Tag: language

Woke California professor calls to abolish terms ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ to avoid offending the transgender community

A California professor laid out an argument for tossing out sexual identifiers, as terms like gay and lesbian ‘harms trans people,’ they claimed. 

Brandon Andrew Robinson, an associate professor at the University of California, spoke on the matter with the university while promoting their book, ‘Trans Pleasure: On Gender Liberation and Sexual Freedom.’

Robinson, who uses they/them pronouns, argued that ‘identities limit us’ and the ongoing creation of unlimited new identities demonstrates how such labels ‘fail to capture the full complexities of gender, sexualities and desire.’ 

They particularly noted hyper-specific identities, such as gynosexual, sapiosexual, asexual or pansexual. 

‘It’s a several-fold argument,’ Robinson told UC Riverside. ‘First, I want people to question why we privilege gender and genitals above all other attributes – like height or race – when we conceptualize our sexual identity.’

They continued on to argue that the term ‘gay,’ referring to a man being attracted to a man, ‘assumes a man is a stable, inherent category.’

‘When history shows the definition of manhood is constantly changing,’ they said.

‘Gender essentialism [the belief that men and women possess inherent, fixed traits determined by biology that define their identity and gender roles] also harms trans people, who often complicate those binary boundaries.’

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Leftist-Globalist BBC Caught AGAIN Doctoring a Speech, This Time by US War Secretary Hegseth, Igniting Another ‘Impartiality’ Row in Britain

The ‘Beeb’ screwed up again – possibly on purpose.

For the leftist-Globalist bosses and crew at the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), it isn’t enough anymore to have highly biased reports filled with editorial content.

Now, they feel the need to go ahead and actually doctor speeches by people they loathe, trying to modify what they are saying, in maneuvers worthy of a George Orwell novel.

The ‘Beeb’ is already on the hook for billions, after deceptively editing a historic J6 speech by Donald J. Trump, as you can read in BBC IS MELTING: British State Broadcaster To Apologize for Doctored Editing of Trump J6 Speech, Under Fire for Its Pro-Hamas, Pro-Trans and Climate Change Biases.

Apparently, the BBC intelligentsia hasn’t learned a thing, so they went ahead and did it again.

Now, they are ‘plunged into a fresh impartiality row’ after altering a speech by US War Secretary Pete Hegseth regarding the military operations in Iran.

Daily Mail reported:

“In the broadcast aired to audiences within Iran, BBC Persian inaccurately translated the US Defense Secretary’s remarks, reporting that Washington intended to bring death to the Iranian ‘people’.

In reality, Mr. Hegseth had specified that the United States was targeting the Iranian ‘regime’.

The BBC, which carried Mr Hegseth’s Pentagon address live on Monday, translated the word ‘regime’ as ‘mardom’, the Persian word for ‘people’, before later issuing a correction.”

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Terror on freeway after Minnesota granted truckers’ license to Somali driver who couldn’t read ROAD SIGNS

Terrifying footage shared on social media showed the truck driving against traffic on US 61 near Troy, Missouri around 8am on Wednesday, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

The truck nearly collided with several other cars before finally crossing the median on to the correct side of the road, when it was stopped by police.

The driver, whose name has not been released, had obtained a commercial driver’s license from Minnesota, NewsNation reported.

Police said the driver showed no signs of impairment or medical issues and determined the trucker was going the wrong way because they could not read the road signs.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy addressed the ‘disturbing’ incident in a post on X.

‘We have learned that a truck driver with a Minnesota CDL who couldn’t read basic road signs spent MILES driving the wrong way in an 80 TON truck,’ Duffy wrote.

‘Thanks to Missouri law enforcement, this dangerous trucker is now out of service.’

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Scientists discover oldest form of writing in mysterious Stone Age engravings

The origins of writing aren’t set in stone.

The ancient cave peoples weren’t as illiterate as portrayed in popular media. Archaeologists have discovered Paleolithic glyphs in a German cave that could potentially push back the history of written communication by over 30,000 years, per a rock-solid study in the journal Proceedings Of The National Academy of Sciences.

According to the researchers, the symbols were engraved on artifacts that dated back some 40,000 years to the Stone Age, when early humans arrived in Europe from Africa and encountered the Neanderthals.

Despite their age, these ancient etchings boasted a complexity comparable to the early stages of the world’s oldest writing system, cuneiform, which originated around 5,000 years ago, the New Scientist reported.

“The artifacts date back to tens of thousands of years before the first writing systems,” exclaimed study co-author Ewa Dutkiewicz, an archaeologist at Berlin’s Museum of Prehistory and Early History, Popular Science reported.

Dutkiewicz and her team had came upon this writing revelation while investigating 260 relics discovered in cave repositories in the Swabian Jura, a mountainous region in Southwest Germany. This archaeological treasure trove included flutes, carvings of animals like mammoths, and figurines of animal-human hybrids.

They were etched with a total of 22 different recurring symbols, including a V-shaped notch and lines, crosses and dots.

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California to Finally Enforce English Tests for Truckers After Newsom Folds to Unlock Federal Funds

California has begun enforcing federal English-language requirements for commercial truck drivers after months of resistance from Governor Gavin Newsom.

The change was confirmed by Nick Chiappe of the California Trucking Association on Friday.

“California Highway Patrol has begun enforcing the English Language Proficiency (ELP) requirements for all drivers of commercial motor vehicles,” he said in a statement.

The move clears the way for the U.S. Department of Transportation to release more than $40 million in funding that had been frozen.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that California had been the only state failing to enforce rules requiring truckers to demonstrate English proficiency.

“I shouldn’t have had to threaten to withhold millions in funding for California to come to their senses and enforce the law,” Duffy told The California Post.

“For those who said we’re playing politics—our efforts have gotten real results for the American people.”

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University Writing Center Rejected Proper English, Calling It “Linguistic White Supremacy”

There was a time when being a white supremacist meant something (for starters, that you were one in a million). Today, though, it appears that anyone can be a white supremacist. Why, all journalist Larry Elder had to do to become “the black face of white supremacy” was seek California’s governorship. And now all you need to do to become the linguistic face of white supremacy is uphold Standard American English (SAE).

That is, according to certain “intellectuals” — such as those at the Metropolitan State University of Denver’s (MSUD’s) Writing Center.

Yes, that’s right. Don’t dare tell students not to speak like a cross between Snoop Dogg and the rapist in the film Deliverance. Otherwise, you could be guilty of “anti-black linguistic racism.”

No, “Woke” Is Not Dead

Reporting on the story Monday, National Review (NR) wrote that MSUD’s writing center urged educators to dispense with SAE

in since-deleted materials published under its “Anti-Racist Practices for Your Classroom” guidance on the university’s website.

The writing center even rejected that SAE exists at all, and “fully support[s] students in using their English (whatever that may be) in communicating their thoughts and ideas,” according to a page that has since been removed from its website.

The center’s reasons for rejecting SAE include the assumption that there is a “correct” way to write, the implication that there is a “standard” when the United States does not have a regulating body, that SAE “is a social construct that privileges white communities and maintains social and racial hierarchies,” and that SAE privileges white society over other ethnicities.

Having gotten blowback, however, the university is now doing damage control. As NR also informs:

MSU Denver told National Review it is aware of the content and that it does not reflect the official policy of the university.

“The University has removed that content and is working with the Writing Center to review it to ensure alignment with the institution’s mission, values and academic best practices,” an MSU Denver spokesperson told NR. “MSU Denver remains committed to rigorous academic standards and preparing all students for success in life and careers.”

So that should be it for the story, right? Not exactly.

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Mayor of Massachusetts City Needs a Translator During Hearing Due to Apparent Inability to Speak English

Mass migration has caused one city in Massachusetts to resemble a foreign nation, as even its own mayor seems unable to speak or understand a word of English.

As The Eagle-Tribune reported, Lawrence Mayor Brian DePena testified earlier this month during a hearing in support of former acting police chief William Castro’s appeal against revoked credentials from a 2024 traffic incident.

According to WCVB, Castro “engaged in a motor-vehicle pursuit in violation of the policies of the Lawrence Police Department.” Moreover, he was “untruthful” regarding the chase while he and his superiors failed to investigate the incident independently.

Video has now emerged showing that DePena demanded a translator during the hearing because his English is so pathetic. DePena’s native language is Spanish.

The judge denied DePena’s request to have his personal assistant act as his translator because he and others involved in the case were unable to speak Spanish. Too much could get lost in translation.

According to reports, an official interpreter was used instead.

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Survey: 91 Percent of College Students Think ‘Words Can Be Violence.’ That Could Feed Real Violence.

Of all the stupid ideas that have emerged in recent years, there may be none worse than the insistence that unwelcome words are the same as violence. This false perception equates physical acts that can injure or kill people with disagreements and insults that might cause hurt feelings and potentially justifies responding to the latter with the former. After all, if words are violence, why not rebut a verbal sparring partner with an actual punch? Unfortunately, the idea is embedded on college campuses where a majority of undergraduate students agree that words and violence can be the same thing.

“Ninety one percent of undergraduate students believe that words can be violence, according to a new poll by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression [FIRE] and College Pulse,” FIRE announced last week. “The survey’s findings are especially startling coming in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination—an extreme and tragic example of the sharp difference between words and violence.”

The survey posed questions about speech and political violence to undergraduate students at Utah Valley University, where Kirk was murdered, and at colleges elsewhere—2,028 students overall. FIRE and College Pulse compared the student responses to those of members of the general public who were separately polled.

Specifically, one question asked how much “words can be violence” described respondents’ thoughts. Twenty-two percent of college undergraduates answered that the sentiment “describes my thoughts completely,” 25 percent said it “mostly” described their thoughts, 28 percent put it at “somewhat,” and 15 percent answered “slightly.” Only 9 percent answered that the “words can be violence” sentiment “does not describe my thoughts at all.”

It’s difficult to get too worked up about those who “slightly” believe words can be violence, but that still leaves us at 75 percent of the student population. And almost half of students “completely” or “mostly” see words and violence as essentially the same thing. That’s a lot of young people who struggle to distinguish between an unwelcome expression and a punch to the nose.

Depressingly, 34 percent of the general public “completely” or “mostly” agree. Fifty-nine percent at least “somewhat” believe words can be violence.

In 2017, when the conflation of words and violence was relatively new, Jonathan Haidt, a New York University psychology professor, worried that the false equivalence fed into the simmering mental health crisis among young people. He and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff wrote in The Atlantic that “growing numbers of college students have become less able to cope with the challenges of campus life, including offensive ideas, insensitive professors, and rude or even racist and sexist peers” and that the rise in mental health issues “is better understood as a crisis of resilience.”

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9 In 10 College Students Think ‘Words Can Be Violence’; Survey

Nine out of ten undergraduate students think that “words can be violence” at least “somewhat,” according to a new Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression survey. 

The poll also showed that ideological gaps between left-leaning and right-leaning students are widening.

When respondents were asked how much the statement “words can be violence” describes their thoughts, 47 percent answered with “completely” or “mostly.” Twenty-eight percent said it describes their thoughts “somewhat,” and 15 percent said “slightly.”

Additionally, around 59 percent of students said “silence is violence” describes their views at least “somewhat,” though only 28 percent said it describes their thoughts “completely” or “mostly.” 

“When people start thinking that words can be violence, violence becomes an acceptable response to words,” FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens said in a news release following the poll. 

“Even after the murder of Charlie Kirk at a speaking event, college students think that someone’s words can be a threat. This is antithetical to a free and open society, where words are the best alternative to political violence,” Stevens said. 

The poll also showed that moderate and conservative students have grown less supportive of disruptive or violent tactics to stop campus speakers, while liberal students’ support for those tactics has stayed the same or risen slightly compared to the spring. 

At the same time, moderate and conservative students have become more open to allowing controversial speakers, while liberal students have maintained or increased their opposition to those speakers.

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Nearly 550 truck drivers cited for not understanding English in Illinois YTD

The number of English language proficiency violations for commercial drivers in Illinois year-to-date has nearly eclipsed last year’s totals with nearly 1 in 5 having CDL’s coming from the state of Illinois.

Since guidance was incorporated into the North American Standard Out-of-Service criteria in June, Illinois State Police tell The Center Square that 221 citations were issued for violating English Language Proficiency assessments. 

A spokesperson said “every ISP officer conducting a commercial motor vehicle inspection initiates the inspection in English. If there is an indication the driver may not understand the inspector’s instructions, the inspector then conducts an English Language Proficiency (ELP) assessment.”

Year to date, about 550 drivers were cited for not understanding English. That’s just shy of totals for all of 2024. In 2023, there were 385. So far this year, 18% of those citations are given to in-state CDL holders. 

“The vast majority of citations are given to out-of-state CDL holders,” the ISP spokesperson said. 

State Rep. Adam Niemerg, R-Dieterich, reacted to nearly 1 in 5 citations going to Illinois CDL holders.  

“So we need to solve the problem in the state of Illinois, the federal government, other states need to solve the problem within their states,” Niemerg told The Center Square. “But it really does scare me.”

ISP said it could not accommodate The Center Square’s request to ride along with an enforcement officer to observe the frequency of such citations.

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