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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • I’m not sure that’s what the criticism is about. The law references ego-dystonic sexual orientation as one of the “mental illnesses” it covers. From Wikipedia (edits mine):

    Ego-dystonic sexual orientation is a highly controversial mental health diagnosis that was included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) from 1980 to 1987 and in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) from 1990 to 2019. Individuals could be diagnosed with ego-dystonic sexual orientation if their sexual orientation or attractions were at odds with their idealized self-image. It describes a conflict between the sexual orientation a person wishes to have and their actual sexual orientation.

    The addition constituted a political compromise between those who believed that homosexuality was a pathological condition and those who believed it was a normal variant of sexuality. Under pressure from mounting scientific evidence that the desire to be heterosexual is a common phase in a gay, lesbian, or bisexual person’s identity development rather than a mental illness, the diagnosis was removed. Leading up to the ICD-11, a WHO-appointed working group recommended its deletion, due to a lack of clinical utility and the potential for negative consequences. The ICD-11 does not include any diagnostic categories that can be applied to people on the basis of sexual orientation, bringing the ICD in line with the DSM-5.

    The current manuals for mental disorders (ICD-11, DSM-5) already include diagnostic categories that can be used as a basis for providing healthcare to LGBTIQ+ people (e g., gender dysphoria). The criticism of the Peruvian law is that it is based on outdated categories that regard the actual sexual identities and orientations as a whole as “mental illnesses” (rather than the affective and emotional issues that LGBTIQ+ are vulnerable to), which has no clinical value and is extremely prone to being used to discriminate against LGBTIQ+ people.






  • In his complaint, Lau argued it is discriminatory to keep artwork, like that of the Picasso painting displayed exclusively in the Ladies Lounge, away from he and other men who pay to enter the museum. (…) He’s asked for an apology from the museum and for men to either be allowed into the lounge or permitted to pay a discounted ticket price for the museum.

    Kaechele and lawyers for the MONA rebutted by saying the exclusion of men is the point of the Ladies Lounge exhibit. “The men are experiencing Ladies Lounge, their experience of rejection is the artwork,” Kaechele told the Guardian. “OK, they experience the artwork differently than women, but men are certainly experiencing the artwork as it’s intended.”

    This is going to be much trickier than it seems based only on the headline. Both anti-discrimination laws and the freedom of art are very fundamental rights, and a decision that weighs these against each other will not be easy to reach (at least I would think so). Curious to see how this lands, although I expect that the museum will come out on top, because the disadvantage that this special exhibit poses to the man (the museum would even argue there is none) is probably not big or permanent enough to justify a restriction on the freedom of art as big as this would entail (and I guess the museum probably discussed this with their lawyer beforehand).


  • If I were a JRR Tolkien or Herbert with a universe in my mind, it would be so much more pleasing to make an engine that generates anything from that world that to just write out a few stories from it.

    Tolkien was a linguist with a deep fondness for nature and spirituality. He loved creating languages and building beautiful, natural worlds around them. I can’t imagine a single person who would be less enamored by the idea of machinistic language devices that people use to “generate everything”. I think he would be either bored by this possibility or deeply disturbed.