Pamela Paresky🎗️(Habits of a Free Mind) Profile picture
Not an important person. Writer, Psychologist, Mother. Opinions my own & I might change them. You defend terrorism=I block you. #IStandWithIsrael #BringThemHome
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Jun 22, 2023 • 13 tweets • 8 min read
Some female athletes have been informed that to be on girls' and women's teams, they must compete with male athletes, undress in front of them, and allow them (even with fully intact male genitalia) to be nude around the young women––because of how those male athletes feel.🧵1/ A biologically male's internal feeling of being a girl or woman is a very personal thing. If moving through life presenting in a way that appears female makes a male person feel more comfortable, that is an individual right. Female girls & women, however, also have rights. 2/

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Mar 8, 2022 • 21 tweets • 16 min read
A pair of prestigious @nytimes staff writers posted on Twitter about a young writer’s first op-ed in their paper — and provided an illustration of the piling on dynamic (as opposed to thoughtful critique) that encourages self-censorship, about which she wrote: 1/ They’re among the “High Net Prestige” (HNP) group in our online prestige economy (JB has over 400k followers. NHJ has over 600k.)

High follower count = prestige

Blue check = prestige

Prestige = social currency

We’ll call it “prestige-coin.” (Illustrations by @waitbutwhy) 2/
Dec 1, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Now critics of wokeism or anti-racism or critical race theory or the 1619 Project or cancel culture or Black Lives Matter apparently don’t believe there are racial inequities, think “anti-racism is anti-white,” and their thinking is white supremacist. 1/
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… The inability to recognize—and the utter lack of curiosity about—arguments against Kendi’s brand of “anti-racism” plus denigrating anyone who doesn’t conform as white supremacist is a perfect example of using moral pollution to create an “us” versus “them” paradigm. 2/
Sep 26, 2021 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
Important piece by @slsatel in @TheAtlantic (🧵) “researchers found some common traits between left-wing and right-wing authoritarians, including a ‘preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior…” 1/ “…cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy, and moral absolutism.’” @slsatel reports.
Part of the problem with recognizing these tendencies is political one-sidedness in academia. 2/
amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/62…
Jun 5, 2021 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
Here, @AmiHorowitz successfully solicits donations to pay for terrorist attacks on #Jews. Then (see next tweet)... At a conference co-sponsored by Duke and UNC, Anti-Israel rhetoric quickly devolves into unvarnished antisemitism, including familiar anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, and an antisemitic song with audience participation. (More in next tweet.) @AmiHorowitz
Mar 22, 2021 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
Here’s what you get in a “critically informed” curriculum.
• Antisemitism isn’t a set of conspiracy theories claiming Jews have unmerited success & power, it’s merely part of a “broader pattern of racism.”
• Jews have unmerited success & power as a result of becoming white. 1/ This curriculum teaches that it’s harder for gay Jews to be Jewish than it is for heterosexual Jews. (Presumably Jews, though overwhelmingly progressive, aren’t accepting.) Nonetheless, a gay man has Jewish privilege (“unearned benefits”) that non-Jews of all kinds don’t have. 2/
Mar 10, 2021 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD:
I’ve been thinking about the new moral culture some call “wokeness.” I see similarities to what happens in a cult. In both, people want to be better & do good. But there’s a kind of incrementalism that moves people from the good parts to the extremely troubling. 1/ People in a cult often disconnect from friends, family, and institutions who appear to be hostile to the ideology. Those who were once considered part of the group but disavow the ideology are not merely wrong, but are suppressive and enemies of the good.
2/
Feb 15, 2021 • 23 tweets • 7 min read
Just re-reading the latest by @benyt and appreciating the courage it takes to be this incisive about his own employer. Also, let's not let broader issues get lost when learning the details of the McNeil use/mention debacle. 1/ nytimes.com/2021/02/14/bus… This is particularly insightful (& creepy): "It seeks to be the voice whispering in your ear in the morning, the curriculum in your child’s history class and the instructions on caramelizing shallots for the pasta you’re making..." (Maybe return to being a source of info?) 2/
Jan 31, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Hahahahahahahaha!!!! Here’s how Jews have managed to survive continued attempts at vilification, exile, and genocide — and even thrive wherever we’ve landed: We never lost our sense of humor. Image More news here: newyorker.com/humor/borowitz…
Oct 16, 2020 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
Yet again, the Grey Lady doth protest too much. nytimes.com/2020/10/16/mag… From the article above: "A few notes on this phrase, “true founding”: It was written by a digital editor and approved by me. (Hannah-Jones, as a staff writer at the magazine is not typically involved in matters of digital display language.)" 🤔
Jun 8, 2020 • 25 tweets • 9 min read
“It is now quite common among journalists to think of opinions not as arguments to be advanced, engaged with, and potentially refuted, but as a kind of viral propaganda with the power to convert readers...” @DamonLinker 1a/
theweek.com/articles/91814… “On this view, published ideas are a kind of ideological contagion. If the ideas are good, they can serve as a kind of vaccination against evil. But if they are bad, they function as an intellectual and moral pathogen that are better off being eradicated.” @DamonLinker 1b/
Oct 13, 2019 • 30 tweets • 26 min read
It’s happening. “The culture wars are over. The battle is over knowledge.” @SovMichael @SovNations
@peterboghossian @ConceptualJames @HPluckrose
Mar 3, 2019 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
In case you were wondering why the grievance studies project matters (@HPluckrose @ConceptualJames @peterboghossian), NEJM published an “auto-ethnography” by a white dr. who concludes that all white doctors are racist. Her evidence? She’s racist and she’s read “White Fragility.” “White Fragility” seems to form the foundation of the author’s assumptions about 1) her own racism, and 2) the generalizability of her discovery that she is racist to the (presumed racist) actions of every other white doctor in the country. libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/v…
Jan 9, 2019 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
By using the term “so-called” in this tweet, the APA implicitly acknowledges the capriciousness of taking a basket of what they call “traits” (though many are actually behaviors) and labeling them together, “traditional masculinity.”
(@cjprofman, @clayroutledge, @CHSommers)
1/ Identifying behaviors that are empirically found to be both psychologically harmful to those who engage in them, and damaging to their relationships (such as suppressing emotions and masking distress) is important. Noting gender differences in frequency/likelihood is helpful.
2/
Oct 3, 2018 • 14 tweets • 8 min read
THREAD: @MoiraWeigel’s review of The Coddling in @Guardian illustrates the very problems we describe in the book. I was chief researcher & in-house editor. We expected some reviewers to cast aspersions rather than use arguments, so we put that in a footnote in ch4. 1/13 The review does not respond to or rebut @glukianoff and @JonHaidt’s core arguments about the 3 Untruths, rising depression/anxiety, or the damaging effects of overprotection and social media. Rather, the central tactic is ad hominem. 2/13