you are?

Saad: It's as common as the heat in Texas. It is definitional. As a matter of fact, I introduced a game -- I mean, factiously, but I mean it seriously -- Six Degrees of Jew. So that's a play on Six Degrees of--

Rogan: Kevin Bacon

Saad: Exactly. So I give you a calamity in the world and you've got up to six causal steps to blame the Jews. So, an Amazonian frog just died in the Amazon. Go. And so I will post these on Twitter and people give answers. Now, often times they're just playing along but that's the mindset. You got diabetes? Well, that's because the Jews who are controlling the pharmaceutical industry are not releasing the drug.

I'll give you a recent one that I faced. So, I put up a police lineup of some guys that had been caught in Huttersfield, which is a town in England, who had been grooming and raping young British white girls. And you may or may not know this, I'm not sure if we've discussed in the past, in Britain over the past 25 years there's been an unbelievable industrial scale level grooming and raping of young white girls by "Asian" men. That's a euphemism for men of a certain religious heritage, but you say it's, they're "Asian."

So their names are, let me summarize them for you: Muhammad, Ahmed, Muhammad, Ahmed, Muhammad, Muhammad, Muhammad, Ahmed, Ahmed, Muhammad, Ahmed, Ahmed, Muhammad, Ahmed, Muhammad, okay. So I put those up and I sarcastically said, I don't have a big enough brain to do the big data analytics to understand what is the commonality across all those gentlemen. Could anybody help me? Do you know how many people wrote to me and blamed it on the Jews? Not factiously. So now I'm going to ask you, Joe, on--

Rogan: How?

Saad: I was just going to ask you that. How is it when three Muhammads rape your 12-year-old British girl, you blame it on Mordecai? Three Muhammads lead to Mordecai. Tell me how. You tell me.

Rogan: I don't know. How do they do it?

Saad: Who let them in? It's the Jewish cabal who control immigration policy. It's George Soros, the Jew who controls the Open Society ideology.

Rogan: I don't think you could really just connect George Soros to Jewish. Iif you look at his policies, he seems anti-western civilization.

Saad: I agree but for the Jew hater, any any causal explanation--

Rogan: So, one individual who just happens to be Jewish.

Saad: Or they point to some other one. There's one, I never, I don't even know who she is. I think Barbara Lerner or something, somebody will correct us in the comments section, where they show her saying something, oh you know, we need to flood-- and she happens to be Jewish. But for every Jewish person who is pro-Open Door policy, there's a counter Jewish person. Here is one who is not for open border policies, right. Stephen Miller, who worked in the Trump administration, is Jewish. He's probably the biggest anti-open door immigration.

So, but that's the mindset of the Jew-hater. Everything is blamed. There's this incredible diabolical feature of the Jew that they're able to at times pretend that they're victims but really they're diabolical and genocidal. It's grotesque, man.

Rogan: It's weird. It's just weird that it became so out in the open

And [recall] when you said, "O Moses, we can never endure one [kind of] food. So call upon your Lord to bring forth for us from the earth its green herbs and its cucumbers and its garlic and its lentils and its onions." [Moses] said, "Would you exchange what is better for what is less? Go into [any] settlement and indeed, you will have what you have asked." And they were covered with humiliation and poverty and returned with anger from Allah [upon them]. That was because they [repeatedly] disbelieved in the signs of Allah and killed the prophets without right. That was because they disobeyed and were [habitually] transgressing.

You will surely find the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers [to be] the Jews and those who associate others with Allah; and you will find the nearest of them in affection to the believers those who say, "We are Christians." That is because among them are priests and monks and because they are not arrogant.

And you had already known about those who transgressed among you [Children of Israel] concerning the sabbath, and We said to them, "Be apes, despised."

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) as saying:

The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.

Riot strrrs: zines as alternative public pedagogies in space science education - Cultural Studies of Science Education

In this paper I demonstrate how zines (pronounced ‘zeen’, a word that is a contraction of ‘magazine’) about space science can be theorised a

SpringerLink

In this paper I demonstrate how zines (pronounced ‘zeen’, a word that is a contraction of ‘magazine’) about space science can be theorised as a site of science education at the margins. Through exploring different zines and their potential to create counter-narratives I offer a series of objects that might reshape how we teach and learn about outer space. Rhizomatically moving laterally between different zine, the paper charts how resisting hegemonic narratives; affective and cultural practices of science; and the integration of quotidian and cosmic is possible in these zines. These new narratives develop cautionary engagement with and resistance to expansionist, colonialist imaginaries that underpin so much cultural material about outer space produced by official actors. While these zines are not hegemonically understood as sites of science education, I argue that they offer science educators a rich site of counter-narratives and pluralising cultural texts that can be drawn on in pursuit of a more socially just science education.

Abstract: This paper interrogates the nursery rhyme "Jack and Jill" as a discursive site of ideological interpellation, contending that it reifies toxic masculinity and cisheteronormative hegemony. Through a deconstructive feminist praxis, we elucidate how the rhyme’s narrative semiotics privilege Jack as the agential, risk-assuming subject, thereby sedimenting phallogocentric constructs of masculine supremacy and stoic performativity. Conversely, Jill’s liminal, subaltern positioning as a passive, ancillary figure instantiates a gendered episteme that naturalizes feminine docility and subordination. The rhyme’s axiomatic cisheteronormative coupling of Jack and Jill as a presumptive dyad further entrenches a heteronormative ontological framework, effacing non-binary and queer subjectivities. Engaging with poststructuralist feminist and queer theoretical paradigms, this analysis situates "Jack and Jill" within the panopticon of patriarchal socialization, positing that such texts function as capillary mechanisms of gendered biopower. We advocate for a subversive hermeneutics of nursery rhymes to destabilize their complicity in the perpetuation of noxious gender ideologies, thereby fostering a liberatory, intersectional narratology.

This paper explores indigenous more-than human hybrid onto-epistemology within the ambit of sustainability paradigm that better capture the Anthropocene epoch. Indigenous more-than human hybrid onto-epistemology profoundly shapes how the indigenous people understand and relate to their environment. Their more-than human hybrid ontoepistemology includes among other things beliefs, knowledge, and Ancestral practices that reflect a relational approach to life and the cosmos. The analysis presented here is based on an understanding of the concept of Anthropocene as rejecting modernist assumptions and framings about a split between human and nature. It discusses respectively, the ways in which the dominant forms of decolonial critique and plurality of environmental imaginaries problematize the Eurocentric framing and the epistemic foundations that separate humans from nature in the Anthropocene as a universalizing concept. In fine, it is argued that the modernist assumptions of separation marginalize sustainability in a multiplicity of ways in the Anthropocene. It is further argued that indigenous more-than human hybrid ontoepistemology is a necessity if humanity is to survive many worlds on one planet and cope with the unprecedented catastrophic ecological destruction largely driven by modernist, anthropocentric, and capitalist land relations.

Trans Wikipedia

Activists control the "facts" on Youth Gender Medicine

lgbcouragecoalition.substack.com

Wikipedia, the world’s leading crowd-sourced encyclopedia, operates on an open-editing model where anyone can contribute. Article pages display information to readers, while talk pages host debates about content. In theory, principles like neutrality, verifiability, and consensus guide edits — but in practice, these rules can be manipulated. Youth gender medicine exemplifies how motivated activists can skew articles to reflect a particular perspective, gatekeeping against challenges to their framing.

Activist editors on Wikipedia employ a range of tactics to control content and maintain biased narratives, as outlined in the Wikipedia:Activist page. They often revert unwelcome edits with brief, dismissive explanations, challenge reliable sources listed on WP:RSPLIST as unsuitable for the topic, or dismiss solid sources as WP:UNDUE, claiming they’re reliable but not significant enough. Mainstream views covered by major newspapers may be mislabeled as WP:FRINGE, while self-published sources or opinions are presented as facts, violating policy. By selectively invoking Wikipedia’s rules, these editors wear down those attempting to improve blatantly biased pages, creating a formidable barrier to achieving a neutral point of view.

To see these tactics in action for youth gender medicine, follow the “talk history” of pages such as WPATH, Cass Review, and SEGM. There you’ll find fierce battlegrounds where editors attempt to instill a NPOV—Wikipedia’s core policy of a neutral point of view — only to be stonewalled by those intent on preserving an ideological stronghold. Or at least, you would if the discussions hadn’t been quietly archived out of easy view (altering archive settings to bury debate is just one of the lesser-known tactics used to maintain the illusion of consensus).

The 2024 WPATH evidence suppression scandal involving Johns Hopkins University was a controversy that was covered by The Economist and The British Medical Journal, and also discussed in op-eds in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. When an editor attempted to add this well-sourced criticism to the section on SOC8, it was instantly reverted by an activist editor. The original editor consequently opened a talk page thread titled “Reversion of objective edit,” asking for an explanation. This marked the beginning of a prolonged discussion spanning four months and involving over 20 distinct participants.

The reverting activist argued “...it may be a concerted smear campaign effort by transphobic groups, which is why it appears not have been picked up by more neutral news organizations and thus is WP:UNDUE...” Another argued: “The Economist has a long history of false reporting on trans issues. I don't think it's appropriate to cite them as a source.” To which the original editor reminded everyone that a Wikipedia Noticeboard already says there is overwhelming consensus that The Economist is reliable for trans topics.

As more editors joined the discussion to support the inclusion of the edit, activist arguments for exclusion began to show a convenient disregard for Wikipedia policy. Claims included the Economist made a mistake and the BMJ author is an activist.

After three months of debate following the original edit, a veteran editor weighed in: “The continued coverage of this, including now in a peer-reviewed journal, makes it untenable not to include any mention at all.” At that point, the discussion shifted from whether to include the information to how it should be included. Eventually, a compromise was reached, and the original editor announced: “In line with the prevailing consensus reached above, I have incorporated the agreed-upon compromise wording regarding the aforementioned developments.” Almost immediately, however, the activist rewrote it entirely—without consulting the talk page. The activist editor was reported to Arbitration Enforcement and, based on this and other behavior, was “warned against edit-warring and treating Wikipedia as a battleground.” A slap on the wrist.

Coincidentally, just as this sanctioned activist backed down, another showed up to take the stonewalling reins — this time belligerently obstinate. When asked for sources to support the case that The Economist's reporting was flawed, this activist retorted “Wikipedia is not the place to publish baseless speculation, which this is if you don't have proof. I don't need to have proof, because I'm not looking to put my personal opinion in the article, I'm looking to keep yours out.” In the weeks that followed, the broader pattern—of circular debate, stalled consensus, and procedural maneuvering — played out again, while requests to reinstate the compromise wording seemingly landed on deaf ears.

As it stands today, both the Economist and the BMJ source are included, but the information has been masterfully cherry-picked, its original intent distorted to further legitimize WPATH and SOC 8. The activists have won, but the public has lost.

This isn’t a hidden campaign — it’s a public one, hiding in plain sight. Activist-editors have been celebrated in media profiles or have openly boasted about using Wikipedia to discredit dissent. One of the most striking examples is “Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist” (YFNS), formerly known as “TheTranarchist.” YFNS was recently profiled in an article on Wikipedia trans editing, published by Assigned Media, a transgender news outlet. The author — YFNS’s friend and colleague—noted that “she is determined to continue her volunteer work on trans-focused articles, which she started over three years ago,” and added that “it was YFNS who helped rally editors in the LGBTQ+ studies WikiProject.” YFNS says “Wikipedia is not in the business of pretending the views of WP:QUACKS are more supported than they are.”

What Assigned Media didn’t tell you is that YFNS was topic-banned in 2023 from editing articles on Gender and Sexuality (GENSEX). According to the administrator notice board, YFNS (going by TheTranarchist at the time) is “trying to mold the topic area to fit her worldview. That is incompatible with Wikipedia. She has become a WP:TENDITIOUS editor. Given all the factors discussed, there is rough consensus for an indefinite GENSEX topic ban. She may appeal it in no sooner than 6 months.”

After six months, YFNS successfully appealed the topic ban and, despite having openly admitted to creating articles with the premeditated intent to tarnish organizations and boost negative coverage in search rankings, remains highly active on the Wikipedia pages of those very organizations. This is best showcased with the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), where YFNS employs the full range of tactics with impunity. As a result, while the BMJ describes SEGM as “a group of researchers and clinicians that has pushed for systematic reviews and an evidence-based approach,” SEGM’s Wikipedia page opens with the vague assertion that it is “known for transgender health care misinformation” — linked, of course, to the latest article created by YFNS.

The Wikipedia page on Transgender health care misinformation appears to be YFNS’s magnum opus. YFNS created it, extensively contributed to it, and then nominated it for “Good Article” (GA) status. While GA is supposed to reward quality, in some contexts — especially controversial ones — it can be strategically used to protect an activist-controlled article. To earn GA status, an article must meet six criteria, including neutrality: “represent viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.”

During the GA review, editors raised concerns about neutrality — one pointedly argued, “This is a field where both activist sides have indulged in misinformation. I'd expect a Wikipedia article to state that clearly and give examples of both.” But perhaps the most telling moment came before when the reviewer who posted on YFNS’s personal talk page offering to help, wrote: “If it comes to this, feel free to tag me or leave a message on my talkpage to get my attention as I wouldn’t be shocked if someone takes the nomination with the intent of failing it.” With that preemptive defense, it was no surprise the review ended in a Pass.

All told, the ironically titled “Good Article” on Transgender health care misinformation may be the finest example yet of how activist editors can freeze their wishful version of reality in place — even as the world continues to evolve. Experts know not to trust Wikipedia—but the average person may not. As more people engage with this topic, society would benefit from access to honest, balanced pages. When the encyclopedia is rigged, it doesn’t just distort the record — it misguides the conversations we have with our neighbors, our children, and our leaders.

No Satisfying Alternative to Religion? Try Reality.

On April 18th, the New York Times published an article by Lauren Jackson called “Americans Haven’t Found a Satisfying Alternative to Religio

richarddawkins.substack.com

On April 18th, the New York Times published an article by Lauren Jackson called “Americans Haven’t Found a Satisfying Alternative to Religion”. It’s very long, but you can probably guess what she correctly lists as unsatisfying alternatives, failed attempts to fill the void of existential insecurity, the god-shaped hole: New Age “spirituality”, astrology, you know the kind of thing. She was kind enough to quote me, so I offer a brief response here.

I am sorry if there is, as she says, an “epidemic of loneliness”. But the remedy for loneliness is human fellowship, the warmth of real, live, flesh-and-blood companions and loved-ones; not prating in a vacuum to an imaginary friend for whose existence there is no vestige of serious evidence. Even an AI robot is better than that. At least ChatGPT exists, really talks back at  you, will actually hold a friendly conversation. But talk to the imaginary friend which is God (Allah, Virgin Mary, Lord Krishna, Thor, Zeus, Mithras, name yours) and the only reply you’ll get is conjured within your own imagination. You’ll be talking to yourself, which is really rather sad, and hardly an antidote to loneliness.

I feel I should qualify, even apologise for, the optimistic tone of what follows. Americans might feel anything but cheerful just at present. Of course I acknowledge this and sympathize. But it has nothing to do with the eternal cosmic angst that religion aspires to assuage, and which prompted Lauren Jackson’s search for alternatives. Moreover, I don’t want to downplay the anguish of the search, nor the epidemic of loneliness that she discerns, and I regret that I was a little facetious when she interviewed me on the telephone. My humorous frivolity went so far as to recommend golf as an alternative, and for this I apologise. I’m better at writing than speaking, so let me now try to express more seriously what I should have said to her. She began with a remorseful testament of her own loss of faith, so forgive me if I too bare my soul when I offer my personal non-religious alternative to religion.

There is joy in understanding, true joy, rising to little short of ecstasy. I suppose you could call it the poetry of reality. Peter Atkins concludes his lovely little book, The Creation, with a vision of the limitless future of science: “Complete knowledge is just within our grasp. Comprehension is moving across the face of the Earth, like the sunrise.”

You tumble into existence, open your eyes, come to consciousness, find yourself on a spinning sphere orbiting a nuclear furnace in one arm of a barred spiral galaxy, hurtling through spacetime alongside 300 billion galaxies. The fact that you exist at all is a piece of shattering good fortune. Not only did your parents chance to meet, not only did one particular sperm outrun 100 million rivals. The same massive luck attended every generation of your ancestors, back to a single Devonian fish and a greater distance beyond. Any slight deviation in what happened, anywhere, anytime, would have sufficed to throw your future existence off the conveyor belt of lucky contingencies. You certainly owe your existence to Julius Caesar, Napoleon, even Hitler, but less obviously to a humble peasant who didn’t sneeze at a crucial moment in some forgotten marital bed. You owe your life to a particular dinosaur, on a particular Jurassic day, who stumbled and failed to catch the ancestor of all the mammals. You are prodigiously lucky to be alive. So please stifle your entitled moaning. Revel in your own existence.

Not just your existence but the existence of others to share your world and sweeten your time in it: fellow voyagers to smile at you, laugh with you, hold your hand along the pilgrim’s way through your personal slice of time. You and I are privileged not only to be alive but to inhabit the twenty-first century when so much is already understood. We who live after Newton, Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein, and their legions of clever but lesser-known followers, we are blessed with the opportunity to know so much. But also to know what we do not know, and so experience the joy of curiosity, of constructive wonder, the buccaneering adventure of the restless mind.

Who needs New Age spirituality (“sound baths”, “energy healing”, “astrology”), who needs to thumb-suck under a mental comfort blanket, who needs gods, when reality is there for the taking?

“The effects on the individual who has experienced narcissistic abuse can be fatal or extremely debilitating, long lasting and individual recovery can be a complex process.” (Howard 2019)

When it comes to relationship abuse and intimate partner violence, men are overwhelming portrayed as perpetrators. Despite such portrayals, research shows that rates of relationship violence are more balanced than such depictions suggest. Unsurprisingly, gender-specific resources for men who suffer relationship abuse are also particularly underserved.

Academically and popularly, the past decade has seen increased attention to narcissistic relationship abuse. Important academic publications have broached the topic psychologically and clinically, while popularly there are now dozens of YouTube channels and podcasts dedicated to the topic. Laudably, many of these resources recognize that men can also be victims of narcissistic relationship abuse. Recent research also suggests the DSM-V criteria for diagnosing narcissism may overemphasize the “grandiose” form of narcissism (more common in men) and overlook aspects of “covert” or “vulnerable” narcissism (which may be more common in women), leading to an overrepresentation of men in data.

There are millions of men suffering abuse at the hands of narcissistic partners. Many fail to recognize what is happening to them, while others have had their lives destroyed and resources depleted by these relationships. Narcissism destroys lives and leaves victims picking up pieces of shattered lives and identities. Becoming informed is one of the first steps for men to recognize these patterns and prepare themselves to act.

Narcissistic abuse is any form of relationship abuse where a narcissistic person takes advantage of their partner. In romantic relationships, this abuse follows an amazingly consistent pattern. First, there is usually an intense love and sex bombing stage during which the narcissist sucks in their victim and gets them heavily invested in the relationship. This is like a relationship’s honeymoon stage on steroids. Here, the narcissist may describe the victim as their “savior” (especially common in covert/vulnerable narcissism) and mirror their partner’s interests to build an intense connection and image they are a perfect match.

Once the narcissist knows their partner is invested, they gradually start devaluing their partner. Often slow and subtle at first, this devaluation becomes more intense over time. Devaluation can occur blatantly—as rage, insults, violence, or aggression—or more subtly—as gaslighting or passive-aggressiveness. This puts the victim on the defensive and gets them worried about the relationship. Many victims have caretaker or codependent tendencies, which make them particularly vulnerable to this type abuse because of their natural proclivity to be supportive—especially to people they love.

Interestingly, narcissists do not prey on weak victims. On the contrary, narcissists look for people that have admirable qualities or resources—looks, financial resources, career success, prestige, social status, etc.—and they seek partners who can boost their own egos.

Once the abuse begins, the victim will draw on their provider inclination to do all they can to console the narcissist in effort to get back to that intense honeymoon stage. However, that stage never returns. The narcissist continues exploiting their victim to satisfy their needs. This is often the narcissists’ insatiable need for attention, but it can also be a need to feed their egos being around admirable people, to exploit their victim sexually or financially, or their desire to exert control. The narcissist will accept the victim’s reconciliation efforts, but they are now in a cycle of abuse marked by the narcissist’s constant devaluation and the victim’s perpetual efforts to restore the relationship to that impossible state.

This cycle continues until the victim garners the courage to leave or until they are discarded. Once the narcissist gets bored of the victim or determines that they can no longer extract the resources from the relationship they want, narcissists usually discard their victims, leaving them confused, broken, and a shell of the person they once were. Narcissists often start grooming their next victim before their relationship with the first victim ends. When this discard happens, the victim is left with serious emotional and psychological damage. They are unable to fathom how a relationship that was like something out of a dream came crashing down in such devastating and dramatic fashion.

In such relationships, narcissists mold their victims into who they want them to be, stripping them of their identity and ultimately making them into a supportive staff in the narcissist’s life. The victim’s goals, ambitions, and needs are ignored while the narcissist refocuses all of the relationship resources onto themselves. This is often achieved through a trauma bond, whereby the victim develops a deep connection to their abuser through a repeated cycle of intense reward and punishment. In the process, narcissists often try to isolate the victim from their support network of family, friends, and acquaintances. Thus, when a discard happens, victims are left especially vulnerable and traumatized.

Most existing resources on narcissistic abuse are gender neutral or approach it from a female perspective. While some resources explicitly consider the male perspective, as with IPV, male victims of narcissistic abuse remain considerably understudied and underserved in terms of gender-specific resources.

When considering male victims of narcissistic abuse relative to recent research on men’s psychology and mental health, there are serious issues regarding men’s recovery from such relationships that deserve attention. These include the stigma of being a male victim of a female perpetrator, which can prevent a man seeing himself as a victim, and others recognizing him as a victim. Another issue is the heightened risk of suicide in men who experience relationship breakdown. A further issue is the perceived lack of support available to men (for sources of support, see below).

The nature of narcissistic abuse inherently destroys victims’ identities. Identity loss after a relationship ends is common, but after a narcissistic relationship this loss can be particularly intense. Male victims can lose self-confidence and a sense of direction and may suffer professional and financial damage. Additionally, female narcissists’ behaviors are often aimed directly at a man’s sense of masculinity psychologically, financially, personally, and sexually, which aims to devalue their sense of manhood and make them further dependent on their abuser. Victims need time to recover from this, but the shock this can have to men’s sense of identity can be especially debilitating. Recovery needs to focus on reclaiming the aspects of masculine identity that were destroyed during the relationship. Victims can find it incredibly difficult to move on and leave behind their idealized life with their abuser. The narcissist created an image that they and their victims would share a perfect life together, something referred to as “future faking.” Leaving this imagined life behind is immensely challenging because the high moments were as if they were straight out of a fairy tale. Being able to detach from this fantastical version of the future and see the relationship for what it was—an abusive, exploitative, and harmful connection built on lies—is incredibly painful and time consuming.

For divorces and situations with children involved, negative stereotypes of men often severely disadvantage them. Narcissists will put on amazing shows in courts to conceal their abusive tactics and even make themselves out to be the ones harmed by such relationships. Victims are often at a loss with how to respond. Men intending to take narcissist partners to court, need to be aware of the challenges they face.

I learned about narcissistic abuse when I realized that something in my past relationship was not right. I had been in difficult relationships before, but something here was just too extreme. The highs were higher than anything I ever experienced, while the lows were more brutal, vicious, and disparaging than I could ever imagine. No matter what concessions I made, the lows just kept getting lower. I continued hoping that my partner would see the value in our relationship and see that we were just a few steps away from that ideal future we had discussed. But the more I hoped, the further we got from that ideal. The cycle just kept playing out in more disheartening ways. Ultimately, as every resource on narcissistic abuse said would happen, I was discarded and replaced. I hung on to hope for as long as possible, even resuscitating the relationship on my own volition several times despite knowing how unhealthy it was. I also contributed by acting out negatively in response to the abuse and failing to set and enforce boundaries, both of which are common in victims. When it was over, I was left utterly confused, broken, and finding it hard just to get through daily activates. It also took substantial time to start reimaging a different future.

The best resource to recover from narcissistic abuse is working with a therapist who specializes in relationship abuse. If men are feeling suicidal in or after such a relationship, it is crucial to reach out for appropriate support. However, if you cannot access a therapist or are still unsure of what’s going on, here are resources that I found useful in my own experience. These are not endorsements of these materials, and these are simply what I liked when I was trying to get by after my own ordeal.

Healing from Hidden Abuse: A Journey Through the Stages of Recovery from Psychological Abuse (Shannon Thomas): The first book I read on the subject, this resource was eye-opening, relatable, educational, and accessible. It is academically informed and offers a six-stage model of recovery. If you are unsure whether you are in an abusive relationship, this book will help. I recommend everyone start here because the abusive patterns are applicable to a wide range of relationships.

Psychopath Free (Expanded Edition): Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships with Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People (Jackson MacKenzie): A helpful book written from the perspective of an abuse survivor. On my first read, I did not appreciate this book as much as others because it wasn’t as academic. However, once I found myself discarded and at a loss for what to do, literally every page in this book became relatable. I started using these relatable pieces as writing prompts in my own healing journey.

Healing from a Narcissistic Relationship: A Caretaker's Guide to Recovery, Empowerment, and Transformation (Margalis Fjelstad): An excellent academically informed book that will help you determine whether or not you are in an abusive narcissistic relationship. It also contains important advice for recovering and journal prompts for helping you better understand your feelings. Fjelstad argues that people who attract and stay with narcissistic often have “caretaker” tendencies that their abusers.

Lise Leblanc: In my opinion, this is the best YouTube channel for men suffering from narcissistic abuse. Most of Leblanc’s videos are specifically aimed at men who suffer abuse at the hands of female partners, and she recognizes how underserved this subpopulation is. Leblanc’s videos are frighteningly relatable; they are as if she was secretly viewing my life for two years. Again, if you are unsure what is going on or if you need some support, this is a great place to start. No reading involved, and short 10–15-minute videos will provide all you need to know.

Enough About You, Let’s Talk About Me: How to Recognize and Manage the Narcissists in Your Life (Les Carter): Perhaps the first academically informed mainstream book about narcissistic abuse. This book is another great resource for understanding narcissistic abuse in partners. Les Carter also hosts an informative podcast, Surviving Narcissism.

Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse: Another podcast for understanding narcissistic abuse and the challenges that come from it. The episodes are filled with personal stories, guests, and analyses of narcissistic personality disorder.

Start Here: A Crash Course in Understanding, Navigating, and Healing from Narcissistic Abuse (Dana Morningstar): An excellent introductory book explaining the effects of relationship abuse. Includes many examples and a dictionary of common terms relating to relationship abuse. A short and accessible read to determine if your relationship might be an unhealthy one.

What Legal Arguments in Gender-Affirming Care Cases Like U.S. v. Skrmetti Are Leaving Out

The problem with sex-trait modification isn’t just the lack of evidence of benefit—it’s the pseudoscience at its core.

City Journal

The last four months have been a whirlwind of change in the gender debate. Just eight days into his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order provocatively titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.” It declared that the United States would no longer “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another.” The order arrived as the Supreme Court was deliberating U.S. v. Skrmetti, a pivotal case challenging Tennessee’s ban on sex-trait modification procedures for minors.

As the U.S. enters an era of legal warfare over pediatric “gender-affirming” care, it’s time to shift the terms of debate from outcomes to the foundational premises of the practice.

I have served as an expert witness for several court cases on gender-affirming care. These courtroom debates fixate almost entirely on whether the treatments show evidence of benefit. This is a mistake.

True, the evidence is almost nonexistent. Last year, British authorities released the Cass Review, a devastating critique of the evidence supporting pediatric sex-trait modification. The report was grounded in seven systematic evidence reviews—the gold standard in evidence-based medicine. One of the reviews, consistent with the others, described the evidence in favor of “gender-affirming treatment” in children and adolescents as “remarkably weak.”

But while it’s not wrong to highlight this evidentiary void, focusing solely on outcomes cedes too much ground to proponents by implying that outcomes alone could legitimize the practice gender transition. The deeper flaw in gender-affirming care lies not in the data but in their premises. If the foundational assumptions used to justify these treatments collapse under scrutiny, the interventions would remain unjustifiable, even if some evidence of benefit eventually emerged.

At its core, gender-affirming care rests on two claims. First, it posits that biological sex is not a fixed binary but a malleable continuum, shaped by traits like sex chromosomes, hormones, genital morphology, and other physical characteristics—most of which doctors can alter with hormones and surgeries.

Second, it asserts that a person can have a “brain sex”—equated with “gender identity”—that diverges from his body, creating a mismatch that drives gender dysphoria. The goal, then, is to align the body with this purportedly immutable “brain sex” through hormones and surgeries.

Both premises are scientifically untenable. Sex is not a spectrum. It’s a binary biological reality defined by reproductive function: males have the function to produce sperm, and females, ova. No hormonal or surgical intervention can change a person’s sex. Likewise, the notion that a person can have a “brain sex” incongruent with his body defies both biology and logic. Our bodies are an integrated whole, not a patchwork of independently sexed traits.

These unsound premises make gender-affirming care a house built on sand, not solid medical science.

Consider an analogy: exorcism might comfort a troubled patient who believes in demonic possession, but the practice’s legitimacy hinges on demons being real. Absent that, it’s a ritual, not medicine.

Similarly, gender-affirming care presupposes both a “sex spectrum” and “brain sex,” which do not exist. No amount of reported benefit can salvage a practice rooted in pseudoscience.

This distinction exposes a contradiction among the defenders of gender medicine in U.S. v. Skrmetti. The litigants against Tennessee argue that bans on “gender-affirming” procedures for minors constitute a form of discrimination based on sex. The ACLU, representing private plaintiffs in the case, attempted to spotlight potential benefits of gender-affirming care while sidestepping the shaky premises, yet its legal arguments invoking sex discrimination implicitly relied on sex being concrete and immutable. This undermines the justification for the gender-affirming care it supports, which requires that sex be fluid and changeable. They can’t have it both ways.

The legal battle over gender-affirming care must shift focus. Legislation should not merely target procedures but dismantle the pseudoscientific terminology and concepts—“gender identity,” “brain sex,” and “sex assigned at birth”—that prop them up. Medical institutions must face accountability for embracing these falsehoods.

This is a rare moment to halt the medicalization of confused, distressed, and vulnerable youth. By attacking gender medicine at its ideological foundation, we can end this harmful practice.

Dear Muslims,

The world is scared of us. The world is laughing at us. The world is worried about us.

And there are legitimate reasons for their worry that we cannot just deny. It is time to flush the word "Islamophobia" down the toilet and start looking in the mirror and ask ourselves, how did we get here?

How come the biggest and most dangerous thriving terrorist organizations in the world are Muslim? How come terrorists successfully use Islam to mobilize more terrorists? What is the problem with our leaders, our books, our imams and our religion? Why do we keep repeating these stone-age traditions that have failed us and continue to fail us?

The world has left us behind. The kuffar that our imams and books tell us to hate have travelled to the future while we're still stuck in the middle ages, reading stories about Muhammad and his flying horse.

You're watching this on your phone or on your computer or tablet created by these kuffars. The same kuffar that we hate so much have created most of the medicines that we use today. Medicine that our religion's crystal ball failed to bring about.

The kuffar have moved forward and travelled into space. Meanwhile, we're stuck on Earth in the middle ages going to our poisonous mosques every Friday, reciting the same chapters and the same stories of prophet Muhammad. Why haven't all of these books and teachings led us to science and technology and medicine?

We're stuck debating "Which sect is correct?" "Which interpretation is correct?" "Who is the kaffer and who is the real Muslim?" "How can we convince the kuffar to become Muslims?"

Why on Earth would anybody want to be Muslim today? They're all scared of us. They're all laughing at us. They're all worried about us.

Delete Israel and the west from the world and we would still be as ignorant as we are and would still be stabbing each other as we are.

Stop blaming them and look at yourselves in the mirror.

Debating a Religion?

Why Conflicts Arise with Trans Activists by Pamela Garfield-Jaeger

genspect.substack.com

“There are only two genders.” “Men can’t be women.” “Men and women are different.” “There’s no such thing as a trans child.”

These statements seem obvious to some and many others, yet they still clash with friends and family who believe transgenderism is real. They think, “It’s common sense—what’s going on here?”

I’ll tell you - They are speaking a different language. They assume a certain set of beliefs. They don’t understand the gender religion.

Most people who believe in transgenderism recognize men and women exist, but they believe their sexed bodies are inconsequential. They believe their bodies are vessels and their inner gender being is transcendent. This is an element of queer theory.

Via google AI: Queer theory is a field of critical theory that examines and critiques society's definitions of gender and sexuality, challenging traditional assumptions about what is "normal" and exploring the social and power structures that shape our understanding of identity.

They certainly wouldn’t agree that “there’s no such thing as a trans child.” They believe these children possess a special soul requiring affirmation. Without physical and emotional affirmation, they argue, these kids will die—it’s life or death to them. This may sound like hyperbole, but many genuinely believe denying this truth leads to death. Studies “proving” this have been quietly debunked, yet they persist in prominent institutions. For example, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) cites a retracted study on sex changes, while Sex Matters explains why these studies are flawed and how this misinformation has spread across major organizations.

The Trevor Project claims LGBTQ young people with access to “affirming spaces” report lower rates of attempting suicide. Notice this data is self-reported (likely via leading surveys) and doesn’t account for completed suicides—only self-reported attempts. This population is repeatedly told they must be affirmed or harm themselves, so naturally, they report more suicidal thoughts and gestures. This data is meaningless.

Their view of children differs sharply. They believe children know themselves, and adults must listen—children must lead. Some claim this applies even at birth. Psychologist Diane Ehrensaft, PhD, claims babies send “gender messages” by wearing a onesie like a dress or removing barrettes. She elaborates in a 2015 essay on the UCSF website and, in a 2014 video, discusses “gender hybrids” and “gender smoothies” with a straight face:

They argue intersex conditions and clownfish prove multiple genders exist. They overlook that humans still only produce male or female gametes, regardless of rare birth defects. They also cite anomalies like clownfish and seahorses to bolster their case. Yet, despite which fish lays the eggs, these species remain male or female. Plus, trans activists forget a basic fact: humans aren’t fish.

Even transexuals—people who surgically alter their bodies to align with the opposite sex—aren’t 'evolved' enough for queer theory adherents. Transexuals and transgenders differ—most transexuals acknowledge a mental health struggle, accept two sexes, and seek to blend in quietly, not challenge norms loudly. The modern trans movement has sidelined them.

Queer theory aims to upend everything “normal.” The notion of male and female is humanity’s most basic truth, yet activists have convinced millions that multiple genders exist—a profound shift.

So, if you’re a logical person and someone you love believes illogical things, what do you do?

First, you must practice a lot of patience. The reason for that is you will need to remember that your logical, common-sense worldview does not align with a trans believer. If you really want to get through to someone and not butt heads, I recommend that you stop using the phrases above. They only reinforce the wedge this ideology intentionally places between you and the person you are trying to reach.

You must understand that your loved one has joined a new religion, and religions don’t respond well to logical statements. They need facts and truth, but you still must appeal to feelings and strategically poke holes in their faulty belief system. What feelings am I talking about? Consider what feelings might draw the person you care about to reject logic. Some possibilities are feelings of isolation, fear, sadness, and vulnerability. Pay attention to who are talking to. Listen and learn, even though a lot won’t make any sense. Sasha Ayad, LPC just tweeted “Take the distress SERIOUSLY, but not LITERALLY.” While you attempt to be gentle, if you are the parent, you must also remember your authority. You must set limits with internet access and the friend groups that are influencing your child. Your conversations can evolve as more logic penetrates.

There are so many things you can do, especially as a parent of a minor, but this essay aims to help people understand broadly why you can so quickly hit a wall when it comes to having an honest conversation with a person who believes transgenderism is a real inner phenomenon. You must learn their language first before you can communicate yours.

You can learn more about the trans language, including a “Trans/English” dictionary in my book, A Practical Response to Gender Distress: Tips and Tools for Families, available on Amazon. In order to mend this horrible divide in our country, we must first learn how to communicate with people who think very differently, especially those we love.