#genderpolitics

AGL diversity & inclusion team embarks on open discrimination

In 2021, equality is seen by some groups as a form of discrimination.

AGL Energy has decided to give trans staff up to 6 weeks paid “gender affirmation” leave.

How will AGL ensure those that apply are genuine cases? Of course it would be improper to ask. Will they be required to submit records of medical or legal appointments to ensure that the ‘extra paid leave’ is used as intended? Surely that would be intrusive and untrusting of the staff. Is it an annual entitlement?

Will non-trans staff be offered gender affirmation leave? Are cis-gendered workers just as entitled to double check they are still the gender listed on their birth certificates? What about the LGB community? Shouldn’t they be entitled to 6 weeks extra leave to affirm their sexual preferences? Should employees who were the victims of childhood sexual assault or domestic violence be given 6 weeks extra paid leave to deal with those demons? Where does it end?

Never mind the legal repercussions for introducing such discriminatory employment systems?

What message does this send to the rest of the company’s employees? Perhaps all employees could now technically identify as trans and cash in on the extra benefits. Who will AGL be to question them? Wouldn’t this undermine the rights of the legitimate transgender staff if non-trans staff pretended to be so just to enjoy those perks?

Will the firm record the increase in the number of trans employees in the annual report after the introduction of this policy? We won’t be the least bit surprised if it surges.

Surely if AGL is to promote true equality, diversity and inclusion it shouldn’t embark on policies that actively segregate and discriminate between different groups outside of rank and role.

Why does the company feel the need to use the word “safe“?

Are trans employees at risk of danger in the workplace outside of occupational hazards? Can the diversity and inclusion team quantify those risks? If so, why hasn’t the company clamped down on that inappropriate workplace behaviour and removed those responsible for the problems? Why hasn’t the company introduced anti-transphobic training to non trans staff to improve safety?

Introducing such discriminatory work policies is likely to create the very resentment in the workplace it is designed to prevent. Did all employees who identify as trans ask for this policy to be introduced? Most likely not. The trans staff shouldn’t be treated as a monolith either. Still, such a move will just keep adding to the number of identities to cater to down the line.

Maybe AGL should look to the disaster that befell PG&E in California when it ended up in Chap 11 bankruptcy because it focused on being woke while neglecting the core business.

The best way to embrace the trans or any other community is to let them know they are on the exact same wicket as everyone else in the company. The same rules. That is how a safe work environment is created. No special treatment. If AGL has hired competent bosses, those trans employees are in safe hands and their ability to shine will be unfettered.

And what a slap in the face to any hard working trans employees at AGL who are able to make it on their own efforts/intelligence/abilities/qualifications but have basically been told by AGL they are charity cases and without the support of the diversity and inclusion team they will probably struggle.

More often than not, it would seem the people behind these woke proposals and policies are selfishly doing it for their own personal quest to morally preen in front of others as opposed to truly helping those they are pretending to represent. Sycophants, not saints. Just look at the self-congratulatory backslapping in the post by those responsible at AGL. Tells us all we need to know – “we are worthy!”

OREO Cookie represents the broader trans community now?

Trans people do exist.

Yet, who on earth was craving Oreo’s opinion on the matter? Why did Oreo’s PR department think the public was waiting on tenterhooks for its guidance on how to embrace the trans community, a group the cookie maker has probably never broadly consulted? On what authority does Oreo speak on their behalf?

If Oreo wanted to be properly woke, why didn’t the PR department issue a public statement about the derogatory use of the phrase, “Oreo cookie”, to slander a black person for being white on the inside.

How ironic that the company’s parent, Mondelez International, is currently accused in a lawsuit – among other food making giants – of engaging in aiding and abetting child slave labour on cocoa plantations in Mali and Cote D’Ivoire.

We keep asking time and time again, what do Oreo, Gillette, Nike, Coca-Cola, Goodyear etc seek to gain by constantly virtue signaling about things they’ve absolutely no idea about? Why are corporate boards approving such radical PR nonsense which has little to do with their core businesses?

We imagine that when injustice occurs in the trans community, Oreo cookies are the last thing on most people’s minds, even after this virtue signaling post on Twitter.

It makes as much sense as the Yarra Council spending ratepayers’ money on woke gestures unrelated to garbage collection and maintaining public toilets. Even the mayor claims she lives on stolen land yet happily takes taxes from the other squatters (aka residents) who must, by definition, also be illegally occupying land in the council zone.

BBC thinks skiing is an avalanche of white privilege

There is a touch of irony that the BBC sent two white reporters to disparage the predominant number of whites populating the chairlifts at ski fields across Europe. Talk about a lack of self awareness.

Surely the very diversity they preached in that video would have been better served by the supposed marginalized minorities who populate the ranks of BBC’s journalists?

We always wonder why these media outlets/activists never seem to provide the ‘appropriate ratio’ by which ski fields should accept bookings to avoid systemic racism on the slopes. What is the outcome? Who benefits? Is personal choice a factor? Or is everything racist, sexist or bigoted these days?

In 2018, the biggest issue facing cyclists in London wasn’t safety but a lack of diversity because, to the powers that be, there were too few women or people from BAME backgrounds taking to pedal power. Therefore a campaign to encourage them to cycle was announced to overcome the ‘gap’.

Again, what is the correct ratio and what will be the outcome should diversity targets be hit? This data never seems to be presented. The supposedly affected groups never consulted.

Could it be some women and many in the BAME community simply don’t like cycling as a mode of transport to and from work?

Maybe some love cycling but would prefer not to leave a $10,000 carbon fibre bike strapped to a pole in the city and risk damage to it because of the high level of street crime?

Could it be that apart from dodging double deckers in peak hour and fighting the inclement weather, some prefer to catch the bus or train during the work week and listen to their iPods or surf the net.

No, just easier for the virtue signal brigade to clump the lack of interest by suggesting racism or sexism might be behind it. Would the cycling chiefs have preferred fewer middle aged whites cycled to work if there were no net increases in female and BAME cyclists because statistically that might solve the problem?

Same for ski fields. Assuming the right balance of racial identities was struck on the slopes, we can be sure that someone would raise the issue that there weren’t enough people from certain religious/sexual orientations/genders and disabilities represented on the black diamond runs.

We are totally happy to find sensible ways to remove barriers to inequalities where they actually exist. It is just that we would rather not listen to sanctimonious lectures made by virtue signaling activists claiming to represent groups they haven’t bothered to consult without ever providing a solution or relevant facts to support the claims.

Maybe parents should set the market wage of teachers

Forgive us a brief preamble. You’ll understand why our title is as it is. Buckle up.

We’ve long been a fan of North Carolina Lt.Gov Mark D. Robinson even before he took office.

He came to notoriety when confronting his local council over its lunatic policies around gun controls. He proclaimed, “when are you going to start sticking up for the majority? Because I’m the majority!”

It just so happens a teacher from a NC public school drew a cartoon where the main character represented the GOP members of the state school board dressed in a Klan robe because it rejected left-wing proposals to the curriculum. Despite those board members including a black man and a Native American woman who had to deal the KKK personally, the local paper decided to publish it anyway.

The media outlet’s excuse after it was admonished for the cartoon was an utter embarrassment. Sorry, not sorry.

“Editorial cartoons are creative and provocative, using hyperbole and satire. No one believes Republicans on the State Board of Education are members of the Ku Klux Klan…”

Robinson was livid when he pointed to the hypocrisy. Not at the expression of free speech but the double standards of a media outlet having such poor taste to publish something like it.

What is more, he wasn’t condemning the teacher’s right to express free speech but his concern at the clear bias shown by a teacher who controls a classroom.

In recent posts we’ve pointed out the critical race theory indoctrination taught to 8-yo kids that is flourishing in public schools across America.

White teachers are having to take anti-racism classes to atone for their skin colour and the privileges it has bestowed on them.

Some parents have openly pushed back on this craziness being taught in the classroom, especially to younger kids.

It has now gone to DEFCON 1 in the Washington DC school district (DCSD) with the introduction of the Marxist BLM manifesto into the school curriculum.

We’ve spent some time watching the “teachers help guide” videos so you don’t need to suffer the drone.

When we hear teachers, who also identify as activists, describe the current education environment as akin to working in a concentration camp surrounded by gas chambers (scroll to 1hr 11min here in the ‘Black Lives Matter at school’ video) we really wonder about what type of education is being thrust on impressionable school kids?!

The BLM curriculum includes 13 distinct guiding principles ranging from ditching the nuclear family and relying on “villages” to raise kids all the way to identity based segregation theory and transgender classes.

Endorsers of the project include Black Women Radicals, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and the Washington Teachers Union. Can you feel the balance?

The ultimate irony is that despite all of the claims of systemic racism in the ‘educational’ videos and documents, the DCSD is living proof to the data it proudly published highlighting the importance of the course to prevent it. 69% of DCSD principals are black. Doesn’t sound like the DC education system has held them back.

On the flip side, harsh realities must be dealt with. Truancy and chronic absenteeism (pre COVID) in DC continued to climb to 30% of all students in 2018-2019. Isn’t that a bigger issue for educators than ramming Marxist ideology down the throats of the 70% that attend class?

Recall our piece on Baltimore high schools. Despite four of the 13 schools in the city receiving the highest levels of funding per student in the country, maths proficiency is at ZERO percent. That isn’t a misprint. Doesn’t that seem like a teaching problem?

As we said in the title, perhaps parents should be setting the market price for teachers’ salaries based on their ability to educate kids in a balanced and open manner. Not one wrapped around the personal ideological beliefs of those given a duty of care for the very students they are responsible for.

Perhaps these teachers should have polled the parents before embarking on curriculums like these which seek to brain wash kids as early as possible.

We anticipate these teachers know just how poorly received by “the majority” they would be. Best just ram it through without questions because freedom is slavery. War is peace and up is down. Got it?

Hence, we think teachers should be remunerated on improved results in maths, English and science rather than working hard to disassociate students from their families into the bosom of the state.

Teachers have a right to believe their own politics. They don’t have a mandate to force feed young kids with it.

Note that the 1619 Project is the next round of bonkers ideology being thrust into the national educational curriculum across the 50 states.

Forget unity with this type of racially driven identity politics.

Welcome to Biden’s America.

Peloton finds itself in the crosshairs of racism

Who knew that a stationary exercise bike company with online exercise classes could be…wait for it…racist.

In the woke world we live in today, corporates have been busy letting people know what they can’t buy for fear of being cancelled. Now we have customers dictating who they must create products for.

NBC’s David Kaufman wrote,

“Like many people in quarantine, every day I find some time to hide from my children and hop on to my Peloton, the stationary exercise bike with built-in internet-enabled spin classes that has become a must-have for some people during this time away from, well, everything…

…But the more I use my Peloton bicycle, the more I don’t feel so good about the company behind it. Because just as their now-infamous holiday-season ad last year convinced many people that the company had an unacknowledged gender problem, their video and music programming suggests to me — as an African American — that they also have an unrecognized race problem…

…It’s not that Peloton the company is actively racist or has even failed at being #woke; a quick spin through Peloton’s app or blog reveals that the brand is intentionally including racially conscious content throughout their marketing materials.

The problem is more subtle. With each bike priced at over $2,200 (their treadmills start at over $4,200) plus $39 per month more for those streaming classes, Peloton users are typically demi-1-percenters, with cash to spare and homes spacious enough to house those speedy racers. And, in fact, Peloton CEO and co-founder John Foley said those users were his target demographic in a 2016 CNBC interview: “These are people who have children, live in suburbs, have nice homes, they have the money and space but don’t necessarily have time.”

So a gym equipment company that specifically targets the premium segment is now in trouble for having customers that are “disproportionately white.”

Surely if Peloton saw a market opportunity to sell exercise bikes to low wage essential workers it probably would.

Now that President Biden has one in the White House (which is creating cybersecurity issues) perhaps he can introduce a Peloton Equality Act to ensure essential workers can exercise after he’s paid for their student fees.

As an aside, our gym HIIT circuit class has a young Asian man do the video workout examples. The disproportionately white female class has not thought twice about him. Maybe Jetts Gym should be cancelled for not having a minority female conduct the video even the instructors are mostly young women. Smack them for ageism too.

Californian elementary school brainwashing 8yo kids about power & privilege

It seems that a third-grade teacher at R.I. Meyerholz Elementary School in Cupertino, CA decided to get 8yo kids to deconstruct their own racial identities. Students were taught that the dominant culture was the following:

“White, middle class, cisgender, educated, able bodied, Christian, English speakers who created and maintained” this culture in order “to hold power and stay in power.”

The documents were leaked, not by someone dripping in white fragility, but an Asian American parent who was disgusted to see kids being taught racism. She rallied other parents at the school to protest to the principal.

The teacher began the lesson on “social identities” during a mathematics class. That gives a whole new meaning to division.

A passage from the assigned text went as follows:

“a white, cisgender man, who is able-bodied, heterosexual, considered handsome and speaks English has more privilege than a Black transgender woman.”

Christopher Rufo, who obtained the leaked documents wrote,

“The irony is that, despite being 94 percent nonwhite, Meyerholz Elementary is one of the most privileged schools in America. The median household income in Cupertino is $172,000, and nearly 80 percent of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher. At the school, where the majority of families are Asian-American, the students have exceptionally high rates of academic achievement and the school consistently ranks in the top 1 percent of all elementary schools statewide. In short, nobody at Meyerholz is oppressed.”

Should the teacher just view the Asian American parents against intersectional politics as inconvenient minorities who believe in meritocracy? According to Rufo, the parents believe that the school board is overpopulated by critical race theory activists.

One wonders under Biden whether these things will proliferate. So much for unity. Let’s get the brainwashing in as early as possible.

Presumably when the handsome sun bleached blonde, blue eyed white 8yo boy is punched in the nose by a minority student, the teacher will explain to him that this is a part of the healing process to account for his white privilege and atone for things he has no control over.

Black is white. Freedom is slavery. War is peace. Got it?

Why should we believe in the science when such people are modeling it?

We were continuously told last year that we must follow the science on COVID-19. No ifs. No buts. We’re all in this together. Right?

Not so fast. Politicians continued to collect paychecks while forcing so many into financial destitution by preventing their right to earn an income. Even worse the political class continuously broke their own draconian rules which landed many of the less fortunate with fines, arrests and in the worst case scenario, prison. Rules for thee but not for me.

Back to the science.

One could be forgiven for possessing a healthy dose of skepticism in questioning the medical advisories by virtue of the constant flip-flopping on how to contain the virus.

Sweden has proven that lockdowns aren’t effective. That didn’t stop a me too approach exercised by most cities/states/countries to adopt economics-destroying stay-at-home orders. It wasn’t based on a science but a safety in numbers approach. The idea that there was less political risk by following a herd mentality rather than herd immunity.

Flu guru Dr Fauci told us masks were ineffective until they became a useful political tool for him to promote their use.

Now a multitude of vaccines are upon us, science doesn’t seem to be the only driver of decisions on how it should be administered.

Were the science to be followed to the letter, wouldn’t the best option be to save lives in aggregate? Wouldn’t that be to give it to the most vulnerable members in society first i.e. the elderly?

Well the CDC has modelers like Jo Walker. Walker identifies as a non-binary trans who goes by pronouns they/them. Walker’s Twitter handle makes a pretty strong case for putting social justice ahead of science. Walker is a fervent supporter of defunding the police and claims to live on stolen land. By that measure, it is not hard to believe that such public disclosure might reveal a certain personal bias.

We don’t know about you but all we look for in data scientists (or any other profession for that matter) is the ability to do the role competently.

Are modelers like Walker partly responsible for pushing the racial inequity narrative at the CDC? In a nutshell, given there are more whites in the 65yo and above category (who just happen to be among the highest risk of succumbing to COVID-19), the CDC believes there is a strong case for minorities being bumped up the queue even if it could result in a higher final death tally.

Put it another way, if minorities dominated the most risky categories (65+) the CDC would have no need to report it because it would merely be the right thing to do.

Expect 2021 to reveal more mind numbing social justice masked as science. So much for uniting people by promoting real equality. Use identity as the yardstick. The more oppression points the better. End segregation by enforcing it.

Then some wonder why fewer and fewer people are in this together. The CDC and many groups like it have ceased being reputable agencies and become activists pushing agendas unrelated to their mandated fields.

Leaked CNN tapes, Janet Yellen will stop climate change & SF mayor avoids own COVID rules by dining in another city!

Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report discusses Project Veritas’ leaked CNN tapes of months of internal meetings, Treasury Secretary nominee Janet Yellen’s plans to fight racial inequality, and more liberal hypocrisy as yet another Democrat lockdown hypocrite gets caught at The French Laundry.

First, Dave gives his thoughts on the leaked audio of CNN CEO Jeff Zucker’s meetings. James O’Keefe of Project Veritas revealed that he has been recording Jeff Zucker’s internal morning meetings for two months. The tapes offer proof of CNN’s extreme anti-Trump agenda.

Next, former head of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen gave a speech outlining how as Joe Biden’s Treasury Secretary she will somehow use economic policy to reduce inequality, climate change, and gender inequality.

Finally, it has been discovered that lockdown proponent and San Francisco Mayor London Breed avoided breaking the COVID dining rules by simply leaving her own city and going to The French Laundry, the same luxury restaurant that California Governor Gavin Newsom was caught breaking his COVID rules at (and dropping $15,000 on booze).

It is worth the 30 minutes.

WaPo thinks interracial couples will breathe a sigh of relief with Kamala Harris as VP

Overnight, WaPo went out of its way to publish a puff piece on identity politics, suggesting interracial couples could breathe easy because a black woman with a white partner were soon to be confirmed at the highest levels of government.

Sorry? I am married to a woman from another race. Not for one fleeting millisecond do Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff symbolize anything remotely monumental for us. On the contrary. It is utterly irrelevant. As it should be.

Besides, I married my better half because of the content of her character, not the colour of her skin. One imagines Kamala Harris loves Mr Emhoff for his personality. As two-dimensional as Harris often appears, we sincerely doubt Emhoff’s ethnicity was a clincher. Maybe Emhoff loves Harris’ infectious laughter. Who knows? Who cares? It is a matter for them.

The article, penned by Sydney Trent, tried to paint the picture that Kamala Harris is a vital piece in the visual puzzle that will stamp out systemic racism and bigotry for good.

According to Pew Research, c.10% of all marriages today are mixed race/ethnicity up from around 3% in 1967. 17% of all new unions are interracial. So is Trent trying to tell us not to believe our lying eyes that the 5-fold ratio increase in mixed marriages over the last 5-decades is not evidence that contradicts the notion that so many still remain in abject fear of those intolerant few that cast scorn upon them?

Where are Trent’s in-depth statistics that document interracial couples being under constant attack by unhinged lunatics across the USA?

The FBI keeps such a comprehensive database on hate crimes. In its  2019 Hate Crimes report, there is no classification for interracial couple abuse.

The closest to it would be the 4,930 victims of race/ethnicity/ancestry bias in 2019 across 3,963 incidents. By deduction, only 967 groups (perhaps some are couples) have been ‘vilified’ for their racial background. That doesn’t automatically guarantee that they were all interracial couples. Let’s assume that they are for simplicity’s sake.

Among 330 million Americans, interracial couples have at worst a 0.000293% chance of being the victim of a hate crime targeting their race/ethnicity, suggesting that 99.9987% don’t.

Never mind, Trent had to push the identity politics agenda:

“On the last night of the Democratic National Convention, Aisha Cozad watched on television as Joe Biden and his vice-presidential choice Kamala D. Harris held their clasped hands triumphantly aloft. But her eyes were also on Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband, who was standing off to one side clapping adoringly. It was clear who was in the spotlight and who was the cheerleader…Cozad was moved because Emhoff was a man so publicly supporting his powerful, ambitious wife. And she was moved because Emhoff is White and Harris is Black...”

“Given the current state of race relations, it’s a powerful thing to say that we don’t have to accept these roles as society would have us play them out,” said Cozad, a 46-year-old African American whose husband, Scott, 44, is White. “We don’t have to accept what society says it’s comfortable with. We can, in fact, determine our own path.”

Should we be surprised that Emhoff is proud of his partner given the results? If Emhoff was black, would his applause been any more/less supportive? Hopefully Jill Biden is just as proud of her Joe as Emhoff is of Harris.

Maybe Trent might reflect on the fact that almost 1/5th of current American couples have already “determined their own path” without having to pander to identity politics. Maybe they just dig their other half no matter what race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual proclivity, orientation or gender they happen to be.

Silence of the Left. Even WaPo concedes

It is amazing how silent the left has been post the VP debate. So much so that even Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle conceded the following:

“Jake Tapper is suggesting that Harris was not able to be aggressive because she’s a woman. That was … not my impression of how that debate went…I wish people would stop explaining every debate performance by a woman as a function of gender. Yes, there are challenges, but Elizabeth Warren is a good debater! Not all women are great debaters being held back by their sex–some of us, like some men, are just bad debaters…

…Mike Pence is actually a good debater–full of nonsense, but a good debater. And you didn’t see him over there rolling his eyes and doing exaggerated high-school-theatrical ‘this is my disdainful face’ mugging. Harris’ X chromosomes did not force her to do that…Nor did Harris’ gender force her to leave points on the table. She left them on the table because she couldn’t think of a good response quick enough.”

The meme above is from one of FNF Media’s deeply left liberal acquaintances.