Call me 'ze,' not 'he': University wants everyone to use 'gender inclusive' pronouns

Fox News

Educators in the Volunteer State are very concerned that students might be offended by the usage of traditional pronouns like she, he, him and hers, according to a document from the University of Tennessee – Knoxville’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

“With the new semester beginning and an influx of new students on campus, it is important to participate in making our campus welcoming and inclusive for all,” wrote Donna Braquet in a posting on the university’s website. “One way to do that is to use a student’s chosen name and their correct pronouns.”

Braquet, who is director of the university’s Pride Center, suggested using a variety of gender neutral pronouns instead of traditional pronouns.

For all you folks who went to school back when there were only him and her – here’s a primer: some of the new gender neutral pronouns are ze, hir, zir, xe, xem and xyr.

  [...]

Let’s just say that not everyone is on board with the new gender neutral pronouns. Lots of folks in Big Orange Country are turning blood red.

“It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Republican State Sen. Mae Beavers told me. “If you must interview a student before you greet the student, that’s not acceptance – that’s just absurd.”

Beavers represents a “very conservative” district and she said her constituents are enraged over how their tax money is being spent by the university.

“The idea a child would want to be called by a gender neutral term is absolutely ridiculous,” she said. “It’s getting so crazy in this country.”

Julie West has two children at the university – not to mention a family dog named after the Volunteer’s revered coach – General Neyland.

“This isn’t inclusion,” she said. “This is the radical transformation of our lives and language.”[...]

Dealing with threats from spouse in divorce cases

shrink 4 men 

A very common concern from divorce clients and people looking for information about their divorce comes in the form of, “my husband is threatening to…” or “my wife is threatening to…” with something about taking away the kids or all the property.

99.9% of the time those threats have zero basis in the law and are never going to happen. They have less to do with the law or what the person really believes they can do to you, and more to do with psychological warfare by tormenting you or scaring you into doing or not doing something. Under the Texas Family Code, divorces are just not that sinister. Usually these threats are made before the divorce petition is filed or shortly afterwards. It is common to see the spouse who does not want the divorce threatening to “take the kids and you’ll never see them” or “take everything and leave you with nothing” to scare you away from filing for divorce and staying in a bad situation. After the divorce petition is filed and the other spouse (respondent) has been served, these threats are tossed around out of anger just to torment you. The best way to avoid being scared away from filing for divorce in Texas or hire a divorce lawyer to protect your rights is to understand why these threats are untrue (or at least highly unlikely). Knowledge is power. So today’s post will address some of those common threats and how the law really works. One of the biggest issues people struggle with in dealing with a high-conflict (HCP) ex is when children are part of the equation. It’s hard enough to shed a HCP spouse or partner; when children are involved, it becomes the never-ending trickle of salt into the open wound you’re trying to heal.

As noted in a previous Shrink4Men article, the trick to neutralizing the Crazy is boundaries. For some of us, creating boundaries for ourselves is difficult enough. It becomes hellishly difficult to implement healthy boundaries when there are children to consider.

Why is it so difficult? In many cases, the answer is fear.

HCPs are predators, as Dr T and Micksbabe so aptly identified them. They know the smell of fear. If you have any, they will know it. They might not be the sharpest pencil in the box otherwise, but boy, do they know how to sniff out fear. Then they capitalize on it to the nth degree.

Once you or the HCP decide the marriage or relationship is over, you need to immediately be on your guard. At that point, regardless of what your HCP ex says, you are now the enemy in their mind. Many men are often lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that she seems to be behaving and seems to be thinking and acting rationally at the beginning of the break-up or divorce.

She is not. It’s a trap! (Think Admiral Ackbar here.) [...]

Even when you know how crazy your Crazy is, it’s hard to believe someone could act the way they do. You don’t want to believe it. You want to think the high-conflict parent loves the children as much as you do. (Honestly, they all seem to have the same large-print handbook on how to be as horrific as possible.)

HCPs know this. On some level, they know you won’t sink to the same depths they do in your desire to get what you want and they count on it. They count on you not wanting to go against your upbringing that includes manners and not behaving badly. They know your desire to behave as a decent member of society holds you back from responding to their behavior no matter what. No one wants to be the bad guy and they count on your desire to be Mr Nice Guy.

Know that. Recognize that the Crazy will not fight fair, will not behave in a way that is socially acceptable, will use your children, will threaten you and play on your fear at every opportunity, and will sacrifice herself to “win” against you. To the Crazy, any means justify their ends.

You don’t have to stoop to their level. Instead, prepare yourself from a legal standpoint. Again, do your research and understand the laws you’ll be subject to once in the court system. Document the Crazy behavior and show how the Crazy does not support a positive relationship between your kids and yourself.  Also, understand the financial implications. Get very familiar with your state’s child support guidelines. Even if you have an attorney, having this knowledge will serve you well. [...]

In Dr. Baker’s book, she profiles horrible stories of alienation. All of the children who were victims of PAS eventually stepped away from their alienating parent, and went about attempting to resurrect the relationship with the target parent. This was true even in some of the most awful cases.

While it may not seem to be doing much at the time, your children will remember who loved them and demonstrated it using more than words, who was there for them, and who didn’t hop on the Crazy train and drive it into the abyss.

Do your due diligence, get professional support if you need it, focus on long-term gains instead of the short-term, permanent present guerrilla warfare tactics many HCPs engage in and you and your children will survive this. [...]

Holocaust trauma passed on to children via genes, says scientist

Picture unrelated to story

The Jewish Chronicle   A study of Holocaust survivors and their children has shown that trauma can be passed on through genes.

The study, led by Rachel Yehuda from New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, looked at the genes of 32 men and women who directly experienced the Holocaust - either in a concentration camp or who had to hide during the Second World War. 

According to the research, the survivors’ children had an increased likelihood of stress-related disorders, as well as low levels of cortisol, the hormone that regulates the body’s response to stress. Ms Yehuda said: “The gene changes in the children could only be attributed to Holocaust exposure in the parents”.

The idea that environmental factors such as smoking or diet can affect one’s offspring via genetic mutations is known as “epigenetic inheritance”. [...]

The idea is a controversial one and it is still not fully understood how these tags are passed on. It was believed that any epigenetic tags on DNA are ‘wiped clean’ following fertilisation. However, recent research form Cambridge University has shown that some epigenetic tags escape this cleaning process.

“To our knowledge, this provides the first demonstration of transmission of pre-conception stress effects resulting in epigenetic changes in both the exposed parents and their offspring in humans,” said Ms Yehuda, whose work was published in Biological Psychiatry. 

Marcus Pembrey, emeritus professor of paediatric genetics at University College London, said: “What we’re getting here is the very beginnings of a understanding of how one generation responds to the experiences of the previous generation. It’s fine-tuning the way your genes respond to the world.”

Graphic video has prompted McDonald's to cut ties with one of its chicken suppliers

Picture unrelated to story

Huffington Post  Chickens cruelly beaten, stomped to death and left to die painfully and slowly. According to Mercy For Animals, that’s the “disgusting secret” behind McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets.

On Wednesday, the advocacy group released disturbing hidden-camera footage capturing what it says is evidence of abusive practices at a McDonald’s chicken supplier.

The investigation into T&S Farm, located in Dukedom, Tennessee, “exposed horrific cruelty to animals, including birds beaten, crammed in filthy sheds, stabbed to death with nails attached to makeshift clubs and left to suffer and slowly die without proper veterinary care,” the group wrote.

The farm had likely supplied chicken for McDonald's Chicken McNuggets, McChicken sandwiches and grilled and deep-fried chicken filets, according to The Associated Press.

Watch the video below. Be warned that it contains graphic footage:

Sponge Bob and the Jewish Question

The Widening World of Hand-Picked Truths

NY Times

Nearly half a century ago, in what passed as outrage in pre-Internet times, people across the country became incensed by the latest edition of Time magazine. In place of the familiar portrait of a world leader — Indira Gandhi, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ho Chi Minh — the cover of the April 8, 1966, issue was emblazoned with three red words against a stark black background: “Is God Dead?”

Thousands of people sent letters of protest to Time and to their local newspapers. Ministers denounced the magazine in their sermons.

The subject of the fury — a sprawling, 6,000-word essay of the kind Time was known for — was not, as many assumed, a denunciation of religion. Drawing on a panoply of philosophers and theologians, Time’s religion editor calmly considered how society was adapting to the diminishing role of religion in an age of secularization, urbanism and, especially, stunning advances in science.

With astronauts walking in space, and polio and other infectious diseases seemingly on the way to oblivion, it was natural to assume that people would increasingly stop believing things just because they had always believed them. Faith would steadily give way to the scientific method as humanity converged on an ever better understanding of what was real.

Almost 50 years later, that dream seems to be coming apart. Some of the opposition is on familiar grounds: The creationist battle against evolution remains fierce, and more sophisticated than ever. But it’s not just organized religions that are insisting on their own alternate truths. On one front after another, the hard-won consensus of science is also expected to accommodate personal beliefs, religious or otherwise, about the safety of vaccines, G.M.O. crops, fluoridation or cellphone radio waves, along with the validity of global climate change.

Like creationists with their “intelligent design,” the followers of these causes come armed with their own personal science, assembled through Internet searches that inevitably turn up the contortions of special interest groups. In an attempt to dilute the wisdom of the crowd, Google recently tweaked its algorithm so that searching for “vaccination” or “fluoridation,” for example, brings vetted medical information to the top of the results.

But presenting people with the best available science doesn’t seem to change many minds. In a kind of psychological immune response, they reject ideas they consider harmful. A study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that it is more effective to appeal to anti-vaxxers through their emotions, with stories and pictures of children sick with measles, the mumps or rubella — a reminder that subjective feelings are still trusted over scientific expertise.[...]

Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed - 50% of published studies are possibly junk

NYTimes

The past several years have been bruising ones for the credibility of the social sciences. A star social psychologist was caught fabricating data, leading to more than 50 retracted papers. A top journal published a study supporting the existence of ESP. The journal Science pulled a political science paper on the effect of gay canvassers on voters’ behavior – also because of concerns about fake data.

 A University of Virginia psychologist decided in 2011 to find out whether such suspect science was a widespread problem. He and his team recruited more than 250 researchers, identified 100 studies that had each been published in one of three leading journals in 2008, and rigorously redid the experiments in close collaboration with the original authors.

The results are now in: More than 60 of the studies did not hold up. They include findings that were circulated at the time — that a strong skepticism of free will increases the likelihood of cheating; that physical distances could subconsciously influence people’s sense of personal closeness; that attached women are more attracted to single men when highly fertile than when less so.

The new analysis, called the Reproducibility Project and posted Thursday by Science, found no evidence of fraud or that any original study was definitively false. Rather, it concluded that the evidence for most published findings was not nearly as strong as originally claimed.

“Less than half — even lower than I thought,” said Dr. John Ioannidis, a director of Stanford University’s Meta-Research Innovation Center, who once estimated that about half of published results across medicine were inflated or wrong. Dr. Ioannidis said the problem was hardly confined to psychology and could be worse in other fields, including cell biology, economics, neuroscience, clinical medicine, and animal research

Canadian Man Dubbed 'Jewish Schindler' for Saving Yazidi Sex Slaves From ISIS

Haaretz

A Canadian businessman is being dubbed the “Jewish Schindler” after paying for the release of Yazidi and Christian slaves held by Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Steve Maman has rescued 128  girls and women through the organisation he founded, Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI).

CYCI uses intermediaries to negotiate with Islamic State captors and pays between $1000 - $3000 for the release of each slave. According to the organization’s website, girls and women are then returned to their families or sent to a Kurdish refugee camp in northern Syria.

Islamic State is estimated to have taken 2,700 women and girls captive, torturing them and using them as sex slaves. Amnesty International claims Yazidi and Christian girls as young as 12 are being held.

Montreal-based Maman says his Jewish tradition motivated him to take action and establish CYCI in January this year.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.673270

Rav Dovid Eidensohn Tel Conf #17 - Your Kesubo – Is it Kosher? August 26 Wed 9:30 PM

Call 605-562-3130 enter code 411161#

Your Kesubo – is it kosher? Why not? Probably, some reliable person supervised the Kesubo writing at your wedding. Torah scholars were present. So, what is the problem? We list below three problems. One is Reb Moshe Feinstein’s ruling that in large cities some kesubose may be invalid. And today most people are probably in such cities, certainly those in New York City. Another problem is that our Kesubose don’t really assure a woman that she will be paid. And the Talmud considers this an invalid Kesubo, and the marriage is considered Zenuse. This is even if the Kesubo is a proper legal document but the wife is not sure of that. Surely if there are real problems in making her sure of herself with the Kesubo. The third problem is that the Kesubo is read publicly, and some information in it may be hugely humiliating. Rabbeinu Yona considers such a humiliation to be worse than murder.

Rav Mendel Shafran: Explaining the Givat Yerushalayim project in Beit Shemesh

Ultra-Orthodox In Israel: Keeping Cool While Keeping Customs

NPR

In the hot sun of a Jerusalem afternoon, kids wait for a fountain to turn on.

When water spouts into the air, 9-year-old Tzipora Baranas jumps right in. She's wearing black tights, a black, below-the-knee skirt and a long-sleeved black shirt.

"It's fun when the water spritzes up in my face," she says.

She is Orthodox Jewish and her outfit is in deference to religious modesty. She says she's not hot at all, despite the temperature hitting the 90s and the dark clothes covering all but her face and hands.

Of course, she is dripping wet at the moment.

Nearby, in the shade, an Orthodox mother, Rinat Kuperman, says it's good that the city has a place where kids can get wet without having to wear a swimsuit in public.

"They understand that people like us want to be happy in the summer and still keep ourselves like we want," she says. "Covered and refreshed."

Her family swims only in pools with times separated by gender, in keeping with their religious custom of covering their bodies when away from home and in the presence of members of the opposite sex. Kuperman isn't dressed all in black, but her skirt brushes her ankles. She wears a long-sleeved blouse over a T-shirt and has wrapped a colorful scarf over her hair.

Most Israelis are secular, and this record-breaking summer heat means plenty of shorts and skimpy tops on the beaches and streets. Choices for modest dress — including those that keep people covered up even in the summer heat — draw on religious rules, community norms and personal beliefs.[...]