Throwing Like a Girl: Is Biology Allowed to Explain Anything?
Reality’s Last Stand
Fausto-Sterling’s treatment of sex differences in throwing reveals how modern Blank Slate thinking survives by acknowledging biology in principle while dismissing it in practice.
City Journal
Two former NBA stars declare themselves eligible for the league’s dra, forcing a reckoning over gender identity in women’s basketball.
United Nations is Now Controlled by a Cabal of Radical Feminists
Domestic Abuse and Violence International Alliance (DAVIA)
Dr Rebekah Wanic on the Just Checking In podcast
Episode description: Rebekah is an academic, leadership consultant, life coach and the Founder of ‘Vent To Reinvent’. She is also the Founder of the SubStack ‘PsychSkeptics’. We came across Rebekah through an article she wrote on a publication called Minding The Campus called ‘The Disappearing Male Student’ which friend of the pod Dr James Nuzzo shared. In the article she talks about the disparity in student numbers between male and female students on US college campuses, where men now make up around 41-44% of the student population. She also wrote about how male students are treated on these campuses, whether it comes to political debate, fears of cancellation by their female peers or even their female professors. In this episode we discuss Rebekah’s wider academic journey, why she enjoys the freedom and flexibility academia gives her as a career, a deep dive into the men on campus article, some of the other articles she’s written and her own attempted cancellation she experienced in a previous job. For Rebekah’s mental health journey, she was hospitalised a lot as a child for asthma issues. She suffered from depression from the age of 13 to her mid-20s and an eating disorder from 13-30 as well, which came in the form of anorexia and then developed into bulimia. We talk about the impact that had on her mental health, how she overcame it, her positive experience of therapy and how it empowered her to overcome her ED, take action and own it.
University suspends academic whose investigation exposed disgraced Cambridge Professor Jason Arday
The College Fix
Ghent university shouldn’t have suspended Nathan Cofnas
The Spectator
Elite Universities Reward Disgraced Leaders with Million-Dollar Soft Landings
National Review
Professor turned writer-whistleblower exposes rot in modern academia
The College Fix
DOJ says federal programs to increase racial minorities in STEM are unconstitutional
The College Fix
Department of War orders research security audits at 30 U.S. academic institutions
The College Fix
Med Schools Are over Their Politics Fever
Off Label
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise
Abstract: Introduction: The purpose of this study was to compare group level resistance training (RT)-induced changes in ultrasound measured muscle thickness (ΔMTUS) with criterion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures of muscle growth (i.e. changes in maximum anatomical cross-sectional area [ΔACSAMRI] and volume [ΔVOLMRI]), and examine the relationship between ΔMTUS and both ΔACSAMRI and ΔVOLMRI, for the quadriceps femoris (QF) and its constituent muscles. Materials and methods: Healthy young males (n=39) completed 15 weeks of lower-body RT (knee extension, knee flexion, and leg press; x3 sessions/wk). Pre and post RT participants undertook dominant thigh musculoskeletal scans. Ultrasound and MRI scans were manually segmented to quantify pre to post ΔMTUS, ΔACSAMRI, and ΔVOLMRI of constituent muscles and the overall QF. Results: ΔMTUS significantly underestimated increases in ΔACSAMRI (0.001≤ p ≤0.002) and ΔVOLMRI (0.001≤ p ≤0.012) for the overall QF and two out of four constituent muscles (vastus lateralis and vastus medialis), with a mean offset/underestimate of more than half the change in criterion MRI measures, and an average individual error that was typically more than the change in criterion MRI measures. Although vastus intermedius and rectus femoris ΔMTUS did not differ compared to ΔACSAMRI, and ΔVOLMRI (0.057 ≤ p ≤ 0.113). There were no significant bivariate correlations between ΔMTUS and either ΔACSAMRI or ΔVOLMRI for the overall QF (-0.152 ≤ r ≤ -0.015, 0.393≤ adjusted p ≤1.431) or any constituent muscles of the QF (-0.197 ≤ r ≤ 0.422, 0.140≤ adjusted p ≤1.002) in absolute or relative terms. Conclusions: Overall, ΔMTUS was not an accurate or valid index of RT-induced muscle growth and it is recommended to exercise substantial caution in the use and interpretation of MTUS in the context of RT adaptation.
Empathizing and systemizing cognitive traits in the sciences and humanities
Personality and Individual Differences (2007)
Abstract: or several decades, cognitive research on personality and individual differences has focused on psychological traits other than general intelligence. Here we present data on empathizing and systemizing cognitive traits in science and humanities students. In view of existing data on autistic traits in scientists, we hypothesized that the science students would show higher systemizing than empathizing and that the humanities students would show the opposite pattern. Our findings suggest that individuals in the sciences possess a cognitive style that is more systemizing-driven than empathizing-driven, whereas individuals in humanities possess a cognitive style that is much more empathizing-driven than systemizing-driven. Both type of major and gender independently and highly significantly contribute to this effect. Within the sciences, the systemizing pattern is especially pronounced in engineering and physics. Men and women have been found previously to differ in their systemizing–empathizing cognitive style, with men being stronger in systemizing and women being stronger in empathizing. We find the same gender differences within each type of major.
SSRN (2014)
Abstract: The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) was enacted under Clinton administration to strengthen the child support system and promote parental responsibility through tougher enforcement and paternity establishment. Low-income fathers are particularly hard hit by the enforcement. This paper uses state-level data to analyze the effect of tougher child support enforcement and paternity establishment on crime rates. I find a strong, positive effect between the child support order rate and the introduction of income withholding for child support on crime. But an increase in the paternity establishment rate will lower crime rate.
Boys are rarely taught to be caring. If they were, we could better prevent domestic violence
The Conversation
The Guardian
(See my brief post on X for why this article is in the Rubbish Bin.)
Queensland University of Technology defends removing ‘merit’ from hiring policy
ABC (2023)
(NB. Credit to Critiquing Feminism for bringing this article to my attention, after I shared the article that I have linked below on X.)
Integrating Merit and Equality to Address Gender Inequality at Work
Gender, Work & Organization
Abstract: Although the extant literature provides a comprehensive account of workplace gender inequalities, the mechanisms that produce inequalities, and the underlying assumptions and principles of those mechanisms, remain opaque. The concept of “merit,” although morally persuasive and ubiquitous in organizational contexts, is a significant point of tension in redressing gender inequality. This article firstly identifies three significant critiques of merit/ocracy identified in the literature, challenging assumptions that merit is objective, impartial and unbiased; independent of social, historical, and organizational contexts; and a reflection of individual circumstances and choice. Based on these three critiques, the paper then develops a framework that articulates the discourse, praxis and outcomes of meritocratic systems which undermine gender equity principles and practices. Finally, the paper draws on strategies that have attempted to redress gender inequality in order to illustrate how meritocratic systems can be imbued with, and hence directly confront, the current and historical reality of unequal gender outcomes.
Gender, Work & Organization
Abstract: This paper explores the work experience and career trajectories of people working across 12 UK-based universities awarded an Athena Swan Charter, an international scheme that recognizes commitment to gender equality. Despite, or perhaps due to institutional reward leading to gender-washed “peacocking”, everyday sexisms and gender regimes are sustained through acts of gendered microinsults that often go unnoticed and are individualized. Women in “awarded” institutions report being spoken over, disproportionately allocated academic housework, experience re/enforced gendered boundaries, and inadequate equality policy provision. They also identify microinvalidations through exclusion from meetings, mis/appropriation of their ideas, gender inequality denial, and overt or covert resistance to gender equity initiatives. An analysis of these microaggressions determines their interconnected, mutually constitutive, and reproductive nature; it suggests that institutional gender-washing propagates a misconception of current levels of gender inequality which kindles “equity-backlash”. The findings reveal unintended outcomes of gender award schemes that might be mitigated through visibilising and addressing inequality regimes and their impacts.
Gender inequality in education in the United States: evidence from PIAAC
Studies in the Education of Adults
Abstract: The research on gender inequality in education covers an all-round and whole-process analysis of education’s access, process, and outcome. The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) directly measures adults’ critical cognitive skills. It contains detailed information such as education history, employment history, and family background, which provides a data source that reveals the multidimensionality, continuity, and imbalance of gender inequality in the function of the whole education system. Taking the function mode of UNESCO (input-process-output-outcome-ultimate outcome) as the analysis framework, through the analysis of 12,330 samples of the US PIAAC survey, it is found that there is significant gender inequality in the US education, and inequality runs throughout the whole education system. This kind of inequality is complex. Although there is no absolute dominant gender, women are at a disadvantage on the whole. Solving the multidimensional gender inequality in education is crucial for realising all-around and substantive equality for its role in sustainable development, peaceful societies, and individual well-being.
(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)
Sacralizing Masculinity: Rethinking Anti-Feminist Politics on the Far Right
International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society
Abstract: Prominent accounts of the far-right upsurge rest on the notion of backlash. However, I argue that backlash explanations for the rise of anti-feminist and far-right mobilization, which center on defensive reactions concentrated among older, white, materially precarious strata against progressivism, are inadequate to explain the youth-centered gender polarization and the emergence of the manosphere, a loose digital ecosystem centered around radicalized views of masculinity, men’s rights, and misogyny. I advance an alternative theoretical explanation that centers on sacralization, a social process by which collectives deem certain values as sacred. The theory explains masculinity politics through the power of collective sacred symbols and the formation of in-groups and out-groups. Drawing on Hans Joas, it highlights tensions between the universalist and particularist tendencies of sacralization. These tensions lead to the paper’s original typology of universalized particularism, which appropriates universalist narratives for particularist ends, and particularism contra universalism, which pits particularist ideals against universalist moral claims. The utility of the sacralization framework and the typology is illustrated through an analysis of Andrew Tate, a manosphere influencer known for promoting violence against women, by examining his religious messaging and the collective sacralization of his following.
Against cure, against backlash: neuroaffirmative responses to antifeminism and the war on autism
Frontiers in Political Science
Excerpt: “Antifeminism is the backbone of global far-right politics (Sanders and Jenkins, 2022) and is intersectional by nature (Goetz and Mayer, 2024) as it attacks non-conformity at its heart by calling for a racialized and able bodyminded sex-gender system, differentially affecting those who do not comply with white supremacist views (Choi et al., 2025; Maddox, 2025). A particular aspect of this political quest for conformity has recently gained visibility in Trump’s administration: the war on autism (McGuire, 2016). Through an intersectional framework (Collins and Bilge, 2020), we argue that autism reveals the core contradiction of far-right supremacy: a logic that can glorify a trait as a “superpower” in some (white, male) bodies while seeking to eliminate it as a defect in others. This paper historically situates the pursuit of autism’s prevention and cure within the broader contexts of eugenic fascism and antifeminist backlash, to understand its contemporary weaponization by the far-right. We then delineate the consequences of this war for autistic lives and conclude by exploring neuroaffirmative counterstrategies.”
“Instead of just a drive by”: Clinician and birthing person perspectives on consent for toxicology testing during pregnancy
Pregnancy
Abstract: Introduction: Although state, federal, and professional guidelines stipulate the need for informed consent for toxicology testing during pregnancy, consent is often inadequately obtained. The objective of this study was to explore birthing person and obstetric clinician experiences with consent for toxicology testing during pregnancy. Methods: Semi‐structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 25 obstetric clinicians and 15 birthing persons who had toxicology testing performed during their delivery hospitalization. Interviews assessed clinical decision‐making around toxicology testing, perceptions of testing utility, as well as consent and communication practices. Transcripts were then double‐coded and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: Three primary themes were identified. First, information disclosure during consent conversations for toxicology testing deviated from normative standards for informed consent in obstetrics. Second, barriers to adequate information provision included clinicians’ limited knowledge of and discomfort with the test’s risks, the infrequency of testing in clinical practice, and birthing peoples’ discomfort asking questions within the physician–patient power hierarchy. Third, birthing people felt unable to decline testing due to fears of child protective services involvement and perceived pressure from clinicians to undergo testing. Conclusion: While both birthing people and clinicians identified challenges related to appropriate information provision during consent conversations, birthing people critically underscored a lack of voluntariness related to their fears of child protective services and experiences of pressure from clinicians to consent to testing. As a result, consent practices failed to adhere to normative standards for informed consent within obstetrics, which undermined patient autonomy.
(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)
Learning as action? How white racial ignorance limits equity work in schools and communities
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
Abstract: This qualitative case study explores how parents and community leaders in a predominantly white, small town in the Midwest understand racism and racial equity, and how they work to promote racial equity in their schools and community. I use Mills’s concept of white racial ignorance to analyze the relationships between participants’ understanding, learning, and action around issues of race. The findings indicate that most white participants described racism primarily as an individual or interpersonal problem and perceived themselves as needing to learn about race. As a result, their racial equity efforts mainly focused on learning. However, this learning was disconnected. It had a limited impact on their stated understandings of racism and did not prompt them to take collective action for institutional change. Based on the research findings, I conclude that learning about race in ways that do not explicitly and intentionally address structural racism ultimately perpetuates white supremacy.
Beyond performative decolonization: Epistemic justice in degrowth curricula
Social Sciences & Humanities Open
Abstract: While universities across the Global North increasingly adopt decolonial rhetoric, most initiatives remain limited to what Ahmed (2012) calls “non-performative” diversity work, which obscures rather than challenges underlying power structures. This article moves beyond performative decolonization by examining how degrowth curricula operationalize authentic epistemic justice in university transformation. Through critical analysis of the Autonomous University of Barcelona MA program in Degrowth: Ecology, Economics and Policy, this paper demonstrates how heterodox (economic) pedagogies move beyond symbolic inclusion to implement structural changes that challenge epistemic violence and promote intersectional environmental and social justice. Drawing on Fricker’s epistemic injustice framework, Santos’ (2014) concept of epistemicide, and Schöneberg and Narayanaswamy’s (2024) critique of performative decolonization, this paper offers an integrated theoretical framework that distinguishes authentic transformation from institutional co-optation. The analysis reveals how the Barcelona School moves beyond performative gestures through the systematic operationalization of anti-utilitarian frameworks, the implementation of pluriversal pedagogies that center Global South leadership, and the structural integration of Indigenous knowledge systems that challenge, rather than accommodate, existing academic hierarchies. The study employs document analysis of curriculum materials, theoretical synthesis informed by COST 19129 decolonizing development networks, and critical policy analysis to name concrete mechanisms for moving beyond performative diversity toward structural epistemic justice. This paper advances decolonial scholarships by developing an anti-performative analytical framework that distinguishes authentic transformation from inauthentic university propaganda. Findings show that degrowth education offers tangible pathways beyond performativity by dismantling rather than diversifying mainstream economic paradigms; implementing collective rather than competitive knowledge production systems; centering rather than merely including Indigenous and Global South epistemologies; and structurally transforming rather than symbolically addressing institutional power relations.
Social Sciences & Humanities Open
Abstract: This conceptual article engages with the ‘decolonial turn’ in higher education and argues for a decolonial-intersectional framework that integrates decoloniality and intersectionality to address the interconnected oppressions of race, gender, class, and other axes of marginalization. Drawing on foundational scholarship in decolonial thought and intersectionality theory, this framework critiques the coloniality of power and knowledge, while advocating for transformative practices that affirm diverse epistemologies and lived experiences of marginalized communities in higher education. By conceptualizing intersectionality as inherently decolonial and decolonization as an intersectional process, the framework highlights how colonial legacies and intersecting oppressions co-constitute inequities in academia. The article theorizes the potential of this approach to foster epistemic resistance, reimagining universities as spaces that interrogate and dismantle colonial structures and Eurocentric biases. This potential is shown through illustrative examples and recommendations, emphasizing the value of a decolonial-intersectional lens in advancing equitable, just, and decolonized academic practices and research agendas.
Social Sciences & Humanities Open
Abstract: In this collaborative meditation, understandings and practices of academic living in the Nordics as Afro-Nordic feminists are enacted through an explorative methodology of engaging and re-imagining forms for knowledge production through the lens of Black feminist theorizations. In particular, we rehearse practices of collective care through a form of collective note keeping, a practice which is in kinship with Christina Sharpe’s concept of notes (2023). In practicing this collective note keeping, we attempt to make explicit some of the conditions, contexts, and practices which make up the antiblack climate (Sharpe, 2016) of academia, as well as the Black feminist values and practices which help us weather these conditions. In our notes, we offer a generative critique of not only the conditions which structure the experiences of African and Black feminists in Nordic academia, but also the often seemingly progressive efforts which purport to make academia a more inclusive space. Grounded in our specific, overlapping yet different positions, experiences, and relations to academia, we also explore the ways in which our collective facilitates experimentation with alternative ways of being, relating, and co-creating knowledge which center Black feminist ethics of care, collaboration, and shared memory. We share these notes reflecting on our work together to illustrate the possibilities of imagining and creating fugitive spaces of collective care within, outside, and against the academic industrial machine.
Social Sciences & Humanities Open
Abstract: This paper captures honest and courageous intergenerational dialogue between three Black women - 2 students, and 1 faculty member – who reflect on their experiences in the Canadian academy. In this, the authors reflect on issues such as imposter syndrome, Black humanity, anti-Black sexism, EDI initiatives, and the impact of all of these dynamics in our places of learning and work on our overall health and wellbeing. Towards this end, we also reflect on what keeps us motivated to continue doing the good work we are engaged in.
(My brief comment on this article is available on X here).
Mad, mentally ill and neurodivergent professionals: epistemic injustice in practice
Disability & Society
Key points: Though Madness, mental illness and neurodiversity (MMIND) differ in important ways, they all carry (mis)perceptions that people are less capable and less credible. Beliefs that Mad, mentally ill and neurodivergent people are less credible may be a particular problem in professional work contexts. Experiences of Madness, mental illness and neurodivergence may bring valuable strengths to professional practice, yet those are undermined when people are perceived as less-capable and less-trustworthy. When professionals are pressured to hide their Mad, mentally ill and neurodivergent identities, there are costs to them, to their colleagues, to their clients/patients, and to their professions, as new and different ways of doing, being and thinking get suppressed.
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