I remember how it was -- JR
Biden is considering extending student loan payment freeze for several months and forgiving $10,000 per borrower
President Biden is considering extending a Covid-19-induced pause on student loan payments yet again and the federal government has in recent weeks told student loan servicers not to contact borrowers about making payments again one month ahead of the moratorium's deadline.
The president is also still considering forgiving up to $10,000 in student loan debt per borrower.
The current moratorium is expected to end Aug. 31 and Biden could extend it through the end of 2022 or until next summer as the president seeks to appeal to young voters ahead of the midterm elections.
Debt forgiveness may follow the extension, though the president has not reached a final decision, according to Bloomberg. Biden has been under intense pressure from progressives to do forgive as much as $50,000 in student debt and it's unclear if forgiving $10,000 will soften their cries.
'Today is good day to cancel student debt,' Rep. Ilhan Omar wrote on Twitter Tuesday.
Critics have said that student loan forgiveness would disproportionately benefit the wealthy, and for that the Biden administration plans to cap eligibility somewhere between a salary of $125,000 and $150,000.
Biden has neared a decision on student loan forgiveness three times over the last several months but backed away each time, one Democrat close to the White House told Bloomberg. At a time of 9.1 percent 40-year-high inflation, aides worry about giving Republicans another opportunity to say they are adding fuel to the fire.
But the Education Department has been telling student loan servicers not to give borrowers the required advanced notice that their payments will kick in ahead of the Aug. 31 moratorium deadline, Scott Buchanan, the executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, told the Wall Street Journal. 'Maybe the department expects that the White House will yet again kick the can down the road.'
Biden told reporters last week that another extension was indeed on the table.
Federal student loan payments have not been required in over two years, first put on pause in March 2020. The freeze has been extended six times since then, twice under former President Trump and four times under Biden.
And while Biden has not come to a decision on a mass student loan forgiveness plan, his Education Department has implemented smaller plans to forgive the debts of those who were defrauded by schools or borrowers and those who work in public service. So far under Biden around $26 billion has been forgiven from hundreds of thousands of borrowers.
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The Sexual Experiment at the Ivy Leagues
Until very recently, most people were unaware that asserting that only women can menstruate and become pregnant could be controversial, or that pronouns could be incendiary. Yet today, gender ideology dominates the news cycle. Netflix employees protested Dave Chappelle’s comedy special with “transphobic” jokes. Avid Harry Potter fans boycotted J. K. Rowling’s work because of her supposedly “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” views. It’s not merely a culture war. The State Department recognized International Pronouns Day. Recently, President Biden signed an executive order to “advance LGBTQI+ equality,” which in part promotes “expanded access to gender-affirming care,” even for minors.
How did such radical social change happen so quickly? As incubators of gender fundamentalists, universities are equipping students with ever-expanding terminology for sexual orientation and encouraging activism without cultivating a sense of intellectual humility. Graduates become the directors of corporations, editors of newspapers, and staffers to politicians, thus occupying powerful positions that shape American culture. To help readers understand the college-campus dynamics, National Review compiled academic coursework, extracurricular programming, and institutional resources related to gender and sexual ethics at the eight Ivy League institutions, which serve as exemplars of higher education and train the country’s future elites.
Brown University
Brown’s Pembroke Center houses various academic initiatives, including the gender- and sexuality-studies department, which offers an undergraduate major. In April, the Pembroke Center hosted Tufts University professor Kareem Khubchandani, who responds to “any pronouns” and performs as the drag queen “LaWhore Vagistan,” a pun on Lahore, Pakistan, and a nod to Khubchandani’s research on South Asia.
At Brown, one also finds the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender, whose mission is “to engage the campus community through a feminist praxis of activism and academics.” The center’s FAQ page includes: “I don’t identify as a woman. Is the Sarah Doyle Center for me?” The center responds in the affirmative: “Yes! The Sarah Doyle Center welcomes people regardless of gender identity, presentation, or sexuality.”
Brown recently offered the course Pornography. The “course agreement” subsection of the syllabus clarifies that “this course will involve our viewing and discussing sexually explicit material” and that, by enrolling, students consent that “I have read the syllabus for Philosophy 1576, Pornography, and understand that the course will include both discussion of and viewings of sexually explicit material (i.e., pornography).” Students would be expected to “practice analyzing pornographic media” and “to watch one film per week, privately”; in addition, the syllabus notes, “every other week we’ll devote a class to discussing two films.” Upcoming Brown courses include Queer Dance, Black Queer Life, and Latinx Social Movement History.
Brown University affirms that it is “committed to supporting trans students, staff and faculty and the LGBTQ Center is here to help provide our campus community with information, education, support and resources.” The LGBTQ Center’s recent programming included a voguing workshop and a “Disability & Sex” series, which consisted of “discussion covering pleasure for non-normative bodies & sex toy accessibility.” The center shares various infographics on social media, such as endorsements of phrases like “people with penises” and “people who menstruate.”
Columbia University
Upcoming Columbia courses in women’s and gender studies include Indigenous Feminisms, Decolonization and Feminist Critique, Practicing Intersectionality, Abolitionist Feminism, and Theorizing Activism.
In 1889, Columbia University refused to admit women and founded the affiliate women’s-only school Barnard College, whose mission was and remains “to provide generations of promising, high-achieving young women with an outstanding liberal arts education in a community where women lead.” In 2016, Barnard began accepting “applicants who consistently live and identify as women, regardless of the gender assigned to them at birth,” specifying that “the applicant must identify herself as a woman and her application materials must support this self-identification.” This policy disqualifies applicants who are female but identify as male, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming.
The Columbia “identity-based group” Conversio Virium is described as “the oldest university student-run BDSM education group in the United States.” The club stresses that one of its “community pillars” is to honor preferred pronouns, including “xe.” The club says it is welcoming and emphasizes the need for respect: “Sometimes people have kinks that you do not personally share, and that is okay—please don’t disrespect people based on their kink.” Previous events include “Rough Sex for Nice Folks” and “Discreet Public Erotic Role Play: How to Do It Safely and Get Away With It.” Participants in the 2018 “YesFest: Beat-a-Bear Workshop” event “practice[d] negotiation, spanking, and usage of other impact-play implements.”
Cornell University
The program in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies at Cornell “offers students the opportunity to study a wide range of fields from the perspectives of feminist and LGBT critical analysis, in a global context and with the purpose of promoting social justice.” All undergraduates pursuing the major or minor in the department must fulfill a course in each of the three distribution areas: “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies (LGBT); the study of intersectionality; and geopolitics and transnationality.” One upcoming course is Nightlife, which focuses on “queer communities of color”; students “interrogate the ways in which nightlife demonstrates the queer world-making potential that exists beyond the normative 9-5 capitalist model of production.” Additional upcoming courses include Beyoncé Nation: The Remix and Queer Time and the Senses. Undergraduate students can also minor in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies.
Cornell’s Women’s Resource Center (WRC) supports “women-identified students” and “strives to be a welcoming space for people of all genders and identities.” The center “especially encourage[s] women of color, Black feminists/womanists, queer and trans folks, and people with disabilities” to be involved. In 2019, a WRC post said, “We recognize trans women as the women that they are,” emphasizing that “the Women’s Resource Center is a safe space on campus for members of the trans community and has an array of resources for members.”
In 2020, the WRC posted a statement: “We are angry, frustrated, and shaken by Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Those among us who are women and gender marginalized; black and brown; queer, trans, and gender non-confirming, immigrants; have mental health challenges or are of varying abilities; and, and, and . . . we are anxious and scared and angry.” The accompanying photo shows both Justice Barrett and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with the quote “expand the court” attributed to AOC. The WRC has shown a different attitude toward other female justices. In April 2022, it posted a photo of Ketanji Brown Jackson with the celebratory “CONFIRMED!!” In 2021, the WRC featured Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the “Woman of the Week.”
The WRC annually hosted the event “I Love Female Orgasm” and encouraged people “to come learn about everything from multiple orgasms to that mysterious G-spot.” The advertisement affirms that “all genders” are welcome, “whether you want to learn how to have your first orgasm, how to have better ones, or how to help your girlfriend.” The 2021 event “Sex in the Dark” was a “lights-off virtual event” that allowed attendees to stay anonymous and have their “deepest, darkest questions” answered by “professional sexperts.” In 2022, the WRC sponsored “Decolonizing the Body” and explained that, “when we look at menstruation through the lens of our current colonial, capitalist society, we often see pain, shame, discomfort, & disposability.”
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth’s Center for Professional Development lists resources for “womxn students.” Upcoming courses offered by the program in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies include Social Justice & the City; Radical Sexuality: Of Color, Wildness, and Fabulosity; and Sex, Celibacy & the Problem of Purity. Previous courses include #BlackLivesMatter, Black Consciousness & Black Feminisms, and Queer Popular Culture. The department sponsored the lecture “I Was a Queer Child and So Were You: Kissing, Queer Children, and Structural Change.” Other events hosted by the university include “Decolonization in the 21st Century,” “Decolonizing Environmental Politics,” and “Gender Equality in the Arctic.”
The religion department hosted the drag show “Dragmouth” with the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, which describes itself as dedicated to “the values, needs, strengths, and practices of marginalized communities” and lists “intersectionality” as a core value. The office also hosted “Transform,” a drag show that “actively disrupts the cultural gender policing, cissexism, and heterosexism on campus.”
Harvard University
Harvard offers both major and minor undergraduate degrees in studies of women, gender, and sexuality. Spring 2022 courses included Leaning In, Hooking Up: Visions of Feminism and Femininity in the 21st Century, and Indigenous Feminisms: Environmental Justice and Resistance. The spring 2021 course Topics in Advanced Performance Theory: Gender and Sexuality addressed “racialized and gendered structures of feeling; queer transnational social histories; technosexuality and mutation; and minor keys of Black unruliness and fugitivity.”
Like Brown University, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics hosted the Tufts professor who performs as “LaWhore Vagistan,” dubbed “everyone’s favorite academic South Asian drag queen auntie.” The professor regards his “greatest accomplishment” as “teaching a semester-long undergraduate course called ‘Critical Drag’ that birthed 21 new baby drag artists.” In courses, he “brings the nightclub to the classroom and vice-versa by teaching critical race, postcolonial, and gender theories through lip sync and lecture.”
The Harvard College Women’s Center addresses the question “What’s with the ‘e’ in Women’s Center?” The center explains its decision to refrain from the word “womxn” but affirms that “we emphatically welcome people of all genders and no gender into our space and invite you as collaborators in our work towards gender equity.”
The Women’s Center offers a land acknowledgment: “We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this territory, and honor and respect the many diverse Indigenous peoples still connected to this land.” It touts its “justice commitments,” namely reproductive justice, anti-fetishization, racial equity, and environmental justice. Among the workshops the center hosts is the “Gender 101” workshop on gender as a “constellation framework.”
The Harvard Women’s Center condemned the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade and committed to partnering with student organizations that are “pursuing reproductive justice goals.” These include Sexual Health Education & Advocacy throughout Harvard College (SHEATH), but not Harvard Right to Life, the pro-life student organization.
SHEATH hosts an annual “Sex Week” in the fall and “Sex Weekend” in the spring. The 2021 Sex Week included “Feel Those Good Vibrations: Sex Toys 101,” “Come Together, Right Now: Orgies 101,” and “What What, in the Butt! Anal 101.” The “F*** Fest” event celebrates Sex Week, and attendees are encouraged to wear lingerie. The 2022 Sex Weekend events included “Feelin’ Chemistry: Psychedelics and Sex,” “Pussy Portraits: Celebrating Genital Diversity,” and “Banging Beyond the Binary: Trans Sex 101”; meanwhile “oh-mazing toys” were raffled after each event.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/the-sexual-experiment-at-the-ivy-leagues/
*******************************************************Five is too young for radical gender theory
Kevin Donnelly
The Sydney parent of a 5-year-old child attending Roseville Kids Care complaining about his child being indoctrinated with radical LGBTQ+ gender theory has done Australian parents a great service.
On being interviewed by the Daily Telegraph the parent complained, ‘There was a giant out-size pride flag, it was the biggest flag in the room, far bigger than the Australian flag.’ And, ‘When I went in there was an entire wall describing different sexualities giving definitions of things like pansexual and lesbian.’
Parents have every reason to be fearful and anxious. Proven by the National Quality Framework Approved Learning Discussion Paper pre-schools are the latest ground in the cultural-left’s long march pushing radical gender and sexuality ideology.
This can be seen in the documentation.
Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity
Children have multiple and changing identities. There is a push for strengthening the identity of children and young people as Australian citizens with connection to the identities of others. Aspects of identity formation that encompass gender identity and gender expression (with a non-binary dichotomy) and family diversity are also critical.
Pre-schools and kindergartens across Australia have to abide by the Discussion Paper and there’s no doubt, compared to the previous guidelines, the proposed new framework represents a radical change.
Gone are the days when pre-schools and kindergartens focused on finger painting, learning to socialise, physical play, and learning the alphabet and rudimentary numbers. Instead, pre-schools and kindergartens are told ‘children have multiple and changing identities’.
In a similar manner to the Marxist-inspired Safe Schools gender fluidity program, the Discussion Paper states, ‘Aspects of identity formation that encompass gender identity and gender expression (with a non-binary dichotomy) and family diversity are also critical.’
At a time when most pre-schoolers want to enjoy childhood and lack the ability to conceptualise and understand complex ideas, gender activists want to weaponise the early years of childhood to indoctrinate sensitive minds to adult concepts that require sexual knowledge.
Ignored is the science proving the overwhelming majority of babies are born as girls and boys with XX and XY chromosomes respectively. Also ignored, according to Identity matters: sexual identity in Australia published by the Commonwealth’s Parliamentary Library, heterosexuality is the norm with only 4 per cent of the population aged over 15 years identifying as non-binary.
Proven by the rationale underpinning the gender fluidity Safe Schools program, funded under Labor and Liberal governments, parents need to realise that the campaign to undermine human biology and radically change how society views family, gender, and sexuality is Marxist in origin.
One of the founders of the Safe Schools program, Roz Ward, admits the school program has nothing to do with stopping bullying, rather, ‘Marxism offers both the hope and the strategy needed to create a world where human sexuality, gender and how we relate to our bodies can blossom in extraordinary, new and amazing ways.’
As argued by the Italian philosopher and cultural critic Augusto Del Noce, the origins of radical gender theory can be traced to the Marxist academic Wilhelm Reich whose book The Sexual Revolution was published in 1936. Reich argues traditional sexual morality is used to reinforce capitalist control and domination.
To bring about the socialist utopia Reich argues people must be sexually liberated and empowered to express themselves free of what he describes as ‘repressive morality’. Concepts like the nuclear family and human biology are condemned as oppressive, restrictive, and binary in nature.
During the cultural revolution of the late 60s and early 70s Reich’s book was re-discovered leading to a sexual revolution epitomised by the slogan ‘Make Love, Not War’, the birth control pill, free love, and the emergence of the gay/lesbian pride movement.
Parents also need to realise the campaign to impose this radical gender ideology now infects primary and secondary schools from preparatory to year 12. In English classrooms, students are taught that traditional fairy-tale stories like Cinderella and plays like Romeo and Juliet are guilty of heteronormativity and cis-genderism.
The Australian Education Union for over 30 years has argued ‘homosexuality and bisexuality need to be normalised’, it’s wrong to assume being male or female is ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ and the school curriculum must embrace ‘non-heterosexist language’.
While unfair discrimination is wrong and all, regardless of sexuality and gender, must be treated without prejudice, what parents are facing is a doctrinaire campaign by the cultural-left to condition children to accept its radical ideology.
Whereas education was once based on the premise the curriculum should be balanced and impartial, and that teachers should refrain from proselytising, pre-schools and schools have become one of the front lines in the Culture Wars.
As a result, instead of parents being their children’s primary educators and moral guardians the cultural-left is all pervasive. It’s time for Australian parents, as they are doing in American states including Florida and Virginia, to reassert their right to teach their children and for schools to focus on education and not Marxist-inspired indoctrination.
Childhood should be a time of innocence and wonder, a time when children can enjoy being happy, playful, and creative instead of being burdened by cultural-left ideology riven with identity politics and victimhood.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/five-is-too-young-for-radical-gender-theory/
***********************************My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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