"Of Hemingway’s three children, Patrick came closest to simulating, though hardly emulating, his father...."

"Hemingway’s first son, Jack, was an avid fly fisherman who fished in Europe between battles in World War II. He had difficulty finding a postwar career until he became Idaho’s fish and game commissioner in the 1970s. He died in 2000. Hemingway’s third child, Gloria Hemingway, was a physician who struggled with alcohol abuse. She wrote a memoir, 'Papa' (1976), before undergoing transition surgery later in life. She died in 2001."

From "Patrick Hemingway, Ernest’s Devoted Second Son, Is Dead at 97/Inspired by his parents’ travels, he spent much of his life in Africa and helped complete his father’s safari memoir. He also published a volume of father-son letters. He was Ernest Hemingway’s last surviving child" (NYT).

Transition surgery? I clicked on "She died in 2001" and got to the obituary "Gregory H. Hemingway, 69; Wrote a Memoir Called 'Papa.'" Excerpt:

"Liebich has vigorously resisted suggestions of taking this step to satirise the authorities, rather than out of a wish to live as a woman."

Link to the London Times.

It should be noted that "Alexander Dobrindt, the interior minister, said Liebich had 'abused' the new gender self-identification law and it needed to be tightened up."

"The 'Father Ted' writer Graham Linehan has revealed that he was arrested on Monday by 5 armed police officers on arrival at Heathrow airport over 3 tweets about transgender activists...."

The London Times reports.

Linehan told The Times: “I was outraged by what happened. I’d just travelled ten hours from Arizona to voluntarily appear in another court case and they thought they had to send armed police to get me." 

"I was arrested for messages on X when I haven’t even been banned from X. The tweets are not my best work but they are completely harmless. I’m furious about what is happening to women in the UK and I despise trans activists because I think they are homophobic and misogynist.... I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me and banned from speaking online — all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers. To me, this proves one thing beyond doubt: the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad.”

The Times prints the tweets in question:

"As another man who once worked with me declares himself saddened by my beliefs on gender and sex, I thought it might be useful to compile a list..."

"... for handy reference. Which of the following do you imagine makes actors and directors who aren’t involved with the HBO reboot of Harry Potter so miserable?"

J.K. Rowling has a useful list, at X, where she also engages with many of her commenters.

It's a long list, so go to the link. I'll just highlight one item, the belief "[t]hat gay people shouldn’t be pressured to include the opposite sex in their dating pools, nor should they be smeared as ‘genital fetishists’ when they don’t?"

"This kind of violence is very recent. It's a new thing in human history. There was no time in the past when people would walk into a church or a classroom and start shooting people."

"It is not happening in other countries. It's happening here and we need to look at all of the potential culprits that might be contributing to that."

Said RFK Jr. on "Fox & Friends" yesterday, when he was asked about whether "drugs" used in transgender treatment might have had a effect on the Minneapolis shooter. RFK Jr.'s answer broadened the topic to "SSRI drugs and other psychiatric drugs," some of which come with warnings about homicidal and suicidal ideation.

"I only keep [the long hair] because it is pretty much my last shred of being trans. I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself..."

"I can’t cut my hair now as it would be embarrassing defeat, and it might be a concerning change of character that could get me reported. It just always gets in my way. I will probably chop it on the day of the attack.... I don’t want to dress girly all the time but I guess sometimes I really like it. I know I am not a woman but I definitely don’t feel like a man."

Wrote Robin Westman, more or less rejecting trans identity, quoted in "Minneapolis school shooter Robin Westman confessed he was 'tired of being trans': 'I wish I never brain-washed myself'" (NY Post).

I don't understand why we are calling this person trans. If you're saying you "brain-washed" yourself, you've implicitly consigned the belief to the past. You might not reveal the loss of belief to others, but you've put it in writing — albeit in code — and we can read it. Why are people pretending to believe that he believed what he said he didn't believe? And he wrote it explicitly: "I know I am not a woman." 

I don't see why anyone wants this person to be a member of their group. What good would it do anyone to have Westman as one of their own?

"In one 20-minute video, Westman flips through the disturbing handwritten manifesto. Much of it is written in a homespun code that uses Cyrillic characters and English phonetic words."

"In the deranged writings, he gleefully fantasizes about 'being that scary horrible monster standing over those powerless kids'.... 'I am feeling good about Annunciation. It seems like a good combo of easy attack form and devastating tragedy and I want to do more research. I have concerns about finding a large enough group. I want to avoid any parents, but pre and post school drop off,' another page reads. 'Maybe I could attack an event at the on-site church.... I think attacking a large group of kids coming in from recess is my best plan … Then from there I can go inside and kill, going for as long as I can.' Near the end of the video, Westman flicks through a number of blank pages before reaching what appears to be a drawing showing the inside of a church, saying 'Haha, nice'... stops turning pages... takes out a knife and stabs into the center of the sketch... withdraws the blade, and quietly mumbles, 'kill myself.'"

From "Minneapolis school shooter ID’d as trans woman Robin Westman — as apparent manifesto included 'kill Trump'" (NY Post).

UPDATE: Writing this post, I avoided quoting the text that used a pronoun for Westman. The Post had used "she," but I see this morning, the "she"s are all changed to "he"s, without any notice that a correction/"correction" has been made. 

"It was weird enough that six or seven White, trans people moved into the neighborhood. And now the FBI is raiding their house."

Said a resident of the "predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood here known as The Bottoms."

Quoted in "Suspects in Texas ICE shooting tied to trans, anti-fascist activism/Benjamin Song, an alleged ringleader, is a former Marine Corps reservist who trained left-wing activists for close-quarters combat and large-scale gunfights, associates said" in The Washington Post. 

It's quite long, so I'm giving you a free-access link. I'll quote a few highlights:

The raid... was part of an investigation into a July 4 attack outside the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, an hour’s drive south.... The Alvarado attack is one of the most violent incidents in a wave of assaults and threats against federal immigration officers.... The Department of Homeland Security recorded 79 assaults on ICE officers between Jan. 21 and June 30....

The topic is the rise of left-wing violence in the Trump era, but WaPo interrupts itself to remind readers that there's even more right-wing violence and it's worse.

"Buttigieg’s remarks came days after Rahm Emanuel... a potential 2028 presidential candidate, told Megyn Kelly that 'a man can’t become a woman'..."

"... a comment that directly contradicted party orthodoxy and sparked fresh divisions over how Democrats should approach transgender rights. 'I think most reasonable people would recognize that there are serious fairness issues if you just treat this as not mattering when a trans athlete wants to compete in women’s sports,' Buttigieg told NPR."

From "Pete Buttigieg weighs in on ‘fairness’ of transgender kids playing girls’ sports" (Advocate).

This gets my tag "2028 campaign." Looks like Emanuel made a significant move and Buttigieg felt obliged to react. But did Buttigieg say anything comprehensible? He also said "The approach starts with compassion, compassion for transgender people, compassion for families, especially of young people who are going through this, and also empathy for people who are not sure what all of this means for them... and just taking everybody seriously." And: "These decisions should be in the hands of sports leagues and school boards and not politicians, least of all politicians in Washington trying to use this as a political pawn."

And here's Rahm:



"So do you believe boys should be able to play in girls sports?"/"No."

"The wax lips is my statement against plastic surgery. I’ve been very vocal about the genocide of a generation of women..."

"...  by the cosmeceutical industrial complex who’ve disfigured themselves. The wax lips really sends it home.”

Said Jamie Lee Curtis, posing in wax lips and quoted in "'Generations of women have been disfigured': Jamie Lee Curtis lets rip on plastic surgery, power, and Hollywood’s age problem" (Guardian).

Obviously, the word “genocide” is very strong and risks causing offence, given its proper meaning. To Curtis, however, it is accurate. “I’ve used that word for a long time and I use it specifically because it’s a strong word. I believe that we have wiped out a generation or two of natural human [appearance]. The concept that you can alter the way you look through chemicals, surgical procedures, fillers – there’s a disfigurement of generations of predominantly women who are altering their appearances...."

And yet: 

Curtis’s daughter Ruby, 29, is trans.... “I’m an outspoken advocate for the right of human beings to be who they are.... I’m a John Steinbeck student... and there’s a beautiful piece of writing from East of Eden about the freedom of people to be who they are. Any government, religion, institution trying to limit that freedom is what I need to fight against.””

I guess those Hollywood actresses with their chemicals and surgical procedures are not trying to "be who they are" but to be what they feel others want them to be. How "against plastic surgery" is Curtis? When is it "disfigurement"? When does she feel motivated to use the word "genocide"? One might feel inclined to say that each person is free to make their own decision, but when do onlookers judge them harshly? How do we know who is truly finding their real self in these medical cuttings and who is straining to conform to real or imagined societal expectations?

ADDED: Here's the question I was motivated to ask Grok: "Are trans women mostly attempting to look like beautiful women or is the goal simply to look like an ordinary woman (and to 'read' as a woman)? Or is it enough merely to feel, from their own perspective, that they are expressing their own personal idea of womanliness (or femininity) and not focused on what other people think of what they are seeing?" 

"Amy Sherald — the artist who rocketed to fame with her 2018 portrait of Michelle Obama — has withdrawn her upcoming solo show from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery..."

"... because she said she had been told the museum was considering removing her painting depicting a transgender Statue of Liberty to avoid provoking President Trump. 'American Sublime,' set to arrive at the museum in September, is a much heralded exhibition of works by Ms. Sherald and would have been the first by a Black contemporary artist at the Portrait Gallery... Ms. Sherald said that [Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian, which runs the Portrait Gallery]... had proposed replacing the painting with a video of people reacting to the painting and discussing transgender issues, an idea she rejected because she said it would have included anti-trans views. 'When I understood a video would replace the painting, I decided to cancel,' she said. 'The video would have opened up for debate the value of trans visibility and I was opposed to that being a part of the "American Sublime" narrative.’"

From "Amy Sherald Cancels Her Smithsonian Show, Citing Censorship/The artist said that she made the decision after she said she learned that her painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty might be removed to avoid provoking President Trump" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see photos of the paintings).

Whatever you think of the painting — "Tranforming Liberty" — it really is an awful idea to replace it with a video that included people critiquing the artist's point of view. Show the artist. She has a point of view. If you don't admire her, don't give her a show. But don't weave in the critics! They're not even art critics as far as I can tell. They just seem to be discordant voices about the visibility of trans people. Ridiculous! Embarrassing! Let the people see the paintings as painted and talk about them amongst themselves or write about them in social media or, as critics, in traditional media. Don't muck up the show!

As for the share of blame that belongs to Trump...

"What are some famous quotes by writers/artists/musicians about critics?"

That's I question I had, a couple hours ago, as I was gathering my thoughts in preparation, I thought, for blogging this article by the New Yorker's movie critic, Richard Brody, "In Defense of the Traditional Review/Far from being a journalistic relic, as suggested by recent developments at the New York Times, arts criticism is inherently progressive, keeping art honest and pointing toward its future."

I got a bunch of great quotes out of Grok with my question, including the one that deserves to stand in for them all: "Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read" (Frank Zappa).

Then there was this, from Pablo Picasso: "The critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." And that got me tumbling down a side path with an issue I'd encountered yesterday, the idea that there are individuals who identify as eunuchs and the notion that castration is, for them, medically necessary. I was told: "The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care (Version 8) includes a chapter on 'eunuch' as a gender identity, suggesting that castration may be considered 'medically necessary gender-affirming care' for some who identify as eunuchs and experience distress from their genitals."

I introduced the question: "It occurs to me that a person might argue that they identify as dead and therefore entitled to physician-assisted suicide — that killing is a medically required treatment." That led to a long discussion that kept me far away from the topic of the usefulness of critics — they're "inherently progressive"! — and I'm not going to go into the details. I'm just going to list a few phrases that came up in the Grok discussion that's displaced blogging for me this morning:

"Conditions like Cotard’s syndrome, where individuals genuinely believe they are dead or non-existent, are rare and classified as a psychiatric delusion, treated through therapy or medication, not affirmation," "So you're saying that if only doctors had been killing people who 'identify as dead' for a longer period of time and managed to fight off those who think it's wrong, it would be analogous to transgender surgeries," "You’re correct that genital transgender surgeries, like vaginoplasty or phalloplasty, are... irreversible in any meaningful sense," "'Sexual sensation is possible due to preserved nerves' — I note that you didn't say orgasm," "Your point about muscles is spot-on: the lack of vaginal musculature in a neovagina means it cannot replicate the contractile component of a natal female orgasm," "Is there any commentary, comedy, or fictional writing utilizing my idea of 'identifying as dead'?," "Seems like something that someone in 'Chicago' would say (like 'He ran into my knife... 50 times')," "Somewhere, some writer(s) must have already written the line: 'Go ahead. Try to kill me. You can't. I'm already dead.'"

That went on and on, with the discussion of many movies, and it wasn't the only A.I. conversations that kept me away from the blog this morning. There was also, among many others, "Summarize this article... and explain why Brody thinks arts criticism is 'progressive.'" Which led to: "What is 'progressive' supposed to mean? It strikes me as utter bullshit." And: "Weave into this discussion what Tom Wolfe wrote in 'The Painted Word.'" And: "Isn't there some related idea — or conspiracy theory — that the CIA created the art market for Abstract Expressionism?"

All of that was more interesting to me than what I would have produced reading Brody's article and blogging it in my usual way. And my "usual way" is to follow whatever interests me, not to feel obligated, but to do what is intrinsically rewarding for me. You see the problem!

"The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee quietly changed its eligibility rules on Monday to bar transgender women from competing in Olympic women’s sports..."

"... and now will comply with President Trump’s executive order on the issue, according to a post on the organization’s website. The new policy, expressed in a short, vaguely worded paragraph, is tucked under the category of 'USOPC Athlete Safety Policy' on the site, and does not include details of how the ban will work. Nor does the new policy include the word 'transgender' or the title of Mr. Trump’s executive order, 'Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,' referring to it instead as 'Executive Order 14201.'"

From "U.S. Olympic Officials Bar Transgender Women From Women’s Competitions/The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee changed its eligibility rules on Monday to comply with President Trump’s executive order, taking the decision away from national governing bodies for each sport" (NYT).

Interesting language, especially "tucked under." It seems to evoke the effort of a biological man to pass as a woman. Did the NYT want us to see an analogy there? The U.S. Olympic Committee wants to look like it is what it wants to be. In this analogy, following Trump’s executive order corresponds to the male genitalia that must be "tucked under" and the look of female genitalia is achieved with the words "USOPC Athlete Safety Policy."

If that's not intentional, the editing at the NYT is incompetent/nonexistent. If it is intentional, it's hilarious and very very wrong.

"I was a registered Democrat for 45 years. But two years ago, I registered as independent because of the Democratic Party’s embrace of what I see as a misogynistic, homophobic view of gender..."

"... that has contributed to the loss of lesbian-only and women-only spaces from dating sites, to shelters, to sports — in short, erasing our right to free speech and free association. I am a soft butch lesbian. I came out in 1978 at 18 years old. I was always a tomboy and if I were a teenager today, I would likely be medically transitioned. I strongly believe society must stop medicalizing gender nonconforming youths. As a lawyer in this recent Supreme Court case acknowledged, there is no evidence 'that this treatment reduces completed suicide.' And a major scientific review of this field of medicine described it as 'an area of remarkably weak evidence.' In fact, some research suggests that gender nonconforming youths grow up to be happy lesbian or gay adults. In these cases, medical transition would be a kind of conversion therapy. Further, there is no current way to determine which youths will detransition in the future. We know there are risks associated with puberty blockers and transitioning. One child harmed is one too many. The U.S. v. Skrmetti decision is correct, and it will safeguard children like the teenager I once was."

Says a letter to the editor in The Washington Post. The letter responds to the article "Tennessee can ban gender transition care for minors, Supreme Court says/The court’s decision allows the law in Tennessee and has implications for the 23 other states that have banned similar treatments in recent years."

There is no current way to determine which youths will detransition in the future and there is also no way to count the gay and lesbian Americans, living today, who would have transitioned if they'd faced puberty in the 2020s. 

AND: If we knew who they were, we could ask them if they're happy they did not live the life their teenage self would have chosen for them.

"For the first time, my insides don’t feel like fire. They feel like warm, golden love."

Says Penelope, a child in the book "Born Ready," described by Justice Alito in the new Supreme Court case, Mahmoud v. Taylor:

The book Born Ready...  follows the story of Penelope, an apparently biological female who asserts “ ‘I AM a boy.’ ” Id., at 458a. Not only does the story convey the message that Penelope is a boy simply because that is what she chooses to be, but it slyly conveys a positive message about transgender medical procedures. Penelope says the following to her mother: 

“ ‘I love you, Mama, but I don’t want to be you. I want to be Papa. I don’t want tomorrow to come because tomorrow I’ll look like you. Please help me, Mama. Help me to be a boy.’ ” Id., at 459a.

Penelope’s mother then agrees that Penelope is a boy, and Penelope exclaims: “For the first time, my insides don’t feel like fire. They feel like warm, golden love.” Id., at 462a. To young children, the moral implication of the story is that it is seriously harmful to deny a gender transition and that transitioning is a highly positive experience....

A child's "insides" described as feeling like fire or, alternatively, warm, golden love! Quite aside from the topic of transgenderism, that is — if not blatantly sexual — too closely approximate to sexuality to belong in reading material for children. If I say I'm amazed that school authorities would adopt such a book for classroom instruction, I am sure commenters will scoff at me for being too naive to perceive the deliberate "grooming."

"Transgender swimming champion Lia Thomas will be stripped of University of Pennsylvania swimming titles after the Ivy League school bowed to pressure from the Trump administration."

"The university will also issue formal apologies to every biological female competitor who lost out to a transgender competitor following an investigation by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The probe found UPenn violated Title IX by 'allowing a male to compete in female athletic programs and occupy female-only intimate facilities.' 'Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action...' Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement...."

From "Trans UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas will be stripped of her titles after university bends the knee to Trump admin" (NY Post).

"I am a philosopher, not a physician... Philosophers prize clear language and love unravelling muddled arguments, and the writings of pediatric gender specialists..."

"... serve up plenty of obscurity and confusion.... The review describes how the medicalized 'gender affirming care' approach to treating pediatric gender distress, endorsed by the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, rests on very weak evidence.... [N]o reliable research indicates that these treatments are beneficial to minors’ mental health...."

Writes MIT philosophy professor Alex Byrne, in "I co-wrote the anonymous HHS report on pediatric gender medicine/The hostile reaction to our work shows why we needed to do it in the first place" (WaPo)(free-access link). Byrne is quick to assure readers that she's no Trump fan, never votes Republican, and opposes the "discrimination and prejudice" against trans people.

"I think you would prefer the human race to endure, right?"/"Uh............"/"You’re hesitating"/"Well, I don’t know. I would....... I would....."

"There’s so many questions implicit in this"/"Should the human race survive?"/"Yes.... but I also would like us to radically solve these problems. And so it’s always, I don’t know, yeah — transhumanism. The ideal was this radical transformation where your human, natural body gets transformed into an immortal body. And there’s a critique of, let’s say, the trans people in a sexual context, or, I don’t know, a transvestite is someone who changes their clothes and cross-dresses, and a transsexual is someone where you change your, I don’t know, penis into a vagina. And we can then debate how well those surgeries work. But we want more transformation than that. The critique is not that it’s weird and unnatural, it’s: Man, it’s so pathetically little. And OK, we want more than cross-dressing or changing your sex organs. We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind and change your whole body. And then Orthodox Christianity, by the way — the critique Orthodox Christianity has of this, is these things don’t go far enough. That transhumanism is just changing your body, but you also need to transform your soul and you need to transform your whole self. And so............................"

It's Peter Thiel, responding to what one might think were easy questions from Ross Douthat, on the new episode of Douthat's podcast, here, at Podscribe.

Go to 00:37:32 to experience Thiel's freakishly long hesitation when Douthat has just asked if he'd like humanity to survive. And I love how he takes the concept of "trans" and runs with it.

Even though Thiel's cogitations wander into Christianity, he doesn't mention The Transfiguration, in Matthew 17. There, Jesus is "transfigured":

"As a gay man I applaud this decision. The court may be acting in bad faith, they may be hostile to gay rights, but..."

"... this ruling will help protect gay kids and gender non-conforming kids from this insane gender ideology that suggests that they may have been born in the wrong bodies if they don't fit some retrograde heterosexual gender role. You can't argue on one hand that gender is 'fluid' and on the other that it is somehow fixed in small children who have yet to experience puberty. This is madness, especially as we know these medical procedures lead to a lifetime of medical issues and a shorter lifespan. Only an adult can make these decisions for themselves."

Writes John02116 in the comments section to the Megan McArdle column, "The ACLU bet big on a trans rights case. Its loss was predictable. A Supreme Court ruling shows trans advocates failed to see the fragility of the liberal consensus" (WaPo)(free-access link so you can see the big disconnect between the column and the comments).

An even more strongly worded comment comes from JR Colorado:

"There are a lot of conversations happening right now. People know the movement is stuck. They know we’ve gone too far. They know we’ve lost the thread."

Said said Dana Beyer, "a physician and longtime trans activist in Maryland," quoted in "How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost/The inside story of the case that could set the movement back a generation" (NYT)(free-access link).