The Post-Partisan Emporium

What Do Girls Do? Girls Become Women Heather Heying There is an eight-year-old girl who likes to play in streams and look under rocks for squirmy critters. She not only knows how to throw a ball but enjoys doing it. She loves math and logic, and has no interest in dolls or dresses. She will grow up to be a woman. Because that’s what girls do. There is another eight-year-old girl who likes to give tea parties for her stuffed animals. She likes to dance all the dances, often with other girls who like to do the same thing. She loves to read, and has no interest in trucks or trails. She will also grow up to be a woman. Because, again, that’s what girls do. One of these girls may want to be an astronaut. The other, a chef. Or a mother. Or a lawyer. An actress. A racecar driver. Are all of these desires equally likely among girls? They are not. Girls are likely to want some things more than others. But guess what: the girls who aren’t girly are still girls. You can tell, in part, by the fact

"Targeting" anti-discourse discourse has fallen in love with a word Chris Bray You do X. I say that I disagree with X, and would prefer for you to do Y. Maybe I also tell other people that you do X, and that I disagree with X. This means that I have  targeted  you.  Here’s a letter  from medical industry groups to Attorney General Merrick Garland, offering a distinct echo of last year’s  NSBA letter . Look at the second and third paragraphs: The accusation that dark actors are engaged in provocation and “targeting” is a response to people posting videos of doctors at children’s hospitals talking about gender-affirming surgery, including hysterectomies. Social media companies are aggressively removing those videos, so watch one  here  if you haven’t seen them. The fact-checkers, doing what they do, have staggered to the fainting couch,  insisting  that it’s an insane far-right conspiracy theory to claim that children’s hospitals provide gender-affirming surgery to children — a