Category: Education & Schools

Med Schools Are Now Denying Biological Sex.

Today we bring you another installment of Katie Herzog’s ongoing series about the spread of woke ideology in the field of medicine. Her first story focused on the ideological purge at the top medical schools and teaching hospitals in the country. “Wokeness,” as one doctor put it, “feels like an existential threat.”

Katie’s latest reporting illustrates some of the most urgent elements of that threat. It focuses on how biological sex is being denied by professors fearful of being smeared by their students as transphobic…..

During a recent endocrinology course at a top medical school in the University of California system, a professor stopped mid-lecture to apologize for something he’d said at the beginning of class.

“I don’t want you to think that I am in any way trying to imply anything, and if you can summon some generosity to forgive me, I would really appreciate it,” the physician says in a recording provided by a student in the class (whom I’ll call Lauren). “Again, I’m very sorry for that. It was certainly not my intention to offend anyone. The worst thing that I can do as a human being is be offensive.”

His offense: using the term “pregnant women.”

“I said ‘when a woman is pregnant,’ which implies that only women can get pregnant and I most sincerely apologize to all of you.”

It wasn’t the first time Lauren had heard an instructor apologize for using language that, to most Americans, would seem utterly inoffensive. Words like “male” and “female.”

Why would medical school professors apologize for referring to a patient’s biological sex? Because, Lauren explains, in the context of her medical school “acknowledging biological sex can be considered transphobic.”

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Saving Our School Children from Dangerous Judges in Ohio

We do a lot to protect our children. We learn as new threats come along. The news media has bombarded us with messages saying that mass murder is common and increasing. Ordinary people like us feel a growing need to protect our families. That makes sense to me, but I’ve met some wonderful men and women who go further and put their lives on the line to save other people’s children. I listened to school staff who volunteered to protect their students. In their words, these teachers raised their hands and volunteered so they could protect “their kids”. That commitment and compassion is as serious as anything I’ve seen.

I wish you were there with me because my heart leapt when I saw these ordinary people take training so they could rush forward  and stop an attack at their school. They train themselves to put their body between our children and a murderer’s bullet. These amazing school staff and church staff care more about the lives of their students than their own lives. We are wonderfully rich that these ordinary heroes, our neighbors, care so much about our kids. Until recently, we got it right that these teachers may protect our kids the same way we would protect them if we were there. That changed when a few supreme court justices in Ohio disarmed the defenders. Now, we have to fix that. Heaven help them if these children are hurt.

Let’s put school safety into perspective. Mass murderers look for easy targets. They deliberately attack vulnerable people in locations where the intended victims are disarmed and unprotected. Schools and churches are common targets because these are seen as gun-free zones. In Ohio, they took significant steps to eliminate these gun free zones.

There are more than 1-and-a-half-million students in Ohio schools. When you add them up, there are about a hundred thousand schoolteachers in Ohio. After the horrific attacks on the staff and the students in the elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, thousands of teachers in Ohio volunteered, under then current Ohio Law to protect their students. They wanted to stop the murderer until the police arrived and took over. These volunteers wanted to stop the bleeding until emergency medical personnel arrived to take their place. That is inspiring.

Ohio voters also elected thousands of school board members. School boards get input from millions of parents. Those school boards listened to local parents and addressed the issue of protecting students. Hundreds of school boards in Ohio then worked with their sheriffs to put a safety plan in place. Together, they screened and trained volunteer staff to be armed first responders and to provide life saving critical trauma care. I’m inspired that thousands of people volunteer to protect our kids every day, not their kids, our kids.

The attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School happened over 8 years ago. Since then, the program in Ohio has accumulated over 2-million hours of real-world experience with these volunteer first responders. The program spread across 200 school districts in Ohio alone. The program did not stop at the Ohio border, the program was adopted in several other states. In Ohio, these trained first responders performed extremely well. until four justices made it illegal.

Politics is a real consideration, and elections have consequences. Unfortunately, there were considerable forces arrayed against the low information voter. Anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg made large political donations to get anti-gun judges elected. Money talks, and Bloomberg got the judges and the results he wanted in Ohio. These justices said that school staff who were armed needed to first pass through a police academy before they could protect their students at school. That seems so odd since these same school staff members are permitted to protect those same students every other hour of the day as legal concealed carry license holders in Ohio.

The Ohio Senate passed several bills to remove the legal ambiguity the justices introduced. They confirmed that school boards could authorize selected school staff members to be first responders without going through four-months of police training. After being examined by their school board and sheriff, these trained volunteer school staff members could go armed as they worked. They could provide emergency trauma care without first being licensed as an emergency medical technician or a paramedic. Does that make sense?

You don’t have to be a trained firefighter to use a fire extinguisher in your home. You shouldn’t have to pass mandatory firefighting training to use a fire extinguisher where you work, either. You shouldn’t require EMT training to apply a tourniquet. Imposing that training puts us at greater risk rather than making us safer. The reason is simple. School janitors and cafeteria workers have done a fine job protecting children without first passing a course on high-performance driving in pursuit of a fleeing suspect as taught in police academies. We need more volunteers who will help, not fewer.

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Biden Admin Disavows CRT Material Originally Included in Official School Reopening Guidance

After the Biden administration’s Department of Education was forced to walk back guidance on schools reopening that included counsel from critical race theory purveyors Abolitionist Teaching Network, the White House disavowed the group in a press briefing on Thursday.

Missouri Teachers, CRT Advocate Plotted to Hide Social Justice Curriculum from ‘Trump Country’ Parents.

Teachers questioned how they could teach history and social studies through a social justice lens without rankling parents in the ‘highly conservative county … in the middle of Trump country.’

The curriculum-writing team in a suburban St. Louis school district plotted with a critical race theory advocate on how to keep parents in the dark about their efforts to inject leftwing social justice advocacy into their classrooms, according to a video of their meeting leaked online.

The video, posted on rumble.com in early July, is alleged to be a condensed version of a September 2020 webinar that members of the Francis Howell School District’s curriculum-writing team participated in. The webinar was hosted by their equity consultant, LaGarrett J. King, an associate professor of social studies education at the University of Missouri. He was described on the call as a specialist in the study of “race, critical theories and knowledge.”

It’s unclear who edited the video, which appears to have been posted anonymously by someone with the online moniker “wokeatfhsd.”

During the webinar, King told the predominantly white team members that “This is not a safe space,” but rather a “racialized space,” because “In many ways a safe space is a space where white people tell us how not racist they are. And this is not that space.”

King said “the first thing we have to understand is that our social studies and our history curriculum is political and racist,” and “there is no such thing as neutral history.” He then asked the team members to question whether they are developing black history curriculums through the historical lens of the oppressor. “We have made those who have oppressed people, the oppressor, we have humanized them,” he said.

The nation’s founding “means nothing to black people,” he said, calling history “psychologically violent” but one-sided. He also seemed to justify violence in the name of racial justice.

“All of our wars was about freedom, violence,” King said. “But yet, when black people say, ‘Hey … we need to take over, man. We need to burn this place down, we need to do this, we need to do that.’ ‘Oh no, you should do non-violence to achieve freedom.’ It’s silly. It’s prejudice.”

During a question-and-answer portion of the webinar, teachers and staff on the call questioned how they could reframe their classes to look at history and social studies through a more racialized social justice lens without rankling parents in the “highly conservative” community, which one teacher described as “the middle of Trump country.” King agreed that teachers could do away with verbiage like “white privilege,” while still getting the progressive message across to students.

“Kids are way more open,” she said, “but then they go home and they tell their parents, and then their parents get upset. I don’t advertise to my students when I’m teaching U.S. history that sometimes I would consider myself the anti-U.S. history teacher.”

Another white teacher said because they teach in a conservative county, “Sometimes I think we have deferred to letting that stop progress. We let noise keep progress from moving forward.”

In a paper he co-authored in 2018, King acknowledged that critical theory was developed in the 1920s by German thinkers who “sought to extend Marxist theory into the changing social, political, and economic landscape of the twentieth century by talking about how culture and ideology encourage and sustain social inequality.” In order to “remain true to critical pedagogy,” the authors wrote, “teachers should work to identify questions that are important to students’ lives and that encourage them to reflect on the ways that they are either privileged or oppressed by social dynamics.”

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Ramaswamy: ‘Secular Religion’ of Critical Race Theory Now Taught in Schools Violates Civil Rights Act of 64

News that a left-wing author’s anti-White “picture book” is being read or assigned in public schools in a dozen states helps make the case that the “secular religion” of critical race theory is a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy argued Tuesday.

Ramaswamy, founder of Roivent Sciences, told “America Reports” that it is very troubling to see school districts across the country highlight Anastasia Higginbotham’s “Not My Idea” in young childhood curriculum..

Scholar Christopher Rufo published a list of school districts in Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Washington, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Montana, Oregon, Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey and Maine that reportedly either recommend the reading to students or instruct teachers to read aloud.

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Arizona Governor Signs Bill to Prohibit Critical Race Theory Teaching

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) signed a bill on Friday preventing local governments from teaching critical race theory.

The measure, House Bill 2906, prohibits “the state and any local governments from requiring their employees to engage in orientation, training or therapy that suggest an employee is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” Ducey’s office said in a statement.

The Arizona state House passed the bill in a 31-25 vote, according to records from the state legislature. The state Senate passed the bill on a 16-12 vote…..

Arizona House Passes Bill Requiring Schools Share Stories From People Who Fled Communism.

The Republican-majority Arizona House on June 25 approved a bill that could mandate that school teachers share stories from people who fled communism as part of the curriculum.

The requirement is part of House Bill 2898 (pdf), which includes changes in laws governing K–12 education in the state. The language was inserted by Republican state Rep. Judy Burges, and states that the measure will prepare students to be “civically responsible and knowledgeable adults.”

Public schools would be required to teach “a comparative discussion of political ideologies, such as communism and totalitarianism, the conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy essential to the founding principles of the United States” among other changes, the bill’s text states.

Arizona’s Department of Education must also develop new civics education standards for school districts and charter schools to include, such as on the original intent of America’s Founding Documents and principles of the United States, including the expectation that U.S. citizens will be responsible for preserving and defending “the blessings of liberty inherited from prior generations and secured by the United States Constitution.”

The education board would also have to develop a list of oral history resources that provide “patriotism based on first-person accounts of victims of other nations’ governing philosophies who can compare those philosophies with those of the United States.”

“The reality is [that] one of the greatest threats facing the globe today is communism and totalitarianism,” Republican state Rep. Jake Hoffman said, Capitol Media Services reported. “We have governments like the communist Chinese government, that their stated goal is to be the world’s sole and only superpower, and that they will achieve that goal through any means possible.”

The legislation now heads to the state Senate for consideration.

The measure advanced days after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order on education that pushes back against critical race theory, and also creates an education program that will require students to be taught about “the evils of communism.”

In short, high schools must provide “instruction on the evils of communism and totalitarian ideology,” DeSantis said, noting that there are Florida residents who have escaped totalitarian regimes and communist dictatorships, such as from Cuba and Vietnam, to live in America.

“We want all students to understand the difference,” he said. “Why would somebody flee across shark-infested waters … why would people leave these countries and risk their lives to be able to come here? It’s important that students understand that.”

DeSantis on June 22 also signed into law HB 5, which requires the Florida Department of Education to develop an integrated K–12 civic education curriculum that includes teaching students about citizens’ shared rights under the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Critical Race Theory Seeks to Undermine Equality and the Constitutional Order.

In its own words, critical race theory seeks to overthrow America’s system of government. Leaked mandatory training documents from Iowa’s Mississippi Bend Area Education Agency (MBAEA) make this clear.

critical race theory
Leaked document from Iowa’s Mississippi Bend Area Education Agency.

The document clearly separates CRT from “traditional civil rights,” saying it “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and principles of constitutional law.”

This helps explain the sudden shift in rhetoric away from equality and toward “equity.” This massive moving of the goalposts is based on CRT’s principles.

According to documents leaked to Benny Johnson of Turning Point USA and Newsmax TV, the MBAEA is forcing hundreds of teachers into this training at taxpayer expense. Not only is it designed to fracture and undermine our entire basis of law, it’s openly racist and it’s politically vindictive.

LEAKED DOCUMENTS from Iowa School System show Teachers are FORCED to classify ‘Make America Great Again” as a type of “racism” & “white supremacy.”

This is done through MANDATORY Critical Race Theory training FORCED on teachers at taxpayer expense.

Trump won Iowa by +9 points pic.twitter.com/6xEuVJpv7g

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) June 22, 2021

 

Among the terms the MBAEA’s training insists are “white supremacist” are “colorblindness,” celebrating Columbus Day, believing that “we’re just one human family,” and, of course, “Make America Great Again.”

Again, this is mandatory training in Iowa, in government schools. MBAEA’s equity officer is Kim Hoffman.

Read through Johnson’s entire Twitter thread. The documents provide clear proof that CRT is intentionally destructive.

 

Johnson reached out to Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R).

 

Iowa’s legislature did ban critical race theory in its schools in its 2021 session. But if teachers are already indoctrinated? If they’ve been forced to subscribe to cultish beliefs as the price of keeping their jobs?

Oregon students shouldn’t have to prove they can write or do math to get a diploma, lawmakers decide

A bill to prohibit Oregon schools from requiring students to show they can read, write and do math at a basic high school level is headed to Gov. Kate Brown after lawmakers gave final approval Wednesday.

The idea is to hit pause on the requirements, in place since 2009 but already suspended during the pandemic, at least until the class of 2024 gets their diplomas and for Oregon to thoughtfully reexamine its graduation requirements in the meantime. A report recommending what the new standards should be is due to the Legislature and Oregon Board of Education by September 2022.

But since Oregon has long insisted it would not impose new graduation requirements on students who have already begun high school, new requirements would not take effect until the class of 2027 at the very earliest. So at least five more classes could be expected to graduate without needing to demonstrate roughly 10th grade level proficiency in math and writing.

The decision to remove the skills requirement was largely but not entirely a party-line one, with Democrats staunchly opposing the proficiency rules and Republicans decrying what they see as a lowering of academic standards.

A spokesperson for Brown told The Oregonian/OregonLive Wednesday she has yet to decide whether she will sign the bill, veto it or allow it to become law without her signature.

Oregon, unlike other states, did not require students to pass a particular standardized test or any test at all. Students could show their ability to use English and do math via about five different tests or by completing an in-depth classroom project judged by their own teachers. In reality, most schools relied primarily on standardized tests and most students easily passed them.

But demonstrating proficiency proved most challenging for students who learned English as a second language, students with disabilities and students of color.

Officials on the Oregon Board of Education, when they enacted the “essential skills” graduation requirement more than a decade ago, said they hoped no student would be denied a diploma for lacking the skills but that schools would step up and help juniors and seniors who hadn’t mastered enough English or math to do so. Many high schools created special math and writing workshop classes for seniors who needed to demonstrate those skills to get their diplomas.

The bill calls on the diverse committee studying graduation requirements to come up with a recommendation “with the goal of ensuring that the processes and outcomes related to the requirements for high school diplomas are equitable, accessible and inclusive.”

Arizona Gov. Overrides State University’s Rule Forcing Students to Get Vaccine

Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey shot down a forced vaccination policy for students at Arizona State University, leaving the school with egg on its face. forcing students to vaccinate

The latest version of the University COVID policy was published on June 14 and said in part:

Once vaccinated, students should upload proof of vaccination to their ASU Health Portal. ASU will accept all COVID-19 vaccines that are approved by the World Health Organization or a national regulatory agency. Students who are unable to be vaccinated for any reason or who do not agree to share their vaccination status will be required to participate in ongoing COVID-19 health management protocols.

Unvaccinated students or those who do not share their status will be required to:

√ Submit a daily health check.

√ Participate in up to twice weekly COVID-19 testing.

√ Wear face covers in all indoor and outdoor spaces on ASU campuses.

Fully vaccinated students who consent to share their status will not be required to:

√ Submit a daily health check.

√ Participate in COVID-19 testing.

√ Wear face coverings indoors or outdoors, unless otherwise directed.

Any student may continue to wear face covers if they wish, and everyone is encouraged to wear face covers in crowded areas and venues.

It took only one day for Gov. Ducey to say, not so fast, buckaroo.

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Is Critical Race Theory at a School Near You?

The Legal Insurrection Foundation released an interactive map that allows individuals to track Critical Race Theory training in education.

The resource serves to provide students and parents with more information about the curriculum that is being taught in 200 colleges in all 50 states.

As Campus Reform has reported, Critical Race Theory training has been used by colleges and universities as a form of “diversity” training for students and faculty. Former President Donald Trump signed an executive order in 2020 banning these types of training. President Joe Biden reversed this order shortly after being sworn in.

William Jacobson, Professor at Cornell Law School and Founder of Legal Insurrection, spoke with Campus Reform about the project.“

This database is neutral, it simply provides the facts and links to programs and policies. Some people might like a school that has a lot of Critical Race Training mandates and initiatives, others may not like that. We provide the data and information so people can decide on their own,” Jacobson said.

The map does not focus specifically on the term “Critical Race Theory,” Jacobson explained that they “try to focus on programs that go beyond mere diversity initiatives, and cross over into so-called “anti-racism” and “equity” doctrines as well as other aspects of Critical Race Theory, though the lines are not always clear.”

New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and California are among the states with the most schools on the map, with 24, 18, 14, and 20 institutions listed, respectively.

Florida Bans Critical Race Theory in Schools.

On Thursday, the Florida Department of Education approved a policy that explicitly bans Marxist critical race theory (CRT) from public schools.

The original rule, proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), did not explicitly condemn critical race theory, but barred teachers from attempting “to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.”

The final version, however, prohibits “fiction or theory masquerading as facts, such as critical race theory.” By voice vote, the seven-member Board of Education adopted an amendment sponsored by board member Tom Grady. The board then unanimously passed the amended version, Just the News reported.

“Instruction on the required topics must be factual and objective, and may not suppress or distort significant historical events, such as the Holocaust, and may not define American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence,” the proposed rule read.

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Biden’s Proposed Funding of Critical Race Theory Puts US on a ‘Very Dark Path’: Inez Stepman

The Biden administration’s proposal to fund education programs informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT) is “dangerous and pernicious,” according to senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, Inez Stepman.

In April, the Department of Education proposed a new rule to prioritize funding education programs that incorporate the New York Times’ 1619 Project and critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi into their teaching of U.S history and civics.

The Department outlined new priority criteria for a $5.3 million American History and Civics Education grant, as well as exemplary materials for K-12 educators to use.

However, Stepman, who is also a senior contributor at The Federalist, told Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program that Ibram X. Kendi’s teachings are “incredibly radical” and may instead put the United States on “a very dark path” by teaching children to actively hate each other.

“Just to give you an idea of how radical his scholarship is, one of the things he’s proposed [in his book, Stamped from the Beginning] is to create a department of ‘anti-racism’ in the federal government,” Stepman said.

“So far, that sounds unobjectionable to most people. But he wants that unelected department staffed by trained academics, presumably by him, to have veto power over every municipal state and federal law in the country, if it creates, in his eyes, any kind of disparity between groups. And he wants that body to have veto power over who stands for political office.

“That’s incredibly radical, incredibly contradictory with the American system. But yet the Department of Education is citing this guy as an example of what they want to encourage schools around the country to teach young Americans who then grow up to be voters in this republic.

“I call it woke Stalinism … his position is that a group of unelected academics should have complete veto power over all laws in the United States, and kind of similar to how it works with the mullahs in Iran, to basically select the slate of candidates. The people may vote, but only on the candidates or among the candidates selected by people who think like Ibram X. Kendi.”

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This is the state of higher education indoctrination today.
Of course, this level of overeducated intellectual mushheads are noted for signing a petition to ban the use of Dihydrogen Monoxide  which is “H2O” – water.

Students sign fake petition to CANCEL MEMORIAL DAY over ‘American imperialism’

BLUF:
Defeating Nazi Germany was a good thing. Defeating Imperial Japan was a good thing. It is sad that one-third of the country is fuzzy on this, but maybe things would[n’t] be so murky if liberals stopped trying to reconstruct American history like some bad plastic surgeon. In the meantime, do what you can to politely correct the record if someone tries to make an argument that fighting the Nazis was a debatable foreign policy move.

A Poll Dropped Over the Memorial Day Weekend That’s Quite a Gut Punch…And a Bit Disturbing

Yes, for millions, Memorial Day weekend is pretty much the unofficial start of the summer. It’s when folks start making their trek to the beach. There are barbeques as well. We’ve all had many a Memorial Day with such festivities, but it’s due to the sacrifices of so many better Americans before us who served and died to protect our freedoms. That’s sort of been lost. Vice President Kamala Harris embodied that perfectly with a tweet that read “enjoy the long weekend” that featured an image…of herself. There’s a great meme that’s immortal on this subject.

It shows a picture of a generic packed shoreline at the top and an image of American soldiers on the beaches of Normandy below it.

It reads “your day at the beach is because of their day at the beach.”

There’s another aspect missing here on this Memorial Day. It’s disturbing really. This is due to liberals perverting American history. Hell, they’re straight-up making it up with this Critical Race Theory nonsense sweeping the nation. The Left has never been able to grasp history or accept that it’s violent, or that it’s overall quite unpleasant to a lot of cultures and races. That discomfort, coupled with snowflake syndrome, has sparked this historical revisionism that’s sold as academic work but is really a fraud. It’s fiction. It’s historical fiction. There is nothing wrong with that on its own, but liberals are trying to pass that off as actual historical analyses.

The sins of the past should not be forgotten, but they cannot hold us back. For the Left, the sins of the past must be addressed, even if it means lying about our history to make us…feel better. It’s crap. This inability for liberal America to simply stop bashing America and accept the flaws on this country, and acknowledging the progress we’ve made, has led to this crosstab that spits in the face of the greatest generation who fought to stop Nazi Germany and Tojo’s Japan. Apparently, there is a shocking number of Americans who are unsure if it was good to fight Nazi Germany during World War II. I’m not kidding. The number of Americans who flat-out said “yes” it was a mistake to take on the Nazis is also bonkers (via NY Post):

… a whopping one-third of Americans either believe that it was a mistake or remain unsure about the US’s involvement in the so-called “good war,” according to a new poll by the Economist/YouGov.

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Unless you are ‘intersex’ which is a defective congenital anomaly, you are a Male with the “XY” chromosome, or a Female with the “XX” chromosome. What clothes are worn and what words one uses to describe themselves don’t matter, and ‘scientists’ having trouble with this aren’t scientists but propagandists.

Scholar booted from APA discussion group after suggesting there are only two sexes

‘This incident just illustrates the current inability of some scientific communities to tolerate dissent’

A scholar has been removed from an American Psychological Association email discussion group after he posed questions on the listserv that upset others, most recently about the nature of biological sex.

John Staddon, an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, was taken off the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology Division 6 listserv overseen by the APA.

“This incident just illustrates the current inability of some scientific communities to tolerate dissent about issues related to sex and race,” Staddon told The College Fix via email. “Psychology and sociology seem to be especially flawed in this respect.”

The topic that appears to have gotten him removed was the suggestion that there are only two sexes.

According to Staddon, what likely got him taken off was this post: “Hmm… Binary view of sex false? What is the evidence? Is there a Z chromosome?”

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