What is a "military target?"

I’ve noticed how a lot of the official reports about thewar on Iran refer to “strikes” on thus-and-so-many “military targets” and I got to thinking how those are decided. Not just deciding what targets to bomb, but deciding what makes them “military” targets in the first place.

Some cases would be, I expect, obvious in the context of war - missile launch sites or warships, for example. Still, not everything would or could be so obviously “military.” So what is the definition? Where is the cutoff between “military” and “non-military?”

So I did a - I can’t call it a deep dive, but we could say I got waist deep. Call it a short exercise in definition-hunting. And this is what I found.

First, according to a guidance document called “Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition Support for Joint Operations,” one of a series of such guidance documents put out by the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

[t]he objective of targeting is to affect, change, modify, or impede enemy activity through destruction, damage, deception, or neutralization.

It added that military targets may be divided into strategic, operational, or tactical.

Tactical targets are those intended to have an “immediate or near-term effect on the outcome of the operation.” Simply, those attacked during a battle.

Operational targets are “those targets deemed critical to the enemy’s capability to conduct successful campaigns.” That is, they are geared not to advancing your offensives but to trying to keep the other side from launching their own.

Finally, strategic targets are those that “influence the overall war effort or political objectives”¹ and are “targeted against an enemy’s will to fight and capacity to sustain war.”

Okay, okay, but what’s a “target?” That was the question.

Well, “target,” another guidance document, this one on “Joint Targeting,” helpfully explains, a “target” is

[a]n entity that performs a function for the adversary or enemy considered for possible engagement.

And that’s all very bureaucratic, all very technocratic, but not very revealing.

Except.

There is a thread running through all that which may not be clear at first. A military target is anything that “performs a function” and that destroying will not only help win a battle but by “influenc[ing] the overall war effort or political objectives” can help win a war, with “destroying” meaning not only physical destruction of buildings and the like but psychological destruction of people and their “will to fight.”

In short, a military target is anything and everything you think destroying will help you destroy your enemy.

So I encourage you to read the accounts about “military targets” with a jaundiced eye, hear then with a jaundiced ear, because this would not be the first time that a little, let’s call it linguistic flexibility - and how’s that for a Pentagon-y sounding term - has been applied to the concept of “target.”

For example, during the Afghanistan War, the US military had a guidance rule that said that all military-age males were assumed to be insurgents - and so legitimate targets. After an “incident” in October 2012 involving killing some children, it was suggested by a senior Army officer in Afghanistan that the “aperture” - the opening in the philosophical lens through which through the military looks at the world - could be widened to include “children with potential hostile intent.”

During the 1991 Iraq War, during which the US methodically bombed Iraq from north to south, the Pentagon justified attacking telephone switching stations, railroad stations, public roads, and similar seemingly non-military targets on the grounds that in fact they were legitimate military targets because they “could help Iraq’s military,” a definition by which, I noted at the time, “it becomes hard to think of anything that is not a ‘military target.’”

Even harder than you may think. In 1972, during the Indochina War, an antiwar group² uncovered a military training manual in use at the time which defined a military target as, quoting,

Any person, thing, idea, entity, or location selected for destruction, inactivation, or rendering non-usable with weapons which will reduce or destroy the will or ability of the enemy to resist.

So again, military targets are anything, anything at all, whether physical, psychological, or emotional, that you think attacking will help you win. Period.

So in a very real way, it’s not what are military targets but that there are no civilian targets; rather, there are military targets you have not yet chosen to attack. If you don’t attack them, it’s not because you can’t or you shouldn’t, it just that right now the cost-benefit balance is tipped to the cost side, for physical, financial, or political reasons, and so you don’t see the gain. There is nothing that by definition is not a military target.

Yes, there may be lists of “prohibited targets” in Iran, in fact I’m sure there are. One of those guidance documents even says checking a list of prohibited targets is part of the process of targeting. But the very fact that there is a list just points up the fact that yes, there is a list and the protection it affords exists only as long as the current iteration of that list. And the “aperture” through which the military and its commanders view the world can always be “widened.”

War has its own rules set by its own definitions and ultimately, all supposed “rules” and “laws,” all prohibitions, along with the very concept of “civilian,” fall before the ultimate imperative of “victory.”

Please, please, bear that always in mind in reading or hearing the war news and don’t be dulled by euphemisms like “struck military targets.”

-- 

¹According to the Asser Institute for International and European Law, under international law a military attack “must be made in order to gain a military advantage, not a political one. Attacks for the purpose of affecting civilian morale are not permitted.” Which means that quoted guidance embraces war crimes, but since holding anyone to account for war crimes is a privilege reserved for the winners, I’m going to note that embrace and then leave that aside for another time.

²The group was called NARMIC and it produced a heavily-documented slide show on “The Automated Air War.” My copy of the show and the supporting citations has long since become buried in the sands of time, but that definition became tattooed on my memory.

Better late than never - please read.

This is a post I drafted back on July 12 and just now realized I never posted. So I'm posting it now hoping it will get read - certainly more than it would if I backdated it to the 12th. I'll leave it to the text to explain what it's about - so if I'm going to do that, I should get to it. What follows, then, is that July 12 draft.

==

I finally submitted my comments on the proposed federal rule that would concentrate control of federal research grants in the hands of a hand-picked presidential political team while requiring, among other things, that grantees act as if trans people don’t exist. One advantage of my slowness is that I got to notice how may comments had been submitted - as of about 11pm on Sunday, it was a touch under 279,000. A good rule of thumb is the greater the number of comments, the greater the opposition. [I learned later that the final total was near a half-million, a truly extraordinary number, and preliminary estimates were 80% of them were in opposition to the rule.]

Personally, I would not be the least surprised if the royal court of The Orange Overlord just said “We don’t care, we’re doing it and this was just for show, anyway.” But hope springs and all that and at least one proposed rule during TOO’s first term - about imposing transphobia on emergency housing met enough opposition that it was never acted on and the Biden administration withdrew it. (They’re trying again.)

I did have some weird moments. For one,I submitted the comment and got told it exceeded the allowable limit. Okay, but until then, no limit had been mentioned. When I edited it enough to fit, I got a notice that it contained “invalid characters.” No indication as to what they were. And everything was regular characters unless they wanted to call braces (used in editing a quote) “invalid” which is weird. To top it off, I submitted just a two-sentence summary plus a .doc file (okay, actually a .wpd file ‘cause yes, I use Word Perfect if only not to use Microsoft) for the full text - which uploaded with no problem. Still don’t know what the issue was.

Anyway, here is the text of my comment.

—

I write to oppose in full the proposed rule “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance.”

I expect much of what I say has already been said amid the over 200,000 comments submitted so far but the importance of opposition must be emphasized.

This proposed rule would replace robust, open, scientific inquiry and “promoting the general welfare” with a weaponized, politicized approach centered on advancing the prejudices and political purposes of whoever happens to occupy the White House. Indeed, it says so in just those words, saying that “activities performed under Federal awards [must be] consistent with ... policy” - which is already defined as “the President’s policy priorities” - and must “demonstrably advance” those interests.

So contrary to what is claimed, this has nothing to do with “improv[ing] transparency, accountability, and oversight for Federal awards” but rather intends to establish centralized control over essentially if not all discretionary federal grants across a wide range of agencies overseeing an even wider range of programs, with such control being held by a small group of hand-picked agents of the president, who are free to overrule any and all scientific and other expert judgement regarding the requested funds. That is not about transparency, that is not about accountability. That is about power.

What’s more, the proposal makes no secret that those “priorities” include continuing and further entrenching the current administration’s racial/ethnic and gender biases, as the White House seeks to redefine any efforts to uplift marginalized communities as discrimination against people who aren’t members of those communities. This is visible in the number of provisions that go far beyond anything to do with “transparency, accountability, and oversight” to set rules for what is and isn’t acceptable in grant requests, rules that serve to strip funding for anyone doing work to support, or do research relating to, those very communities in the greatest need of attention.

For example, the (again hand-picked) presidential appointees performing the “pre-issuance review” are explicitly instructed to screen for and block awards for anything that might “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate ... racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination.” This amounts to a blanket rejection of any and all funding related in any way to DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) or similar or related programs, as the administration has repeatedly labeled DEI programs in exactly those terms.

This proposal effectively demands that any grant applicant act as it racism does not exist. An administration that cut refugee admission slots by 94% and reserved most of the 7,500 remaining for white Afrikaners “fleeing” a non-existent “white genocide” in South Africa and then added 10,000 more, all of them for Afrikaners, may embrace that concept. Rational humans do not. This denial of social reality in the proposal must not be accepted.

For another, those same apparatchiks are supposed to scan for any hint of “[g]ender ideology [including] theories or ideologies that deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans, or endorse or advocate for the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic.” Meanwhile, the proposed rule refers to gender transition as “so-called,” bars all gender-affirming care for anyone under 19, and calls standard, well-established, medical treatment protocols as “chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”

This, bluntly, is attempting to write pseudoscientific nonsense with no greater grip on reality than that held by Holocaust deniers into the federal regulatory framework. It must not be allowed.

But there is yet another danger here. The regulation explicitly instructs the political appointees to screen for “denial by the recipient of the sex binary, etc.” Note: not a denial in the grant or grant application, but by the recipient. I am prepared to assume that those who drafted the proposed rule are aware of the meaning of their words, and if the intent had been to limit the screening to the grant request, it would have been easy enough to say so. But it doesn’t. It says “recipient,” clearly suggesting that the entire institution, organization, research center, or other entity making the request must be expunged of such unacceptable “ideology” or be denied funding.

So just as some entities must behave as racism does not exist, those here must behave as is transgender people do not exist, must not be mentioned, even by suggestion, even indirectly, even from areas unrelated to the funding.

Enough. This proposed rule change is not about “transparency, accountability, [or] oversight.” It is about writing racism and transphobia into federal regulations while giving a cabal of hand-picked presidential acolytes the power of near total control over discretionary federal grants and the control of scientific research that provides. It is unconscionable and must be rejected.

So I said... #26 - For July 10-19

Another collection of my various comments on various topics over the past week and a half. I seem to have been unusually mouthy recently, as this one is somewhat longer than the norm for these roundups, but I can still hope you’ll find something of interest or insight in what’s here.

Remember that “==” separates comments on different topics while those separated by — are parts of threads.

And off we go.

2026-07-10
[“Why Some People Feel Like Trans People Are ‘Everywhere’”]

Dunno if anyone will care, but for the heck of it:

I’m reminded of something I came up with it must be over 40 years ago. I kept hearing people talk about “always getting the red lights” and the like, so I decided to consider the idea.

For a couple of months I tried to keep track as I drove of the red lights and green lights I got (those little thumb clickers proved invaluable) and where I was if I stopped.

The results were pretty much what you would expect: The ratio of green lights to red lights was high on the highways, very roughly 50-50 at side street intersections, and reversed on side streets crossing highways.

So why the perceptions of “always getting red?” I concluded, in what became generalized as my “red light hypothesis,” that we remembered red lights more because unlike green lights they required a change in our behavior - and it was the change that produced the impression.

Simply put, we are more sensitive to and more likely to remember change than continuity and any trans character, precisely because of their infrequency, is a change from the usual. I suppose it could be thought of as a part of or at least related to the frequency illusion.

==

2026-07-10
[Another anti-trans ruling arising from judge-shopping]

It is an affront to, a disgrace to, the very concept of equal justice before the law if any bigoted, jackassed, wanna-be dictator can just pick one district where some equally-bigoted wacko will give them whatever they want, run any legal errand they desire, and bring all their cases there and not get pushback because oh yeah, “trust the system” that allows it.

-

2026-07-14
[How did we get to this terrible situation in only 18 months? How do you get so many cowards in Congress?]

The only part of that I would dispute is “only 18 months.” This is the outgrowth of a decades-long, conscious program of the right-wing and their billionaire (nee millionaire) funders and beneficiaries to undermine the concept of government “of, by, and for the people” and replace it with a mating of plutocracy with oligarchy.

Beyond that, being an elected federal official has come to be seen less and less as public service and more and more as a line of work, as not a calling but a career, as just what you do for a living, just like any other job except with extraordinarily good perks. The result is an increased focus on one thing: staying elected - which means not displeasing the boss, in this case The Orange Overlord, who has shown his ability to raise a host of money and a horde of true believers and aim then at anyone who incurs his royal displeasure.

And here we are.

I, too, think history will not judge the enablers kindly.

==

2026-07-12
[A letter to three corporations that had blocked investor-advised funds from donating to the Southern Poverty Law Center.]

I became aware of the SPLC shortly after its founding in 1971. While I would get irritated by its sometimes overly-aggressive fundraising, I have admired and continue to admire its history of exposing and tracking hate groups and associated hate rhetoric.

Now it faces what it describes as “the very definition of a vindictive prosecution” at the hands of an administration that has demonstrated its own white-supremacist nature not only by its violent anti-immigrant behaviors but by cutting refugee admissions to 7,500 for all of 2026 (a 94% cut from the previous year), with most of those slots to be used by Afrikaners “fleeing” a non-existent “white genocide” in South Africa - followed by the White House announcing an additional 10,000 more slots, all of them for Afrikaners.

However, whatever you may think of the SPLC or the Trump administration, what can’t be denied is that accusation is not conviction and that by blocking donor-advised funds from making grants to the SPLC, you have unfairly and improperly denied the organization access to perhaps millions of dollars, some which it may need to defend itself against an administration that has made no secret of its desire to destroy it.

I urge you to stop blocking donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center immediately. If nothing else, “innocent until proven guilty” demands it.

==

2026-07-14
TERF is not a slur, but it is an incorrect term. There is not a single thing radical about the reactionary, narrow-minded, self-interested, “I got mine so screw you” bullshit they peddle.

In fact, not only are they not radicals, they are not even feminist. Feminism once celebrated opening opportunities for self-expression for everyone, not just women, because they recognized how the male-female binary we had built into our social structures and rules were oppressive to everyone. They were liberators.

Now, these non-radical, non-feminists have become oppressors, eager to impose that same old binary - provided that they get to decide where and how the lines are drawn.

==

2026-07-14
[“Anti-trans activity is a social panic fostered by powerful voices.”]

Spot on. We have seen any number of organic moral panics over the years, and they usually flare up, spread, and burn out in no more than a couple of years. The damage they can do and have done is real (consider the day care panic), but at least the panic is temporary and in retrospect they often look silly (e.g., comic books; rock’n’roll; going back further, dime novels).

This one is different. As you note, it is not organic, it was deliberately created and is being artificially maintained for selfish political purposes and it’s targets (bathrooms, women’s sports, “OMG! Save the Children!”) consciously chosen.

It occurs to me we might be wise to press that point.

==

2026-07-14
Any time a candidate of any party forces an opponent off the ballot in any election (primary or general) while going on about the “integrity” or “security” of the “process,” I get a strong odor of a heavily-used, poorly-tended barnyard.

==

2026-07-15
[A self-proclaimed Christian who was fired from his job after being warned about repeatedly misgendering and deadnaming a co-worker has filed suit, claiming religious discrimination.]

In one of these cases I would like to see the judge or an attorney insist the Christianity-claiming plaintiff cite the Christian doctrine that requires them to behave as they did. They would be hard pressed to do so.

For example, there is no bar on courtesy, indeed Proverbs 15:1 (KJV) says “A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.”

For another, Jesus told his disciples “I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” (Mathew 10:16, KJV) (Oh, and wasn’t the serpent “more subtil [sic] than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made?” (Genesis 3:1. KJV) Kind of hard to find a doctrine against lying for the sake of social peace in that.

Besides, how is his behavior not a sin of pride?

I could come up with more, but you get the idea.

It would be amusing at that point to have the Christian supremacists argue that doctrine is irrelevant because this is his true belief and be met with the counter-argument that they would have him be exempted from all standards of behavior in any context simply by claiming it was his “belief” that he should act that way, something which no society could accept.

I always find it frustrating that in cases like this the argument of “I’m a Christian, therefore” goes unchallenged.

==

2026-07-15
[Heritage Foundation releases report attacking Title IX as a “failed experiment” and saying women’s sports should be exchanged for more “non-competitive and lower-intensity activities.”]

BREAKING NEWS: The Heritage Foundation wants to go back to 1900!

MORE BREAKING NEWS: The Sun rose in the east!

Relevant quote, from conservative columnist George Will, January 2, 1995: “’Back to 1900’ is a serviceable summation of the conservative goal.”

Quote relevant to the relevant quote, from Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

==

2026-07-16
[A commenter said they couldn’t find a source for an inflammatory meme saying JK Rowling posted an up-skirt photo of a transwoman then said “he” [sic] was asking for it.]

Damn, do I thank you for that. I was about to post a comment calling for a link to a source. I am sick to flipping death of memes that do not cite one and I am especially sick - as has happened to me on more than one occasion (not, I emphasize, here) - of requesting a source and getting some version of “find it yourself” in response.

If you don’t have a link to an actual source, don’t post the meme. And personally I will not link to, forward, or even believe any meme that lacks one.

-

2026-07-16
Okay, everybody, I did the work which shouldn’t have been necessary and found the source for this meme.

Someone on Bluesky said it was from a July 11 thread on The-platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter so after signing in to a platform I abandoned several years ago and scrolling down through a Trump-worthy pile of posts from JK Growling I found it.

It was a picture of an overweight transwoman at some conference or another. She was dressed in a blue top, short leather skirt, fishnets, and knee-high boots and was sitting in a cushioned chair on a stage with one leg crossed over another. Because the stage was of course elevated, that position game a somewhat revealing view above the tops of her stockings.

So did Growling post it? Yes.

Did she say she was “asking for it?” She said the woman (who she misgendered as “Fred” - I gather her name is Freda) chose the outfit and then labeled her an “paraphilic exhibitionist” who was having “the time of” her (because Growling didn’t say “her” but I refused to quote it exactly) “life.” So yes, she said it but not in the “blame the victim” sense we usually mean it. Rather, her bigot-befuddled brain pumped out her Psych 101 understanding of real (as opposed to fictional) people to declare that Freda was deliberately exposing herself because it sexually aroused her.

Notably, Growling said the above in response to being asked if she would have posted the same picture if it was of a cis woman. She never answered. Which I think is revealing.

Oh, and she couldn’t let pass the opportunity to body-shame, saying Freda “left an indelible impression on the audience. And the chair.”

Now everybody thank me for the detective work. :-)

==

2026-07-16
[The Democratic candidate for OH governor expressed support for banning trans girls from school sports.]

The bizarre thing is that I almost hope that she said this out of true conviction. That would make her anything from deeply ignorant to an outright transphobe, but at least it would be honest.

The alternative, that she said it thinking it will pick off some of those mythical “moderate Republicans” who supposedly only need a little nudge to abandon The Orange Overlord and all he represents, then she is not only a profound hypocrite, she is stooopid!

And while it’s possible to fix ignorant, stupid is generally incurable.

==

2026-07-17
[“Every interview, in fact almost every sentence should end with ‘Trump crime family’ or ‘corrupt.’”]

Exactly. One of my “Rules for Right-wingers” refers to “Sitzfleisch,” German for “sitting flash” and comes from chess, from a time before chess clocks, and people would sometimes try to win by just refusing to move until the other player just gave up in exhaustion or frustration. That is, winning not by the quality of your play (or in this case argument) but by pure unadulterated stubbornness.

The right is a past master at this, including taking some tag line or slogan and repeating it over and over and over…. That sort of insistent persistence and message consistency is something we should see a lot more of from our side of the divide.

==

2026-07-17
So after effectively winning on bans on trans athletes in school sports, the Heritage Foundation has taken aim at Title IX.

And the Newsom-Moulton playbook of “If we just give them this, everything will be better,” works out as we should have expected (and a lot of us did expect).

But c’mon, be fair, because after we let Germany have the Sudetenland, Hitler was satisfied and we had peace for our time.

==

2026-07-18
[Nosferatu aka Stephen Miller says antifa “rioters” are “deformed.”]

The language is that of eliminationism, a central part of which is making your enemies into something “other,” something not human, something sub-human. It’s why references to “insects,” to “vermin,” to “infections” are so very common among the fascists and their willing enablers - as are, as here, references to “deformities.”

The point in every case is to define some group as “not us, as “other,” as ones whose elimination from society, whether by imprisonment, expulsion, or death is for and to the benefit of those who remain.

We must be clear-eyed about what we facing. As Maya Angelou famously said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” And this is far from the first.

==

2026-07-19
[Contrary to the headline, Tom Tillis does not “rip apart” the SAVE Act.]

His complaint is that it can’t be done for this election cycle, not that it shouldn’t be done. Voter ID is a fraud because no matter what the standard of proof is, some people will be unable to meet it, meaning it’s main effect will be to exclude people, generally poor people, from voting. Considering how rare unlawful voting is, voter ID is a right-wing voter-suppressing “solution” to a non-existent problem.

==

2026-07-19
So Markie Mullin says there are 250,000 non-citizens on voter lists across four states: California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Okay, well, together those states have a breath under 40,000,000 registered voters. So even if his unproven figures based on data which doesn’t have were by some weird coincidence true, the voter rolls in those states would be 99.4% citizens.

Not exactly an “OMG! RUN FOR THE HILLS!” emergency.

==

2026-07-19
[”Apparently mainstream Dems don’t want or need progressive votes”]

It’s not that they don’t need or want our votes. It’s that they think they can take them for granted. Any hesitation or resistance is met with the manipulative outrage of “What, you want (the demon du jour) to win??!?”

==

2026-07-19
[A caucus of the OH Democratic Part was forced to delete a comment criticizing gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton for calling trans girls “boys.”]

“We of the Ohio Democrats Progressive Caucus wish to thank the upper echelons of the state party for instructing us regarding our recent misunderstanding of how things operate.

“To prevent such unfortunate misunderstandings in the future, we request that the party leadership supply us with a full list of statements we are not allowed to make and opinions we are not allowed to express.

“Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Enough for now!

So I said... #25 for June 26 to July 8

The next of my apparently never-ending series of posts of comments I’ve made here there and everywhere and yes I’ve always liked that song.

Just a reminder that comments on different topics are separated by “==” while those separated by “—” are parts of a thread. What is in braces - that is, “[ ]” - in italics is added here for context; if it’s regular type is was as per the original comment.

Speaking of which, comments and reactions are always encouraged.

Here we go….

2026-06-26
”It’s hilarious when Americans pity my Norwegian tax rate.”

I once asked my father, a WW2 veteran which I mention to establish his generation, if he would be willing to pay the income tax rates in Sweden. He immediately said yes on exactly the logic presented here: How much you pay in taxes isn’t important, it’s do you get back in services what it’s worth.

(I specifically remember him citing free education through college as an example.)

And I am going to remember (and steal) the description of the US health care system as “a GoFundMe waiting to happen.”

—

2026-06-26
[Troll: ”If Norway didn’t have control over North Sea oil reserves then your taxes would be four times as much”]

So IF Norway did not have income from North Sea oil, taxes would be higher.

Perhaps. And IF your grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon.

And oh yeah, IF we didn’t have a government and economic system encouraging rapacious capitalism, we’d have nice things, too.

==

2026-06-27
The Shuffle [moving ICE prisoners around so family and legal aid can’t find them] reminds me of the old police trick of repeatedly moving those they arrested from one station house to another so neither their families nor their attorneys knew where they were. There was/is a name for it; maybe someone here can remind me of it.

==

2026-06-27
[A comment on a list of words that can’t be used in NIH grant applications referred to variations on “lactating or pregnant person” as “chilling absurdities.”]

Those actually aren’t absurd; they are intended to include trans men, who while being male by personal identity (i.e., gender) can still have or relate to issues involving having a female phenotype.

Please accept my apology if I have misunderstood you.

==

2026-06-28
The image (of booksellers in Iraq who leave their stock out on the street overnight, confident none will be stolen) reminded me of an experience I’ve had a few times, with the first being the most profound, when I walked into a bookstore and suddenly felt - well, stupid. Aware of a world of knowledge I will never know, whole fields of thought, of philosophy, of which I am unaware, whole realms of history I will never hear of, entire fields of scientific undertaking and development at which I have and will continue to have no understanding, assuming I’d even have come across the name.

It actually can be a rather salutary experience as a corrective to the ego and a invitation to keep learning what I can.

==

2026-06-29
[Re SCOTUS overturning the Humphrey’s Executor decision: “A progressive president could accomplish a lot by systemically removing any Republican appointee.”]

Except that’s not the real danger. If DOGE (which I always pronounce “dodgy” because the whole enterprise was/is) proved anything, it was that you can destroy a program or an institution in a small fraction of the time it took to build it. That incoming administration would spend much of its time rebuilding what had been destroyed just to get back to where things had been - assuming it could.

The danger is not to potentially doing something progressive, it’s rather, to misquote Ben Franklin, “you have something progressive - if you can keep it.”

==

2026-06-30
[A report in Erin in the Morning about the SCOTUS decision allowing sports bans on transgender girls/women produced a lot of discussion. One commenter, looking to rebut another’s argument, said that if the other chose to argue as they did, “every part of Title IX is null and void. All of it, you don’t get to pick and choose.”]

I’ve been staying out of this since I think people are talking past each other - but I do have to insert that “you don’t get to pick and choose” is untrue. Striking down part of a law or regulation or rejecting it “as applied,” meaning it can be valid in other circumstances, is hardly unknown.

==

2026-06-30
[Responding to a different comment in the same article.]

I expect you realize that “T in excess of typical levels” intended to create fairness has been used to exclude cis women as well as trans women. Drawing rigid lines that are actually fair to all is no easy task.

—

2026-06-30
[“Why is it unfair or difficult to apply the same standard to cis women as trans women?”]

Um, I’m confused. The point, which I thought was clear but apparently wasn’t, is that a standard designed to allow for trans girls/women to play on women’s teams could also bar some cis women from that same opportunity and that it’s no easy task to develop a standard that would accomplish the former while avoiding the latter.

If you’re saying that some T level should be controlling in all cases, okay, but then you should say that explicitly and I don’t think anyone would be satisfied.

==

Share

2026-06-30
[Yet another from responses to the same article, referring to an example of people talking past each other. ”Studies show no advantage after 2 years HRT.” “I said the same thing exactly.”]

Which I honestly think is a source of a lot of the verbal conflict here: You kept burying the damn lede underneath declarations that “male biological advantage is real.”

I think the idea that it’s not unreasonable in the pursuit of fairness for trans girls/women to go through a course of HRT in order to be able to compete would meet little objection.

One last thought: Cracks like “as if some woo-woo appeal to spirit gender should be persuasive to any sane person ? !!!” - which certainly comes across as claiming that psychology and neurology are “woo-woo” - certainly didn’t advance understanding of your position.

—

2026-07-01
[Summary of the response: Didn’t bury the lede; idea of requiring course of HRT got “no small bit” of rejection; “woo-woo” refers to “belief that people are transgender for no physical reason.”]

I have no intention of continuing this, so this will be my last.

Burying the lead is exactly what you did. More than once. The lede is the central argument, the one you want people to see, the one intended to frame what follows. It’s precisely why the headline and opening paragraph of a story are so important.

Your first comment was “T in excess of typical levels for a gendered category [is cheating]. Biological reality must be acknowledged and addressed.” (If you don’t know that “biological reality” is a verbal calling card of the anti-trans crowd, I have cause to doubt you are “quite current” on the topic.)

When someone responded by noting the effects of hormones, you responded by calling them an “i***t,” which I think we can assume meant idiot, condescendingly claiming superior expertise - punctuated with “I award you no points” - and went on to declare “The ‘male’ athletic advantage is real.”

It was only at that point when you posted what I assume was your lede, that a prior course of HRT is a reasonable requirement for trans female athletes in traditionally female sports.

Yes, that is damn well burying the lede.

As for the “rejection,” what there was of it was based on the impression you gave by the way you initially approached the topic. If that many people misread your intention, you have to consider that perhaps the problem was not their lack of understanding buy your lack of clarity.

Finally, there is the statement “I refer to a belief that people are transgender for no physical reason.” I have absolutely no idea what that even means. It’s incoherent nonsense. Unless, that is, you are insisting that the brain isn’t “physical” and that, exactly as I suggested, you hold psychology and neurology to be “woo-woo” - in which case your “45 years of study” did you no good.

Yeah, I’m done with this.

==

2026-07-02
[New Jersey enacted a trans shield law.]

There was considerable disappointment when the NJ lege didn’t pass a shield law in the post-election session despite a promise from the party leadership to do it.

I was among those who concluded that the promise to act was to serve as a stopgap in case right-wing nutzoid Jack Ciattarelli won the governor’s race. Since he didn’t, the feeling in the lege was, “Well, there’s an EO in place and that’s been good enough so far, why raise the issue at all?”

I’m glad to see others kept with it and turned an order into law.

==

2026-07-02
I’m glad you mentioned, if only in passing, the women’s national team. They are, in fact, the most successful women’s national football team in the world, having won the cup four times along with finishing second once and third three times. The fact that gets so rarely mentioned just demonstrates the male bias in US appreciation of sports.

==

2026-07-03
[Responding to a note, a biologist wrote, summarized: Nature isn’t binary; a spectrum is the norm; gender is a social construct.]

Just throwing this in because it’s a point I like to emphasize: Gender presentation is a social construct, but the concept of gender exists across time and culture, marking it as something inherent to being human. Which also serves to point out that sex and gender are not the same thing.

—

2026-07-04
[I’m not sure I get your point. I didn’t say concept, I said and spoke from a scientific, not a sociological, perspective. Could you explain more? ]

First, thank you for asking, both because it gives me the opening to blather on a bit and because, well, it’s always a little flattering to have a comment considered seriously.

Let me start by saying that I think that we too often and too easily fall back on the old habit of equating sex and gender as synonyms or as the former defining the latter. But they are not synonymous, which is why I raise the point. You may well be fully aware of that, but I still think the language we use matters.

So, yes, you did use the word “construct.” That is what I was addressing. Referring to gender as a “social construct” is a sociological argument that suggests that gender does not exist outside of social relations - that is, that it is a creation of society.

But the fact that the **idea of gender, the **idea of the masculine and the feminine, exists across human history and (as far as I’m aware) all human societies testifies to the fact that that idea is inherent to humans, as inherent as male and female phenotypes, as inherent as language.

However, and again like language, what forms the **expression of that part of us, in this case, gender expression, is indeed a social construct, determined by the standards and mores of the society in which we live and which instruct us in what is masculine and what is feminine (and what is approved or disapproved in each) in dress, behavior, speech, mannerisms, roles in family and broader society, and more. It tells us how we are supposed to act and more importantly, to be.

For most people, their genetically-driven phenotype (sex) and their internal personal sense of self (gender) align, or at least closely enough to avoid troubling stress from the incongruence. For some among us, they don’t. Which ultimately is the basis of the whole issue.

So my point, which I hope I’ve made clearer than my previous once-over, is that gender exists [I should have added “on its own] apart from sex and we should make a point of presenting it that way as a clearer description of why the whole discussion and defense of trans rights and health care needs to take place.

—

2026-07-04
[My words indicate these ideas, just in fewer words]

:shrug: Okay. I’ll leave it at this: Saying “gender,” not “gender expression” but “gender,” is a “social construct” is to say the concept of gender does not exist on its own but only as an creation of society, little different from clothing fashion.

==

2026-07-04
[Notoriously anti-trans judge Reed O’Connor put an FTC motion “on hold.”]

Maybe I’m just trying to entertain a dream, but I can’t help but wonder of O’Connor, after hearing from WPATH and Boasberg, decided he was kinda tired of being treated like The Orange Overlord’s legal errand boy. He may be a right-wing nutzoid, but he could still have some measure of self-respect.

==

2026-07-05
[USAF Major Jason Watson stood on the Capitol steps in full uniform with a sign reading “Impeach Convict Remove.”]

“you just cannot do what MAJ Watson did”

Yes you can. We know because he did it. He did it knowing there would be a cost, knowing he was risking his position, his career, likely his pension - and prison. Doing it because it seemed a way to make a difference, to have an impact, and doing it because sometimes the “call to conscience” outweighs the “call to duty.”

Yes, he could have just resigned. And Rosa Parks could have just sent a letter to the bus company.

But he didn’t and she didn’t and that’s why we’re talking about him and about courage and about civil disobedience and what are our real first duties and why we still know her name and what followed.

We never know in advance what spark will start a fire and history says his spank very likely will not light one now (few ever do). But he struck his with, I have absolutely no doubt, knowledge of the potential consequences because “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

And that deserves at the least honor and respect rather than arrogant condescension suggesting he acted without consideration of others, including any family.

==

2026-07-05
[Re a video of people reading the “preamble” to the Declaration of Independence]

Okay, I know it’s silly but it always irks me. What those folks read was not the “preamble” to the Declaration of Independence, it was rather (most of) the second paragraph. It was the core argument, not an introduction or preamble to it, and was followed by a bill of particulars.

If the Declaration has a preamble, it is the opening paragraph, which reads:

“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America. When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

==

2026-07-07
[A fundamentalist tries to claim the Bible describes evolution.]

Genesis 1:3-5: And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day. (NIV)

So much for “days don’t mean anything before the fourth one.”

Genesis 2:7: Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (NIV

So much for “Adam had ancestors.”

This guy reinterprets words with the looseness of Humpty Dumpty - or the majority of SCOTUS.

==

2026-07-07
One sort of side but relevant thing: Please stop referring to the [US-Iran] MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] as if it was a settled pact. It is not.

A MOU is essentially an agreed list of what are the outstanding issues, what needs final settlement. It is not binding on either party; rather it is an indication of the direction they intend to take in a final, formal, pact. Neither the US nor Iran properly can be accused of “violating” an agreement to which they have made no legal commitment. So, bluntly, whatever it says about Iranian control over the Strait is entirely irrelevant to the present moment. Stop talking as if it was.

Oh, and to save some folks’ time: Do not even bother trying to claim I’m justifying the [renewed] attack [on Iran]. It would only demonstrate an inability to read what is clearly said, that I am addressing one particular point about the reporting.

==

2026-07-08
[Chris Geidner commented on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s writings on the birthright citizenship and transgender sports ban cases. One person asked “if ‘sex’ includes things other than biological sex, what exactly are those things?”]

Sorry for the delayed response. No arguments, just some of my thoughts on this.

I’d say first that people in general and courts in particular should stop treating the words “sex” and “gender” as if they are synonymous. They are not.

But of course the fact that we have and continue to equate them means that we could just decide that the term “sex” in the law was intended to encompass gender identity - which is in fact what we had done and what this court undid, despite having decided essentially the opposite in an earlier case involving a different title.

Given that’s our situation, I’d say the issue isn’t what’s beyond “biological sex,” but the assumption that the word “sex” - even though we persist in equating it with “gender” - refers only to “biological sex,” which is than taken as a synonym for “means of reproduction.”

But that is a constructed and constricted meaning which separates sex from society and the impacts of each on the other, thus making “biological sex” a perhaps convenient but still a purely arbitrary basis of judgment.

Consider that neuroscience is classed as a multidisciplinary subdivision of biology. Which means that brain function, which is fundamental to and thus directly involves personal identity, is itself part of our biology.

Meanwhile, sociobiology sits in the area where sociology and biology overlap, regarding biology as fundamental to social interaction and identity, which are socially produced and regulated. That is, biology is fundamental to identity, but what defines that identity in a given society is socially generated and the study is of the interplay between them.

Bottom line: SCOTUS imposed a predetermined definition on a word and term that is disconnected from the science involved - and got it wrong.

(BTW, sociobiology got a bad rep when it emerged into popularity in 1975 because some of its adherents insisted that genes are controlling of social relations and so such things as then-accepted social roles for men and women were “natural” and trying to change them “defied reality.” Sound familiar? Thankfully, it has matured at least somewhat in the past 50 years, even though it still to my mind tends to focus too much on genetics as explanations for social relations.)

More to come, I expect. “See” you then.

Rejecting the HUDdled masses - if they're trans

UPDATED
 I failed to include some links to information about the issue and the rule. They are:

https://housingup.org/2026/06/25/hud-proposes-to-remove-key-lgbtq-protections/
https://nlihc.org/resource/hud-proposes-rescind-lgbtq-anti-discrimination-protections-hud-programs-advocates-4-trans

The rest is unchanged. 

 My apologies for not posting this earlier. It was submitted within the time frame (which ended early July) for public comments on a proposed rule change for HUD enforcing stereotypical, transphobic definitions of male and female on applicants for housing aid.

--

In February 2012, a Final rule about HUD’s programs was issued, one which “aimed to ensure that HUD’s housing programs would be open to all eligible individuals and families regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status.”

However, it did not address how to deal with transgender and gender non-conforming individuals in temporary, emergency shelters and other facilities with shared sleeping quarters or bathing facilities.

On September 21, 2016, an updated final rule was issued, clarifying the issue and noting that people must be treated according to their gender identity “and not on another person’s stereotype-based complaints.”

I note that history to emphasize that the current standard is one which has existed since the fall of 2016 through to the present, which means it was in place across the whole of President Trump’s first term - and its one attempt to undo it, in 2020, was washed away under a flood of public opposition from providers, faith-based partners, domestic violence shelter operators, and more, along with the general public. (It was withdrawn by the Biden administration in April 2021.)

Despite that history, on February 7, 2025 HUD Secretary Scott Turner said the agency simply would stop enforcing the 2016 Equal Access Rule - overruling federal regulations by executive fiat - followed by, on April 28 of this year, an announcement of a proposed formal rule change, formalizing and institutionalizing the anti-trans bigotry the administration had been practicing so far.

This rule would apply to all HUD programs and would allow providers of services, including housing and temporary and emergency shelters, to demand “assurances or evidence” to confirm the claimed sex of the person matches their birth certificate, embracing “immutable biological classification as either male or female” - the right-wing approved way of saying “biology is destiny” - while stripping away any references to “gender,” marking it as “ever-shifting concept” with, it appears to say, no real meaning.

This, bluntly, is pseudo-scientific claptrap. It is ignorance pretending to erudition, bigotry wrapped in bureaucracy, animus cloaked as administration. It takes the documented reality that gender-nonconforming people are significantly more likely to be homeless, significantly more likely to be a victim of violence, significantly more likely to be a target of abuse - and says “We don’t care.”

It takes the documented accounts of gender-nonconforming people that “given the choice between a shelter designated for assigned birth sex or sleeping on the streets, many transgender shelter-seekers would choose the streets” because it’s that much safer - and says “Lalala, we can’t hear you!”

Perhaps most importantly, it ignores - I hope through ignorance because doing it deliberately is much worse - the scientifically-documented hard reality that sex (which is about reproduction) and gender (personality, sense of self) are not the same thing, either functionally or neurologically, as they are mediated by partially-overlapping but different parts of the brain.

One of my all time favorite quotes about living an ethical life says “Always try to be good - but never fail to be kind.” The proposed rule change is neither. It should be withdrawn.