Dr. Katja Thieme 👀 Profile picture
https://t.co/DGXpVuXcE4 #WritingStudies #GenreStudies #CanLit "The epitome of the hysterical left wing!" Pronouns on chest: she/they.
Jul 10, 2023 21 tweets 4 min read
Someone tweeted a Riley Gaines clip at me today thinking it unassailably showed we should not teach about trans identities and experiences in schools. The question attached to it was, „Are you okay with enabling this kind of abuse?“ In the clip, Gaines talks about feeling mistreated in a photo op with Lia Thomas. They both won 5th place. Thomas was the tiniest fraction ahead, not enough to effect placement. But enough to say Thomas should hold the single available 5th-place trophy. Gaines got hers mailed.
Nov 2, 2022 17 tweets 4 min read
#NathanCofnas has written a response to recent journalistic articles critical of his appointment as Leverhulme fellow in philosophy at Cambridge. I was tempted to line up the terms he is using to give the impression that his work can't have been debunked.
So, let's do that. 1/ A: terms he uses to describe his own work
B: terms for the work of his critics

A: He works in "philosophy of biology and ethics" and his paper in a "highly respected philosophy and psychology journal" calls for "free inquiry into all possible causes of race difference" in IQ.
Oct 7, 2022 10 tweets 3 min read
Playbook for white supremacist profs.

1. Do your white supremacists things. Write blog posts, tweets, articles in which you take white supremacist positions. Attend white supremacist rallies. Take photos with Nazi symbols. Whatever it is you like to do. 2. Do it repeatedly, perhaps more openly in public & more veiled in professional life. Do it enough until your students and colleagues are alert to it and your university administration notices.
Oct 4, 2022 8 tweets 3 min read
Pit of a puzzle to me how one can say faculty *must* work to make their institutions more equal and inclusive, and then dismiss a request to sketch out how faculty do this work they *must* do as "purity tests" that open some mysterious yet unsavoury doors. Oh, wait, here's how I should have written the above tweet:

I believe university faculty must work to make their institutions more equal and inclusive. #BUT.
Aug 7, 2022 5 tweets 1 min read
🔥 It's a sharp statement. The ministry's letter is egregious enough for the uni president to comment on it directly and critically. He explains that the minister has not followed through by meeting with the uni's executive and has instead put the matter into the public domain.
Aug 6, 2022 11 tweets 4 min read
Four years ago, before he published his first #Quillette piece, before he signed on as editor to that same online magazine, #ColinWright wrote an email to #JamesLindsay in which he laid out the set of simple and basic ideas that continue to drive his anti-trans activism. 1/ 1. You can be an academic⁠—held to the quality of his evidence, the knowledge of the existing literature, & the soundness of his arguments⁠—or you can be a "free-thinking intellectual." (To the point that having lousy evidence & no demonstrable knowledge shows "free thinking.")
May 4, 2022 20 tweets 5 min read
#Quillette published its house phrenologist's lament on having lived the last two years "in exile" from academia. The subheading is to cringe for: "Academia has become an intellectual prison, and many incarcerated professors are compelled to live a dual existence." Let's see. 1/ Bo Winegard says he was shocked and bewildered when he lost his job. He'd thought academia was a place "guided by evidence and argument instead of political ad hominem." I've read some of this papers. Rich in evidence and meticulous in argumentation isn't what I'd call them. 2/
May 2, 2022 10 tweets 4 min read
Ha ha ha, our muffin, #ColinWright not being entirely rational, is he. When Elon Musk copies his cartoon, "It's fine! It's fine! May I interest you in a mug, too, Elon, my mugs are the best mugs!" When Aaron copies his cartoon (albeit with enhancements): "You're insufferable." Can't be that agreeing and disagreeing with someone on other matters and/or sheer level of internet clout could influence #ColinWright's judgement on someone's use of his stick figure cartoon, could it?

That would not be high decoupling if that were the case, now would it? 😂
May 2, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
Good points in this thread!

All my courses now have two consultation assignments: one for the mid-sized assignment halfway through the course, one for the final assignment.

Note: I don't teach big lectures; my courses are between 30-45 students and I teach 3 of those a term. 1/ If you have a lecture with TAs, you can still do this by training TAs in providing these consultations.

It's worth it. This term I've used this approach most consistently to date. I can tell which of the final projects were written by students who didn't manage to visit me. 2/
May 2, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
My dear man, please do not get into the business of trying to teach elementary school children. I beseech you. Don’t even think about it. No. Fourty years ago we still had thesauri banned from any admissions test or course exam. Since then thesaurus theory has seeped into every form of punditry. It cannot be questioned or debated. It is the new cacography.

Aug 11, 2021 15 tweets 4 min read
Let's trace the self-alleged non-political cabal at play here. A cabal trying to change current principles of gender-affirmative care for trans youth. While conducting no original research of their own.

May I introduce, Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM). 1/ What do they do?

Mostly they lobby for "evidence-informed healthcare" for "children, adolescents, and young adults with gender dysphoria."

If you believe a society with that narrow a focus doesn't have very particular political goals, you must be freshly born. 2/
Aug 10, 2021 7 tweets 2 min read
This part of #ColinWright's interview went on for quite a bit: he made his own example of not landing a TT job evidence for how rotten he thinks academia is. But he didn't mention once that his supervisor & co-author was a fraudster & that those co-retractions dragged him down.
Aug 10, 2021 8 tweets 4 min read
#JesseSingal, true to form, keeps hammering his list of requested corrections on all doors.

Do others remember when he copied his lawyer in an email and said it was certainly not a legal threat? Now he says someone saying corrections might appear “Soon…” is “ominous.” 🙃 One can read the DSM-IV as #JesseSingal does, hunting obsessively for those “misrepresentations” for which he then asks for corrections.

It’s been widely discussed though how changes in the DSM-V were to remove transness from being an identity disorder.

Aug 9, 2021 42 tweets 8 min read
#ColinWright, #Quillette editor: "Being trans is just a state of mind. . .you can't empirically verify it in any way."

I know we didn't really need any more confirmation. But here it is. When asked about his previous identification as a progressive, this is how he defines it: "I was pro the gay rights movement, and yeah, for sure."

Yep. Progressive. When you support legal and political changes that have just happened and without any of your participation.
Aug 9, 2021 8 tweets 3 min read
"The same evolutionary & biological processes that. . .result in a shorter average lifespan for men than women also contribute to the sex differences in economic outcomes (e.g., annual income) & political participation." #Quillette authors

The whole paragraph is a trip.  It is the gap on these dim...
Jun 16, 2021 4 tweets 2 min read
WTF. #AbigailShrier

Also, I enjoyed My Little Ponies in middle age. Call yourself childish, Abigail. I'm reading this Shrier piece--follow Merkin's link if you're curious--and an obvious pattern is this.

#AbigailShrier reports with benevolence and understanding on these children's disabilities and mental health struggles UNLESS it's gender dysphoria.
Jun 16, 2021 13 tweets 3 min read
Just yesterday I wrote a wee theoretical thread on the concept of good faith. And today, I receive the apposite gift of the arguer who knows to smile in good faith while trying to stab you at the same time.

Here are some fun aspects of the pattern. Image 1. Asks questions that sound serious and and at first curious and sincere, but that only ever end up requiring extra work of you while he is never offering any work of his own (beyond the well-trained talking points that are the basis of his questions).
Jun 16, 2021 5 tweets 1 min read
Yes. This is a policy I‘d fully support.

🔥🔥🔥

Also, set a base cost-of-living for college/uni students, then give it to those who supply documentation of their own & their parents‘ finances that shows they can’t fund themselves. Simplify award funding & feed into the bursary. Honestly, I think North American higher education has gone way way overboard with topical awards and special prizes and conditional scholarships. It ties up so many resources: dept staff who could be doing other things, profs who could use the time researching and teaching.
Jun 16, 2021 5 tweets 1 min read
"Billionaire businessman and right-wing political donor Richard Uihlein, who owns the shipping supply company Uline, gave $400,000 to the FDRLST Media Foundation. Conservative funding vehicle DonorsTrust contributed $249,000, and the Thomas W. Smith Foundation added $150,000. "The three known donors to the FDRLST Media Foundation also fund the nonprofit behind the news site RealClearPolitics. The Real Clear Foundation has been around for a number of years and took in close to $3.8 million in 2019, roughly $500,000 more than the year before."
Jun 15, 2021 6 tweets 2 min read
On the concept of good faith.

Let's contrast two views.

View 1. Good faith as interactional tool. Be nice. Remain polite. Summarize the other's views strongmanly.

If your own views are quite different, you could exhibit this kind of good faith almost to the point of trolling. In fact, some perceive it as trolling and will complain about that.

Say you want to listen. You want to learn. (Whether you do or not.) Genuinely, you want to understand. You have one more question. And another question.

All might go well.

Or not.
Jun 15, 2021 9 tweets 3 min read
Jimmy Concepts thinks that the concept of structure in critical race theory refers to (1) structuralism in language (!!!)—which he thinks is postmodernism saying there is no agency (!!!)—and (2) Marx’s superstructure (!!!).

ROFL.

ROFL.

*gasps for air*

*laughs louder still* I really cannot express how funny that is.

His words are a salad mixed from miniature children’s toys and clown figurines.