“The Minister may certify a program or activity to be a special needs program or activity if satisfied that its purpose or primary purpose is the promotion of access, for members of a group of persons affected by any form of unlawful discrimination to which this Act applies in an area of discrimination to which this Act applies, to facilities, services or opportunities to meet their special needs or the promotion of equal or improved access for them to facilities, services and opportunities.”

The NSW government’s anti-discrimination website actively promotes the use of these exemptions, stating: “Seeking an exemption or certification under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (NSW), particularly in employment, should be part of a broader strategy to achieve inclusion and diversity.”

To receive an exemption, an organisation must apply via the government’s online portal. In applications, organisations must explain what they want the exemption for, what sections of the Act they want exemption from, how long they want the exemption for, etc. Exemptions are granted for up to 10 years and can also be renewed.

Typically, organisations apply for exemptions so that they can discriminate by race or sex in hiring. Sections of the Act that organisations typically seek exemption from are:

· Section 8 (race discrimination in employment)

· Section 10 (race discrimination against contract workers)

· Section 19 (race discrimination in the provision of goods and services)

· Section 25 (sex discrimination in employment)

· Section 27 (sex discrimination against contract workers)

· Section 33 (sex discrimination in the provision of goods and services)

· Section 51 (advertising in breach of the Act)

After the NSW government approves an organisation’s application, the name of the organisation, and the exemption that they have been granted, are published online. In the current data brief, I analysed this publicly available information to determine which organisations are currently approved by the NSW government to engage in women-only hiring (or related practices).

On July 18, 2026, I searched the website’s text for the words “women” and “female.” I then extracted the relevant text and compiled it here. I placed each organization into one of five categories: Sports, Universities and Research, Government or Public Service, Private Sector, or Non-For-Profit Sector.

Many organisations that seek exemptions to provide special opportunities for women also do the same for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander persons. For brevity, I present only the text related to women, with an ellipsis used to represent deleted text. Readers are encouraged to visit the source website and explore the many organizations that have received exemptions for various reasons.

One organization, The Man Centre Pty Ltd, is currently granted an exemption by the NSW government to “designate and recruit positions for men only as employers or contractors.” Also, the Department of Education received exemptions for targeting female or male students, depending on the situation. The Man Centre Pty Ltd and Department of Education are the only organisations currently listed on the government’s website that have been approved for exemptions that target males. By comparison, 77 organisations have been approved for exemptions that target females (98% of all sex-based exemptions).

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SPORTS

Cricket Australia

“To advertise, designate, and recruit up to 4 positions in its Match Referee Talent Pathway program for women only.”

Football Australia Limited

“To advertise, designate and recruit up to 30 paid internship positions for women aged 18 to 28 only in the areas of Media, Photography, and Communications & Public Relations, including 2 positions for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander women only.”

Foxtel Group

“To advertise, designate and recruit up to 6 positions per year for women only in its sports media and technology graduate program.”

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UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH

Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine and Cell Biology

“To designate, advertise and recruit for the position of Deputy Director for women only.”

Hunter Medical Research Institute

“To provide a medical research fellowship program for women only.”

Macquarie University

“To offer, advertise and facilitate scholarships and fellowships to women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine.”

Macquarie University (Macquarie Business School)

“To offer, advertise and facilitate scholarships, prizes, mentorships, internship and traineeship opportunities for individuals who identify as women in the fields of: accounting, actuarial studies, economics, business management and marketing, and finance.”

University of Newcastle

“To: 1. designate, advertise and recruit positions for…women only at the Senior Academic level in pursuit of a 40% participation rate; women only at all levels in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields where significant underrepresentation of women exists, and 2. offer, advertise and facilitate scholarships and fellowships for women only in: STEM fields, and academic roles, to encourage more women, including those with carer responsibilities, to join, remain and progress in academia.”

University of New England

“…To run women’s leadership, career development and mentoring programs and initiatives for women only, including its Academic Promotion Mentoring Program for Women; designate, advertise and recruit professional staff positions at level HEO9 and HE010, senior academic staff positions at levels C, D and E, and senior executive positions for women only in pursuit of a 50% workplace participation rate of women in those positions.”

University of New South Wales

“…To offer, advertise and facilitate scholarships (PhD/HDR, Coursework) and fellowships for women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM), economics, finance and business (EFAB), the built environment, as well as other programs where the percentage of commencing women enrolments is below 40%...To advertise, designate and recruit senior academic positions for women only in faculties where the percentage of women in senior academic positions is below 40%.”

University of Sydney

“To offer, advertise and facilitate Programs for women only across disciplines where there is a gender imbalance for a period of 10 years. To conduct targeted recruitment programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons and for women. To offer, advertise and facilitate scholarships for women only in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine and finance…”

University of Technology Sydney

​“To offer, advertise and facilitate scholarships for women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine, and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons. To apply a positive adjustment factor of 10 points to the Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) to female applicants only for admission to all current and future standalone or combined engineering, information technology (IT) and construction project management courses where the overall percentage of commencing female enrolments in those courses is below 40%. To advertise, designate and recruit targeted roles for Aboriginal and Torres Islander persons only as part of the strategic target of reaching 3% Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff by 2023 and targeted senior roles for women only with an emphasis on STEMM disciplines, as part of a target of 40% women academic staff.”

​University of Wollongong

​“…To advertise, designate and recruit positions and promote programs and activities for women only in pursuit of its Gender Equity Action Plan targets of: 50% women in the senior executive workforce, 40% women in the professoriate, 50% women in academia, and [i]ncreasing representation of women in academic and professional roles in areas where women are significantly under-represented. This includes: designating up to 50% of scholarships for women, and offering career development activities and programs for women only.”

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GOVERNMENT OR PUBLIC SERVICE

Armidale Regional Council

“To advertise, designate and recruit up to 5 positions for women, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people or Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander women only.”

Blacktown City Council

“To advertise, designate and recruit 3 apprentice heavy vehicle mechanic positions for women only.”

BreastScreen NSW

“To recruit and employ female radiographers and nurse counsellors.”

Department of Communities and Justice

“An exemption granted to provide targeted programs and recruitment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, women, people with a specific disability, carers with a specific carer’s responsibility, people from racial, ethnic, ethno-religious minority group backgrounds, and refugees and asylum seekers who are eligible to work in Australia.”

Department of Education

“To offer, advertise and facilitate up to 50% of places for male students only and up to 50% of places for female students only in each co-educational selective high school and each opportunity class as a part of implementing a gender parity model in pursuit of gender equity measures.”

Department of Regional NSW

“To…advertise, designate and recruit for pipeline roles and up to 45 % leadership roles for women only.”

Essential Energy

“To designate, advertise and recruit approximately 30% of all Early Talent Pathway positions for female applicants only in pursuance of a 30% women workforce participation rate.”

Hunter Water Corporation

“To advertise, designate and recruit roles for women only in pursuance of a 50% workforce participation rate.”

Lake Macquarie City Council

“To advertise, designate and recruit…up to 6 entry level, apprenticeship and traineeship positions for women only.”

NBN Co Limited

“An exemption is given to…designate, advertise and recruit women only for the role of Customer Field Technician Trainee in pursuance of its target to reach 70% women recruits in CFT Trainee roles and 40% women in leadership positions, and in support of its intention to increase the representation of women in Field-based roles to closer to 50%.”

NSW Police Force

“To: designate, advertise and recruit positions for women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people only, in senior leadership positions; run leadership, career development and mentoring programs and initiatives for women, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people only.”

Port Authority of New South Wales

“To advertise, designate and recruit positions for women only, including 4 Port Officer Traineeship positions per year for women only, in pursuance of a 50% workforce participation rate.”

Port Macquarie-Hasting Council

“To designate, advertise and recruit…up to 10 positions for women only including for STEM operational trade roles.”

Sydney Water Corporation

“To advertise, designate and recruit for up to 10 positions per year for women only.”

Transport for NSW

To implement diversity and inclusion programs for designated target groups including: 1. Women; 2. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders; 3. People with a specific disability; 4. People under the age of 25; 5. Refugees and migrants on a relevant visa.”

Water NSW

“To advertise, designate and recruit positions for: women only in pursuit of a 50% workforce participation rate, including for STEM and operational roles…”

Wollongong City Council

“To advertise, designate and recruit for…one traineeship (horticulture) for a female student, aligned to the summer work pilot program.

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PRIVATE SECTOR

ALDI Stores (A Limited Partnership)

“To advertise, designate and recruit for women only for executive manager level, managing director level, group director level and director level roles in pursuance of a 40% workforce participation rate for managerial and senior leadership roles and to implement leadership development, mentoring and networking programs for women only.”

Apprenticeship Careers Australia

“To advertise, designate and recruit up to: 15 positions per year for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women only; 25 positions per year for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons only; 100 positions per year for women only.”

Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd

“To advertise, designate and recruit up to 10 positions per year in its Field Services division for women only.”

A T Kearney Australia Limited

“To provide two management consulting scholarship per year for women only.”

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) and its wholly owned subsidiaries

“To run women’s leadership programs and initiatives for women only. To designate, recruit and promote women only for roles in its Institutional Division. To provide additional superannuation contributions to its female employees in NSW.”

Australian Partnership of Ernst & Young

“To: 1. Advertise, promote, and facilitate programs, activities and events to support the attraction, development, engagement, and career growth of women at EY in pursuit of its targets of: 50% of Graduates hired to be women; 40% of Partners to be women; 50% of Senior Manager 4 level new hires and progressions (combined) to be women…”

Bain International t/a Bain & Company

“To provide up to two management consulting scholarships per year for women only.”

BlueScope Steel Limited

“To advertise, designate and recruit positions, including scholarships, apprentices, traineeships, cadetships, paid work placements, professional roles, operation roles and qualified trade roles for…women only in pursuit of a workforce participation rate of 40%.”

Capgemini Australia Pty Limited

“To: advertise, designate and recruit positions for women only in pursuit of a 40% workforce participation rate, including up to 40% of roles at management level; offer positions only to women, and women over 40 years of age, in its Restart Program…”

Cleanaway Operations Pty Ltd

“To advertise, designate and recruit up to 50 positions each year in its Driver Academy in NSW for women only.”

Cooperative Rabobank U.A. and Rabobank Australia Ltd

“To run leadership, career development and mentoring programs and initiatives for women only, for its IGNITE program.”

CyberCX Pty Ltd

“To: conduct targeted advertising of women only to support their entry into the All-Women Academy Program in support of advancement and promotion of women in cyber security; offer graduate positions of Associate Consultants in Strategy and Consulting, Governance Risk and Compliance and Managed Security Services for women only in pursuance of a 50% workforce participation rate.”

Downer EDI Rail Pty Ltd

“To advertise, designate and recruit 6 traineeships roles for women only, per year, for its Women on Track Program.”

EY Port Jackson Partners

“For the purposes of its EY PJP Women’s Scholarship & Program.”

Finder Crew Pty Ltd

“To advertise, designate and recruit up to 15 technology graduate positions per year for women only.”

Grant Samuel Services Pty Limited

“To advertise, recruit and provide up to two corporate finance internships per year for women only.”

HVTC Pty Ltd

“To designate and recruit: 70 non-traditional trade traineeship and apprenticeship positions for women only…”

John Holland

“To run women’s leadership, career development and mentoring programs and initiatives for women only. To advertise, designate, recruit and employ women only to meet 40% target for all roles and 25% target for non-traditional roles. To advertise, designate and provide scholarships for women only.”

Maple-Brown Abbott Ltd

“To advertise and offer internship program for women only.”

McKinsey & Company

“To advertise, designate and recruit up to: 20 management consultant internships or scholarships for women only…For the purpose of providing additional financial support for women for 2 years after they return to work from parental leave.”

Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group Pty Ltd

“To advertise, designate and recruit for up to 10 women only for technical and engineering roles and apprentice and graduate trade-based engineering roles.”

NSW Energy Coal (the BHP Group)

“To advertise, recruit and prioritise roles for women only and to offer programs, activities and events to attract, develop, engage and support career growth for women in pursuit of its targets of 30.8% female representation overall and 34.9% female leadership representation within its operations at the Mt. Arthur coal mine.”

Oliver Wyman Pty Ltd

“To advertise, designate and offer up to 3 scholarships per year for women only.”

Protech Personnel Pty Ltd and Dreampath Recruitment Pty Ltd

“To advertise, designate and recruit up to 100 Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander persons only and 50 positions for women only in each business.”

Pulse Climbing

“To advertise, designate and recruit up to 2 route settler positions per year for women only.”

Quickway Constructions Pty Ltd

“To advertise, designate and recruit positions for: Women only in pursuit of a 7% workforce participation rate for non-traditional roles…”

Rabobank

“To advertise and offer up to five positions in its cadetship program for female university students in their first or second year of full-time university study.”

Seek Ltd

“To advertise and offer one scholarship per year in the Strategy team for women only.”

Suncorp Group Ltd

“To advertise, designate and recruit for up to five information technology internships per year for women only.”

Talent Gap Pty Ltd

“To provide reruitment [sic] and career development services to female candidates only. This exemption will be in force for 10 years.”

Team Global Express Pty Ltd

“To designate, advertise, and recruit up to: 60 trainee positions per year for females only, in pursuit of achieving a 30% female workforce participation rate…”

Tomago Aluminium Company Pty Ltd

“To: designate, advertise and recruit women only for production, operator, technical, trade and leadership roles in pursuance of a 50% workforce participation rate; designate, advertise and provide training, development, mentoring and career support initiatives for women only”

Turnaround Management Association Australia Ltd

“To advertise, offer and facilitate the following for women only, who are members of Turnaround Management Association Australia Limited (TMA): Educational, career, leadership and networking programs and initiatives; 2 training programs per year; 2 scholarships to attend the TMA Australian National Conference (national scholarships) per year; 1 scholarship to attend a TMA Global Conference in the United States (international scholarship) per year.”

UGL Pty Ltd, UGL Regional Linx Pty Ltd, UGL Rail Services Pty Ltd, UGL Operations & Maintenance Pty Ltd

“To run women’s leadership, career development and mentoring programs and initiatives for women only. To designate, advertise and recruit…for women only, including traineeship, graduate, scholarship and apprenticeship positions, in pursuit of a 30% women workforce participation rate.”

Veolia Environmental Services (Australia) Pty Ltd

“To advertise, designate and recruit up to 20 driver positions in NSW for women only.”

Westpac Banking Corporation

“To designate, advertise, and/or provide training, development, and support programs exclusively for employees who identify as women and/or culturally diverse.”

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NOT-FOR-PROFIT SECTOR

Address Housing Limited

“To recruit women only into any role that deals directly and regularly with the organisation’s tenants.”

The Australia Institute Ltd

“To advertise and recruit up to 4 women aged 18-27 per year for a graduate style fellowship program.”

Habitat for Humanity

“To advertise, designate and recruit women only for its Social Enterprise and to use women only tradespersons to provide services to accommodation service providers for women.”

Manning Support Services Inc.

“To designate, advertise and recruit up to 50% of Men’s Behaviour Change Program Facilitator positions for women only.”

Northern Rivers Community Legal Centre

“To designate and recruit two positions for women only as solicitors specialising in family law and/or care and protection.”

People With Disability Australia

“To advertise, designate and recruit: 30 women for a leadership program which includes 15 women mentors and 15 women mentees…”

Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia Incorporated

“To designate and recruit for women only any position that deals directly and regularly with the organisation’s clients, including not limited to: Executive Officer; Director of Counselling Services; Clinical Supervisors; Trauma Specialist Counsellors.”

Women’s Alcohol and Drug Advisory Centre Incorporated T/A Jarrah House

“To advertise, designate, and recruit up to 6 positions for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander women only.”

Women’s Housing Company

“To designate and recruit up to twenty five female staff member positions and appoint up to nine female directors.”

Women in Prison Advocacy Network Inc

​“To designate and recruit a female Chief Executive Officer, other female employees as required to deliver WIPAN’s social support services and programs, and female volunteers to provide advocacy and mentoring services to women only.”

World Wide Fund For Nature Australia

“To designate, advertise and recruit: up to four positions per year for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people only, and one position per year for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander women only.”

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Bonus Commentary

Exemptions to anti-discrimination law are oxymoronic. They conflict with the spirit and purpose of creating the anti-discrimination laws in the first place.

In the current data brief, I summarised the extent to which these exemptions are currently used in NSW to discriminate against men, particularly in occupational recruitment and hiring. The results show that his discrimination exists in the private sector, the not-for-profit sector, in government and public service, and in education.

Most exemptions that the NSW government approves are not for scenarios in which there is legitimate unequal opportunity. Instead, organisations use the exemptions purposely for increasing female representation in areas where males either have a greater interest in the area or where males have a greater capacity for performing the type of work. The extent to which this widespread discrimination against men has impacted their well-being has not been adequately discussed, and this discrimination has almost certainly played a role in increasing the female:male ratios in the NSW public sector, at universities, and elsewhere (i.e., “The Great Feminization.”)

One danger of sex-based hiring is that the threshold for what constitutes its justification is likely to lower over time, resulting in increased numbers of organisations partaking in such practices under flawed reasoning. In theory, organisations can, and sometimes do, apply for male-only hiring exemptions. However, given the arguments that the NSW government currently accepts when approving female-only hiring, widespread male-only hiring is unlikely to occur anytime soon—because, if the NSW government approved more male-only hiring, then that would presumably contradict many of the current approvals for female-only hiring.

If all the above is not problematic enough, I will end by drawing readers’ attention to the exemption granted to Manning Support Services Inc. The NSW government approved the organisation to “designate, advertise and recruit up to 50% of Men’s Behaviour Change Program Facilitator positions for women only.” In other words, the organisation wants to purposely hire women to tell men how to behave. Can you imagine the public outcry if the sexes were reversed and an organisation purposely hired men to tell women how to behave?

The double standards in sex and gender politics are truly something to behold.

Related Content at The Nuzzo Letter

SUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTER

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LEADING ARTICLE

FY25 Enrollment Data from NIH-Supported Clinical Research Now Available

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Excerpt: “As part of NIH’s continued efforts to increase the transparency of the NIH research portfolio, data on the sex, race, ethnicity, and age of participants in fiscal year (FY) 2025 NIH-supported clinical research are now available…Women continue to be strongly represented in NIH-supported clinical research. In FY25, 57.8% of participants were female, 35.3% were male, and 7.0% were unknown or not reported…”

(My brief comment on this press release is available on X here.)

WEEKLY VOICE

THE NUZZO LETTER IN THE NEWS

George Floyd in medical journals: Analysis documents rise of ‘woke terminology’ in research

The College Fix

Australia Witnesses Impressive Gender Equality Advances for Men

Domestic Abuse and Violence International Alliance (DAVIA)

The Women’s Health Narrative Meets the Data

Men Are Good

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

Sex/Gender

Is it inevitable that men die younger than women? Looking at evidence and policy solutions

American Institute for Boys and Men

$20 Billion: Latest Scare-Tactic of the Women’s Health Lobby

Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE)

A growing share of U.S. husbands and wives are roughly the same age

Pew Research Center

A life dedicated to understanding sex differences in cognition: Interview with Prof David Geary

Centre for Male Psychology

New numbers reveal the child sex-change mania is worse than we knew

New York Post

Biological Sex Is Binary and Rooted in Anisogamy

Ecology Letters

Abstract: The definition of biological sex has become a renewed focus of societal debate, fuelled by the conflation of biological principles with discussions of human gender diversity. Here, we argue that conceptual clarity critically depends on separating these domains. Drawing on evolutionary theory and empirical evidence, we maintain that biological sex is best defined as a binary classification of male and female reproductive strategies rooted in anisogamy, characterised by the production of two discrete gamete types of different sizes. We stress that gamete size constitutes the ultimate criterion for biological sex and that this definition applies consistently across sexual systems, from separate-sexed species to hermaphrodites, irrespective of variation in karyotype, hormonal profile, somatic phenotype, or behaviour. Further, we emphasise that evolutionary insights offer a coherent explanation for recurring, though not universal, associations between biological sex and patterns of sex-specific selection, sexual dimorphism and parental care. We conclude that the definition of biological sex as a binary classification based on gamete size is a powerful scientific framework compatible with the diversity of sexual phenotypes found in anisogamous organisms and distinct from the concept of human gender.

Romantic Love and Sexual Frequency

Current Sexual Health Reports

Abstract: The purpose of this review is to summarize the evidence about the association between romantic love and sexual frequency. We outline what has historically been thought about romantic love and sexual frequency as well as the latest theoretical and empirical contributions to this area of research. There have been three published articles that consider sexual frequency in a sample of participants experiencing romantic love. All are drawn from the same international sample: the Romantic Love Survey 2022. A number of publicly available studies not yet published also exist using this sample. It appears that young adults in love report having sex 3.5 times per week on average, but there was substantial variation in sexual frequency in this sample. This is meaningfully higher than sexual frequency found in the married American population.

Health Sciences

Meeting the WHO guideline on muscle-strengthening activities does not have to be time-consuming: a discussion of time-saving strategies

Frontiers in Public Health

Abstract: The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends performing muscle-strengthening activities at moderate or greater intensity, involving all major muscle groups, and on at least 2 days per week. However, estimates suggest only about 10–30% of the general population meet the guideline on muscle-strengthening activities, limiting overall (aerobic and muscle-strengthening) physical activity guideline adherence. Lack of time is a commonly cited barrier to being physically active and to performing muscle-strengthening activities specifically. To address this barrier, this Perspective describes evidence-based strategies, including exercise snacks, minimal-dose approaches, and time-saving programming (e.g., using supersets), that improve the time-efficiency of resistance training and may improve adherence to guidelines on muscle-strengthening activities. Upon introducing these strategies and the corresponding evidence, we describe how they could be applied in practice in various exemplary real-world scenarios differing in both time and equipment availability.

Education

America’s medical schools tiptoe away from DEI — for now

New York Post

Bella D'Abrera - Mindless: How the Education System is Destroying Our Civilisation

Nat Con Australia

Episode description: My guest today is Dr Bella D’Abrera a well-known Australian academic who was for many years Director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program at the Institute of Public Affairs. Amongst other things she is on the Advisory Committee for the Australian National Archives and a regular contributor to The Spectator Australia, the Herald Sun, the Daily Telegraph and The Australian, and appears regularly on Sky News. Today we discuss: How she describes the ideology which is being taught to our children and whether it is correct to describe it as Marxist; How exactly did this ideology come to seize the commanding heights of our education system; How to push back against the argument that modern education is simply being kind and tolerant? What solutions are there for parents looking to protect their kids?

RUBBISH BIN

Stronger standards for university governance and tackling racism

Australia’s Minister for Education

(My brief comment on this press release is available on X here.)

Male supremacism in college contexts: A critical needs assessment listening to women and nonbinary students across the United States

Journal of Diversity in Higher Education

Abstract: Male supremacism and related fascist influences threaten women and nonbinary college students’ well-being and safety. We conducted semistructured interviews with 16 women and nonbinary college students ages 18–23 who acted as key informants on male supremacism within their college contexts. All participants attended different colleges, with four participants each from the U.S. Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. More than 50% of participants held marginalized racial/ethnic identities, and more than 50% held marginalized sexual orientation identities. We used antifascist praxis and ecological systems theory to consider how students experienced male supremacist influences in college contexts and what aspects of their college contexts were relevant to preventing and responding to male supremacist threats. We identified three needs. College leaders need to (a) respond to male supremacist influences within men’s athletic teams, fraternities, student engagement in U.S. politics, and sexual violence prevention events or discussions; (b) resist how male supremacist influences may be perpetuated through regional contexts (e.g., the U.S. South) and institutional histories (e.g., religious or military origins) and find antioppressive commitments through which to oppose male supremacism; and (c) actively oppose male supremacist influences on campuses through supporting students who resist male supremacism and engaging communities in response to fascist threats. Based on these findings, we call for college leaders to identify male supremacist influences within specific aspects of their college contexts, reshape college cultural identities to resist male supremacism, and oppose male supremacist threats to women and nonbinary students.

(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)

Far-right fossil fuel ignorance: the nostalgia of national-industrial modernity

Environmental Politics

Abstract: Far-right climate change obstruction has been widely noticed in the scholarly literature, and both material and ideational factors have been recognised as playing a part in climate policy backlash. By revisiting and adjusting Ulrich Beck’s description of first modernity, and theories of anti-reflexivity used in early work on climate change obstruction, I argue that far-right climate obstruction can be understood as an attempt to create widespread fossil fuel ignorance through a restorative nostalgic vision of a patriarchal, homogenous, and industrially successful national society. A society upheld by firm dualities and where unlimited industrial progress is taken for granted, but which demand ignorance of climate change and the global inequality and oppressional structures sustaining it. Hence, far-right refusal of reflexivity is not just pitted against environmentalism, but against feminist and antiracist movements as well.

Reviewing educational conceptualisations of transnational settler ignorance

Educational Review

Abstract: This paper investigates how majority societies’ common ignorance about Indigenous peoples and ongoing settler-colonial reality (“settler ignorance”) has been negotiated in the educational sciences literature. Understanding settler ignorance not as a simple “lack of knowledge” but a powerful issue undermining Indigenous rights and decolonial aspirations, this review sets out to gain new understanding of its dimensions in educational settings. The reviewed literature covers 51 peer-reviewed qualitative records from six settler-colonial contexts – Finland, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. The emerging conceptualisations of the phenomenon of settler ignorance and ways of addressing it were explored through thematic synthesis. The findings suggest that settler ignorance has many faces: it is conceptualised as emotionally and ideologically contested knowledge-making, as wilful avoidance and resistance, and as a structural mechanism that transcends the question of individual cognition. Similarly, the proposed approaches to dismantling ignorance are diverse, emphasising the potential of educational content, building relationality, and critical reflection. Discussing the findings’ implications, the article suggests how harnessing both context-based and transnational understandings about settler ignorance and its many dimensions could benefit reconciliatory processes between settler and Indigenous populations and signpost one approach to decolonising education.

We have never not been fascist: Infrastructures of state violence as technofascist laboratories

Dialogues on Digital Society

Abstract: This commentary critiques narratives of Silicon Valley exceptionalism in current efforts to diagnose technofascism. The rapid global spread of fascism has not been initiated by the current American Right, nor does the technological character of this iteration of fascism present a rupture: fascist conditions have continuously existed for peoples colonized, enslaved, indentured, exterminated, or otherwise oppressed by Western imperialism since the beginning of modernity/colonialism. Likewise, surveillance and calculative technologies-from paper to digital-have always been central in inflicting violence on these peoples because they solve issues of scale in necropolitical population control: from biometrics to track fugitive slaves, over census technologies to control and eradicate colonized peoples, to surveillance infrastructures of apartheid, to now algorithmic war machines. Now more than ever, it is urgent that we recognize that the structural conditions of this iteration of fascism have been created by modernity/coloniality and racial capitalism, and that the potential of technofascism lies in the bureaucratic-legal and calculative nature of the modern state.

SUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTER

If you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you!

If you prefer to donate to a specific project, please see the Go Fund Me page for my current research on sex differences in muscle strength in children.

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Homicide Victims

• Since 1989-90, the number of homicides in Australia has trended downward, with 330 total homicide victims in 1989-90 and 277 total homicide victims in 2024-25.

• Since 1989-90, both the number of male and female homicide victims has trended downward.

• Between 1989-90 and 2024-25, 6,780 males and 3,681 females died by homicide in Australia (64.8% males), with more males than females dying by homicide each year over that 36-year period.

• The number of male homicide victims ranged from a low of 138 in 2017-18 to a high of 240 in 2001-02. The average number of male homicide victims per year between 1989-90 to 2024-25 was 188.

• The number of female homicide victims ranged from a low of 59 in 2021-22 to a high of 148 in 1990-91. The average number of female homicide victims per year between 1989-90 to 2024-25 was 102.

• In 2024-24, 70.4% of homicide victims in Australia were males.

Homicide Offenders

• Between 1989-90 and 2024-25, 9,711 males and 1,511 females were offenders of homicide in Australia.

• Between 1989-90 and 2024-25, males were 86.5% of homicide offenders in Australia (low of 82.9% in 2016-17; high of 90.8% in 1990-91).

• In 2024-25, 85.6% of homicide offenders in Australia were males.

Intimate Partner Homicide Victims

• Since 1989-90, the number of intimate partner homicides in Australia has trended downward, with 82 total intimate partner homicide victims in 1989-90 and 46 intimate partner homicide victims in 2024-25.

• Between 1989-90 and 2024-25, 549 males and 1,750 females were victims of intimate partner homicide in Australia (23.9% males; 76.1% females), with more females than males dying by intimate partner homicide each year over that 36-year period.

• The number of intimate partner male homicide victims ranged from a low of four in 2022-23 to a high of 25 in 1993-94. The average number of male intimate partner homicide victims per year between 1989-90 to 2024-25 was 15.

• The number of intimate partner female homicide victims ranged from a low of 26 in 2021-22 to a high of 75 in 2001-02. The average number of female intimate partner homicide victims per year between 1989-90 to 2024-25 was 49.

• In 2024-24, 69.6% of intimate partner homicide victims in Australia were females.

Intimate Partner Homicides as a Proportion of All Homicides

• Historically, approximately one of every five homicides in Australia has been an intimate partner homicide.

• Between 1989-90 and 2024-25, 2,299 of the 10,461 homicide victims in Australia were killed by an intimate partner (21.9%).

• The proportion all homicides that were intimate partner homicides ranged from a low of 15.3% in 2021-22 to a high of 30.4% in 2007-08.

• The proportion all homicides in Australia that are intimate partner homicides has decreased in recent years.

Source

Bricknell S & Miles H 2026. Homicide in Australia 2024–25. Statistical Report no. 58. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.

Bonus Commentary

Data from the Australian Institute of Criminology reveal that numbers of homicides in Australia have been trending downward for many years. This downward trend is due to fewer males killing other males and fewer males killing female intimate partners. The data also confirm that make up most of the victims (~65%) and offenders (~85%) of homicide in Australia.

The Australian government invests billions of dollars into “gender-based violence.” It also allocates an amount of attention to the topic of female intimate partner homicide victimization that is disproportionate to the data. For example, the Australian Institute of Criminology’s homicide data homepage is a dashboard dedicated solely to female victims of intimate partner homicide (see screenshot below). However, for two reasons, this single-sex presentation of homicide victimization data is inappropriate. Firstly, most homicides in Australia are not between intimate partners. Intimate partner homicides account for 20-25% of all homicides in Australia. Secondly, females are not the only victims of intimate partner homicide. Males make up one of every five victims of intimate partner homicide in Australia. Thus, by presenting data only on female victims of intimate partner homicide on its homicide homepage, the Australian Institute of Criminology is distorting the reality of homicide victimisation in Australia.

Related Content at The Nuzzo Letter

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LEADING ARTICLE

Limited Evidence for Flexibility as an Independent Predictor of Health Outcomes in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Prospective Studies

PRE-PRINT: Research Square

Abstract: Background: Flexibility is considered a key component of health-related physical fitness. However, current evidence provides little support for flexibility as an independent predictor of health. Objective: To systematically review and meta-analyse prospective cohort studies examining the association between baseline flexibility and future health outcomes in adults. Methods: MEDLINE, Embase, Emcare, CINAHL Complete, and SPORTDiscus were systematically searched from January 2005 to April 2025. Prospective cohort studies investigating associations between objectively measured flexibility or joint range of motion and subsequent health outcomes in apparently healthy adults (≥18 years) were included. Risk of bias was assessed using the CLARITY Group at McMaster University tool. Certainty of evidence was assessed using the Grading Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation framework. Results: Forty-five studies (n=48 020; 45.2% female, mean age 47.6±19.4 years, median follow-up 6.0 years [range 0.5–29 years]) were included, with outcomes classified into eight domains. Greater flexibility was associated with a lower risk of future self-reported pain and disability (RR=0.99; 95%CI: 0.98–1.00) and a lower risk of future mobility limitations and frailty (RR=0.98; 95%CI: 0.96–1.00). Flexibility was not associated with cardiometabolic disease, musculoskeletal disease, or injury. Associations with mortality, falls, and physical activity were synthesised narratively due to insufficient data. The certainty of evidence ranged from very low-to-low. Conclusion: Current evidence provides limited support for flexibility as an independent predictor of health outcomes in adults. However, the very low-to-low certainty of evidence suggests that this may reflect methodological limitations of existing studies rather than a true absence of association. High-quality prospective studies are needed to clarify the prognostic value of flexibility for health outcomes.

(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)

WEEKLY VOICE

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

Sex/Gender

“Fairness for Everyone?” Then Why Are Only Boys Being Lectured?

Men Are Good

Why Does Feminism Want Women Fat?

The Fiamengo File

Academics and advocates have been hiding the truth about obesity for decades.

The Central Nebraska Connection to a Supreme Court Decision

Forward Nebraska

(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)

How Others Judge You in Moments of Conflict

Rob Henderson’s Newsletter

Education

What Does It Mean to Be a Women’s College If Men Can Enroll?

Minding the Campus

Salem College says it ‘accepts applications from students who were assigned female at birth or who identify as women.’

Censorship in America

Skeptic Research Center

Identity Politics Is Burying Science

Daily Wire

Scientific research and discovery are too important to be sacrificed to the political demands of DEI and angry activists.

Health Sciences

In 20 Different Cancers, Men More Likely to Be Diagnosed at a Later Stage

Medpage Today

Psychotherapy populations that are overlooked due to sociopolitical bias

Current Opinion in Psychology

Abstract: Sociopolitical bias has exerted a profound yet underexamined influence on clinical research and psychotherapeutic practice. This bias has shaped which questions are asked, which populations are studied, and which forms of distress are recognized as legitimate, thereby potentially marginalizing individuals whose mental health needs fall outside prevailing ideological or cultural frameworks. As a result, large segments of the population remain overlooked in the clinical literature, underserved in therapeutic practice, and unsupported by existing mental health infrastructure. The scope of this problem is immense, encompassing numerous overlooked clinical populations that together likely comprise millions of individuals. This paper’s goals are threefold: to review the scope of sociopolitical bias in both psychotherapeutic practice and the academic clinical psychology literature; to address the overlooked populations most affected in the field; and to communicate the worthiness of a research program dedicated to filling these critical gaps. This should be an urgent priority for clinical researchers, therapists, and public funding agencies alike.

Drug Overdose Deaths in Hotels and Motels — United States, 2022–2024

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report

Abstract: In 2024, at least 2,327 drug overdose deaths that were unintentional or of undetermined intent occurred in hotels and motels. Location-specific overdose data might help guide distribution of overdose prevention resources. During 2022–2024, at least 9,651 drug overdose deaths occurred in U.S. hotels and motels; more than one half (56.2%) occurred in the same county where the decedent lived. A potential bystander (a person who was physically nearby and had an opportunity to intervene) was present for 34.7% of deaths, but a timely response was delayed or did not occur in 63.5% of these deaths. Substance use by the bystander was a reason for 29.7% of nonresponses or delayed responses. Enhancing drug overdose prevention strategies in hotels and motels, including providing information about local treatment options and opioid overdose reversal medication distribution and education, might help prevent overdose deaths in these settings.

RUBBISH BIN

Young women are identifying as less straight; young men, not so much

The Conversation

(Nuzzo note: The data in this article are interesting, but note how the authors conclude the article by blaming and shaming men, which is why I have tossed it in the Rubbish Bin. My comment is available on X here.)

University of Melbourne hiring women and ‘trans’ men only for $200K job

The Noticer

(Nuzzo note: I have uploaded a copy of the job advertisement for the historical record, as the link to the job advertisement will eventually expire.)

Jr 014439 Lecturer Senior Lecturer In Mathematical Physics Women Only Pd

359KB ∙ PDF file

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Women-only job advertisement for Lecturer / Senior Lecturer at Monash University

Monash University

(Nuzzo note: I have uploaded a copy of the job advertisement for the historical record, as the link to the job advertisement will eventually expire.)

Monash Univ Geoscience

1.96MB ∙ PDF file

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Labor offers $20,000 taxpayer-funded grants for COP31 attendees as Coalition attacks climate travel program

Sky News

(Nuzzo note: Prior to the Sky News story, I reported on these grants on X here.)

PINE: a geopoetic work about menopause and wildfires

Gender, Place & Culture

Decolonising sexual pleasure: elevating Global South narratives in sexual health

Culture, Health & Sexuality

Abstract: This paper seeks to challenge the dominance of Global North frameworks in international work on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), arguing that decolonising this work requires centring Global South knowledge, lived experience, and culturally grounded understandings of sexuality, including sexual pleasure. Decolonisation is here understood as dismantling inequitable power relations, shifting epistemic authority away from Global North institutions, and prioritising Indigenous, local, and self-determined practices. Writing from within Global North academic institutions, we offer a reflexive critique that acknowledges the tension of advocating for decolonial change from inside the very systems that are under examination. We examine how dominant models have shaped SRHR research, policy, and practice, often limiting responsiveness to, and engagement with, Global South communities. Drawing on examples from Māori communities, Somalia, and West Africa, we demonstrate how culturally driven approaches that integrate pleasure and wellness can challenge inequality, broaden understandings and measures of sexual health, and open pathways to sexual liberation. In doing this, the commentary contributes to that reimagining by using real-world examples to show what becomes possible when pleasure and Global South narratives are centred – transforming how knowledge is produced, how research questions are framed, and how interventions are designed and implemented.

Intersectional vulnerabilities to extreme weather among transgender, nonbinary, and genderqueer respondents in Ohio, USA

International Journal of Transgender Health

Abstract: Introduction: Transgender, nonbinary, and genderqueer individuals face heightened disaster vulnerability due to systemic marginalization, including discriminatory policies, poverty, and limited health care access. Despite increasing climate impacts, transgender communities around the world remain largely invisible in disaster planning and response. People with disabilities also face disproportionate vulnerability during disasters, encountering barriers to evacuation, shelter access, and recovery efforts. Grounded in the minority stress framework and informed by intersectional approaches to climate justice, this study examines how gender identity and disability status intersect to shape disaster vulnerability. Methods: Drawing on survey data from transgender, nonbinary, and genderqueer respondents (n = 198) within a larger study of LGBTQIA+ participants, conducted in Fall 2024 in Ohio, United States, we examined the intersection of disability and gender identity during flooding and extreme heat events. Using Firth’s bias-reduced logistic regression models, we quantified the odds of experiencing mental and physical health impacts and anticipated barriers to disaster services. Results: Disabled transgender individuals were associated with elevated likelihood of adverse outcomes compared to nondisabled, nonbinary respondents, including 5.7 times greater odds of flood-related mental health stress (p < 0.001), 3.0 times higher odds of heat-related mental health stress (p = 0.02), 3.2 times higher odds of heat stress (p = 0.02), and 6.0 times greater odds of heat stroke (p < 0.001). Disabled transgender respondents also had 14.2 times greater odds of anticipating limited access to disaster recovery services due to fear of discrimination or violence (p < 0.001). Findings support prioritizing the continuity of gender-affirming care during climate disasters with practice considerations for emergency health care providers. Conclusion: Intersecting marginalized identities are associated with increased vulnerabilities during disasters, with implications for regions where restrictive gender policies intersect with climate threats. These findings contribute foundational quantitative evidence to support more equitable climate adaptation and emergency preparedness policies.

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Large shifts in employee numbers from one year to the next likely reflect department restructuring. I did not generate graphs for all departments, because data were unavailable for some departments for some years between 2015 and 2025. For example, Major Projects Canberra (now called Infrastructure Canberra) was not created until 2019. Nevertheless, employees in all departments are included in the total for the whole ACT Public Service.

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ACT Public Service

• The total number of employees in the ACT Public Service increased from 20,551 in 2015 to 31,825 in 2025.

• The number of female employees in the ACT Public Service increased from 13,358 in 2015 to 20,639 in 2025.

• The number of male employees in the ACT Public Service increased from 7,193 in 2015 to 11,186 in 2025.

• The percentage of ACT Public Service employees between 2015 and 2025 who were women was typically about 65% each year.

Canberra Health Services

• The total number of employees in Canberra Health Services increased from 6,797 in 2015 to 11,355 in 2025.

• The number of female employees in Canberra Health Services increased from 5,139 in 2015 to 8,456 in 2025.

• The number of male employees in Canberra Health Services increased from 1,658 in 2015 to 2,899 in 2025.

• The percentage of Canberra Health Services employees between 2015 and 2025 who were women was typically about 75% each year.

ACT Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate

• The total number of employees in the ACT Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate increased from 2,408 in 2015 to 2,844 in 2025.

• The number of female employees in the ACT Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate increased from 1,187 in 2015 to 1,565 in 2025.

• The number of male employees in the ACT Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate was roughly constant around 1,250 employees each year between 2015 and 2025.

• The percentage of employees in the ACT Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate between 2015 and 2025 who were women increased from 49.3% in 2015 to 55.0% in 2025.

ACT Community Services Directorate

• The total number of employees in the ACT Community Services Directorate increased from 852 in 2016 to 1,235 in 2025.

• The number of female employees in the ACT Community Services Directorate increased from 590 in 2016 to 905 in 2025.

• The number of male employees in the ACT Community Services Directorate increased from 262 in 2016 to 330 in 2025.

• The percentage of employees in the ACT Community Services Directorate between 2016 and 2025 who were women increased from 69.2% in 2016 to 73.3% in 2025.

ACT Education Directorate

• The total number of employees in the ACT Education Directorate increased from 6,175 in 2015 to 8,962 in 2025.

• The number of female employees in the ACT Education Directorate increased from 4,773 in 2015 to 6,397 in 2025.

• The number of male employees in the ACT Education Directorate increased from 1,402 in 2015 to 2,565 in 2025.

• The percentage of employees in the ACT Education Directorate between 2015 and 2025 who were women decreased from 77.3% in 2015 to 71.4% in 2025.

ACT Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate

• The total number of employees in the ACT Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate increased from 595 in 2017 to 855 in 2025.

• The number of female employees in the ACT Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate increased from 301 in 2017 to 464 in 2025.

• The number of male employees in the ACT Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate increased from 294 in 2017 to 391 in 2025.

• The percentage of employees in the ACT Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate increased from 50.6% in 2017 to 54.3% in 2025.

ACT Justice and Community Safety Directorate

• The total number of employees in the ACT Justice and Community Safety Directorate increased from 1,454 in 2016 to 2,528 in 2025.

• The number of female employees in the ACT Justice and Community Safety Directorate increased from 638 in 2016 to 1,296 in 2025.

• The number of male employees in the ACT Justice and Community Safety Directorate increased from 816 in 2016 to 1,232 in 2025.

• The percentage of employees in the ACT Justice and Community Safety Directorate who were women increased from 43.9% in 2015 to 51.3% in 2025.

Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate

• The total number of employees in the Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate increased from 1,613 in 2016 to 2,551 in 2025.

• The number of female employees in the Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate increased from 384 in 2016 to 694 in 2025.

• The number of male employees in the Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate increased from 1,229 in 2016 to 1,857 in 2025.

• The percentage of employees in the Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate who were women increased from 23.8% in 2016 to 27.2% in 2025.

Female Employee Representation by Department, 2025

• In 2025, seven of the eight departments within the ACT Public Service had greater than 50% female employee representation.

• In 2025, three of the eight departments within the ACT Public Service had greater than 70% female employee representation (Education, Community Services, and Canberra Health Services).

• In 2025, Transport Canberra and City Service was the only department within the ACT Public Service that had greater than 50% male employee representation.

Sources

ACT government annual State of the Service reports.

Bonus Commentary

The current data brief shows that the sex composition of the ACT Public Service has been predominantly female for many years. In 2025, seven of the eight departments in the ACT Public Service had greater than 50% female employee representation, and three of the departments (Education, Health, and Community Services) had more than 70% female employee representation. Currently, Transport Canberra and City Service is the only department in the ACT Public Service that has more male than female employees (27.2% female).

The sex composition of the ACT Public Service is broadly similar to that of New South Wales (NSW). In 2025, 66.6% of employees in the NSW Public Service were women compared to 64.9% in the ACT Public Service. Moreover, in the NSW Departments of Education and Health, 76.5% and 74.3% of employees in 2025 were women, respectively, compared to 71.4% and 74.3% in the ACT Education Directorate and Canberra Health Services, respectively.

The sex compositions of both the ACT and NSW Public Service are broadly similar to the Australian Public Service. In the Australian Public Service, 60.8% of all employees are women, and approximately 70% of employees within the Department of Education and the Department of Health, Disability, and Ageing are women.

Sex differences in employee representation can occur due to multiple factors. A key factor is sex differences in vocational interests. Another factor is hiring bias. Evidence of a hiring bias in favour of female candidates in the public service is already known. In 2017, the Australian Public Service conducted a study tilted, “Unconscious bias in Australian Public Service shortlisting processes.” The study tested if de-identifying job applications impacted who was shortlisted for jobs. The results revealed that when the Australian Public Service de-identified job applications, men’s de-identified job applications were more likely to be shortlisted than women’s de-identified job applications. Consequently, because the Australian Public Service expected the opposite result, and because the Australian Public Service has been fixated on increasing female employee representation, the Australian Public Service decided not to implement de-identified job applications in the future, because doing so would favour male applicants.

High female:male employee ratios in the areas of education and health also warrant public attention. Education and health correlate, and they are two broad areas where males have been faring worse than females for many years (e.g., life expectancy, university degrees earned). Yet, federal, state, and territory education and health departments continue to be give more attention to women than men (e.g., funding for women in STEM programs; funding for women’s health programs and research). Moreover, the relative lack of men in certain areas of public life is changing the priorities of those areas (i.e., “The Great Feminization”). For example, in 2024, the ACT Education Directorate published a troubling document, titled “Gender Equity for Early Years Education.” On X, David Maywald highlighted the severe bias in the document, stating:

“Throughout the report, girls and women are consistently presented as the disadvantaged group, while boys and men are largely framed through the lens of privilege. It encourages educators to recognise and counter the supposed privilege of boys, yet says virtually nothing about the well-documented challenges boys face in education, mental health, school readiness, literacy, behaviour, family breakdown or later-life suicide...”

Tom Golden of Men Are Good also described ways in which the document is unfair to boys, and I highlighted on X the disturbing way in which the document pushes radical gender ideology onto children via book and song recommendations about “gender fluidity,” “gender diversity,” “gender identities,” “toxic masculinity,” and pronoun use.

It is difficult to imagine that a document like that would be published by the ACT Education Directorate if male employee representation was markedly higher than its current level of 25%.

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My comment brought widespread attention to UN Women’s post, which now been viewed over 290,000 times. X users with large followings then began retweeting UN Women’s post, adding their own commentary.

Lisa Britton said: “You call for women and girls to be placed at the center of rescue efforts? What about men and boys? Oh, they’re not as important… Gotcha. Keep striving for “gender equality”

The TinMen said: “What? Women and girls shouldn’t be ‘placed at the centre’ of disaster relief. You should be centring those most in need.”

Phil Mitchell said: “Rescue efforts predominately carried out by men? You often call for & encourage gender equality while simultaneously promoting privilege & gender inequality. Seriously, engage in some reflection about your social media posts.”

William Costello said: “@UN_Women coming out as benevolently sexist?”

Critical comments from a wide range of X users then began piling up. Below are some of the tamest examples of the over 750 comments that UN Women received.

Father X commented: “So to be at the center of rescue efforts requires a person to be of the right gender?? You’re openly calling for gender discrimination. Do you wonder why people look at you as bigots? Do you have any awareness that the women who need rescuing also have sons, fathers, and brothers who need rescuing? And those women aren’t as bigoted as you....so they’re not interested in leaving their male family members behind. You should be ashamed of yourselves for preaching this nonsense.”

Femme commented: “I’m positive a majority of those women have husbands, brothers, sons, male family members also harmed. They’d likely be fairly upset you’re advocating for the men they love to be passed over in rescue efforts. They don’t care about their gender, just their safety.”

Jody John Edward commented: “What an appallingly misandrist post. All people, regardless of gender, should be helped. No doubt it will be men doing the rescuing. You are a disgrace.”

Phill Andry commented: “You are a female supremacist organization that promotes the idea that male lives are worth less than female lives. Disgusting.”

Just Dave commented: “Why is the UN calling for such obvious and outright sexist behavior?”

Based on X users’ overwhelming agreement that UN Women’s post was discriminatory, X added a “community note.” The community note, which now appears below UN Women’s post, says:

“For women and girls to be “placed at the center of rescue efforts” would inherently imply discriminating against men and boys during humanitarian response, which is explicitly forbidden by international legal frameworks for humanitarian action.”

UN Women’s Pattern of Bigotry

Individuals who are unfamiliar with UN Women might be inclined to believe that the entity’s post was an accidental one-off. Sadly, that belief is unlikely to be true. UN Women has a history of publishing anti-male propaganda on X. What’s more, a couple of days prior to UN Women’s controversial post, UN Women’s Executive Director, Sima Bahous, and the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher, published similar comments (shown below).

International Humanitarian Law

UN Women’s post contradicts international humanitarian law. International humanitarian law recognises that men and women sometimes differ in their needs during emergencies, but such law does not say that women’s needs should be centred or prioritised over men’s needs. Instead, international humanitarian law implies that aid should be provided based on medical need. The notion that aid should be prioritised based on group identity is unethical, but it is consistent with the misguided concept of “health equity”—a key component of Woke medicine.

UN Women’s Funding

Over the past couple of years, taxpayers have called on UN Women to lose its intersectional feminist ideology and be fairer and more neutral in its approach. UN Women has consistently ignored these calls. Instead, they have dug their heels in, refusing to reform, and stating that, in 2026, they plan to fight the “backlash against gender equality.”

Aware of UN Women’s unhinged behaviour, both the United States and Israel announced in early 2026 that they would no longer fund the entity. Nevertheless, other member states still send millions of dollars to UN Women each year. In fact, just a couple of days before UN Women’s post about Venezuela, representatives from countries such as Sweden (UN Women’s biggest funder), Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Japan, South Korea, Albania, Vietnam, Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates attended the UN Women’s Executive Board Meeting and reaffirmed their commitments to UN Women. None of these countries have publicly condemned UN Women for its behaviour on X.

Other UN Women News: Double Standards

UN Women was also criticized last week for one of its other X posts (shown below). The post pertained to the number of male and female referees in this year’s men’s World Cup. UN Women expressed concern that only six of the 170 referees in this year’s competition are women.

However, what UN Women did not tell its followers is that in the last women’s World Cup in 2023, none of the referees or assistant referees were men, and UN Women did not advocate for more sex-balanced referee representation in that case. Thus, as many X users pointed out, UN Women continues to apply a double standard regarding the idea of equal representation. That is, UN Women advocates for equal representation when women are “underrepresented” in an area but not when men are “underrepresented” in an area.

Conclusion

UN Women is turning into its own worst enemy. The more extreme it has become, the more it has exposed its biased, unethical agenda. Community pushback online is a fair starting point for raising awareness of UN Women’s agenda. The more public pushback that UN Women receives, the more difficult it will be for member state representatives to justify their support for this international beast of irrationality and inhumanity.

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LEADING ARTICLE

Court rules that states can exclude transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports teams

SCOTUS Blog

A Win for Girls’ Sports—and Common Sense

City Journal

The Supreme Court upheld schools’ right to limit women’s and girls’ sports to biological sex.

(Nuzzo note: My meta-analysis on sex differences in grip strength in children and adolescents is cited in this City Journal article. To support more of this research, see my GoFundMe page.)

They Know They’re Lying

Reality’s Last Stand

The headlines are not sloppy; they are carefully worded to obscure the truth.

WEEKLY VOICE

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

Sex/Gender

Help us recruit to an essential study of therapy for men

Centre for Male Psychology

GoFundMe campaign organised by Dr. John Barry of the Centre for Male Psychology.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore: How to improve young men’s mental health

STAT News

States must lead in the effort to combat young men’s loneliness, despair, and disengagement.

Bad Choices, Anger, and Mental Illness

The Fiamengo File

Disturbed women cannot create a sane movement.

“UN Women” Wants to Silence Everyday Speech

Center for Family and Human Rights

Former prime minister Julia Gillard’s excuse for Sex Discrimination Law changes a ‘cop out’, women’s rights campaigner Rachael Wong says

Sky News

Prostitution Laws Facing Renewed Debate in Washington

Washington Institute for Boys and Men

Arrests for prostitution offenses are way down for both women and men. Criminal punishment for prostitution offenses now skews very male and it may become more severe.

Education

Year in review: 172 campus cancel culture incidents during 2025-26 school year

The College Fix

Another DEI Office Name Change at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson

Do No Harm

For Graduation Ceremonies, Ditch the Guest Speaker

Martin Center for Academic Renewal

Commencement is about graduates, not celebrities, politicians, or influencers.

Other

The Full Digital Edition [of the book Secession by Western Australia] Is Now Free

Secession by Western Australia

Closing the Door on Canberra is now in your hands.

RUBBISH BIN

Supreme Court ruling on trans athletes can’t change my daughter

USA Today

(My brief comments on this article are available on X here and here.)

Gender Equity for Early Years Education Fairness for Everyone: The Way to Successful Learning

ACT Government

(My brief comment on this disturbing document is available on X here. Also, see David Maywald’s extended critique of this document on X here.)

Australia’s healthcare system still weighted towards male experience, women’s health experts say

ABC

(See my post on X here for the specific reasons why I have tossed this article in the Rubbish Bin. Also, see David Maywald’s extended critique of this article on X here.)

Gender studies in Germany

European Journal of Women’s Studies

Where the future was built: fifty years of feminist advocacy at the United Nations

Gender & Development

Pleasures of having (a) sex and the sex wars

Journal of Lesbian Studies

Abstract: This article is a reconsideration of the object of the so-called feminist “sex wars”, past and present. Building on the transfeminist effort to broaden our understanding of “sex” beyond a limiting sex-as-biology and gender-as-culture framework, this article seeks to show the importance of the pleasures of having a sex - a sexed body and role - to the sex wars. In order to do so, it reads two pieces of sex wars era polemical feminist literature in parallel, arguing that while the two texts represent radically different outlooks on ethics and possibility of enjoying having a sex and being sexed, they both show the importance of this question to the sex wars. Finally, the article argues that this broadened perspective on the sex wars can help us make sense of the contemporary feminist conflicts over sex, both as a desire, and as an embodiment - especially trans embodiment.

Social justice in Australian and Canadian dietetic regulatory documents: a content analysis

Public Health Nutrition

Abstract: Objective: This research was conducted to determine if and how Australian and Canadian dietetic regulatory bodies incorporate social justice into regulatory documents and how this compares between two otherwise demographically and politically similar countries. Design: Quantitative and qualitative content analysis of Australian and Canadian dietetic regulatory documents was performed to determine how often and in what context social justice terms were incorporated into dietetics regulation. Setting: Australia and Canada. Participants: Regulatory documents in Australia and Canada. Results: Findings reveal that social justice is framed differently between the two countries, particularly related to working with people who experience marginalisation. Regulatory documents seldom addressed issues of systemic injustice, focusing instead on self-awareness and individualistic approaches to care. Conclusions: Social justice is currently framed in nutrition and dietetics regulatory documents in ways that do not align with core principles of social justice. Social justice should be reframed in regulatory documents to shift attention away from awareness, towards action, and should be done in a way that addresses systemic injustices in healthcare. Developing a clear and consistent definition of what social justice is a critical first step in achieving this goal to overcome the challenges identified in this research study.

(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)

“This Is Not For Me”: A Counterstory on BIPOC Experiences of DEI Trainings

Teaching and Learning in Medicine

Abstract: The health professions education literature often assumes that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts naturally uplift Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). However, when the most common manifestation of DEI efforts, DEI trainings, are examined, there is little evidence to support this assumption. Metanalyses show evaluation and research studies on DEI trainings seldom ask about the experiences of BIPOC participants, and the few that do complicate this happy narrative. To do DEI work that is transformative, we need to center the perspectives and experiences of individuals who share a history of oppression. This study began in 2022 as an evaluation of a DEI training program. It evolved into a case study after the discovery of identity-based harm in a subset of participant surveys. Using a critical lens, this research centers the experiences of those who identified as BIPOC. A semi-structured interview guide based on the evaluation findings was used to interview eight BIPOC individuals, five faculty and three staff members. Two researchers analyzed the interviews using reflexive thematic analysis to generate themes. Then, the primary author used Critical Race Theory’s counterstorytelling methodology to synthesize the interview themes, evaluation findings, fieldnotes and research artifacts into a counterstory on DEI trainings. The counterstory confronts the dominant narratives about DEI training. Such training is not always a transformative education process that uplifts everyone. The counterstory problematizes pedagogies that instrumentalize racial trauma for the benefit of white learners, instructional content that activates racial trauma without the means to process it, and DEI efforts that are performative rather than transformative. This counterstory identifies the ways in which oppressive and racist structures are felt and reproduced in settings meant to uproot it. Although there are no neat answers as to how we might interrupt these systems, critical questions can help to interrogate our assumptions about DEI trainings and (re)-center those pushed to the margins so that we may find our way forward.

(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)

Man-i-pulation? Becoming creative with the ‘information folds’ of post-digital youth masculinity assemblages

Journal of Gender Studies

Abstract: This article explores how masculinity assemblages are composed within postdigital youth landscapes where gender is in a state of epistemic crisis and the digital is assumed to operate primarily as a coercive force. Building on queer and feminist posthuman praxis, we conceptualize the postdigital through Laura Marks’ information fold alongside Celia Lury’s notion of platformization and problem space where we share a compositional methodology that treats methods as generative practices that surface and transform problems in their becoming. Our analysis draws on three arts-informed projects with children and young people (ages 9–18) that used talking, writing, drawing, poetry, sculpting and film. We get creative with manipulation as man-i-pulation across three information folds: an altright ‘algo-rhythm’, a government hashtag campaign and feminist instapoetry. Together, they explore how masculinities are unstable, pliable, multiply entangled and always in motion. We go on to show how such data, re-created in moments of connection with multiple audiences, can come to resonate as posthuman participants beyond the fieldwork encounter. Postdigital information folds, animated through creative praxis, open resource-full spaces for unpredictability, invention, and transformation.

(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)

Crone futures: Ecofeminist reimaginings of aging and planetary ethics

Journal of Women and Aging

Abstract: Older women are routinely positioned as culturally redundant under late-capitalist regimes that equate value with beauty, productivity, and reproductive futurity. This article intervenes in those decline narratives by developing the crone as a feminist figuration, understood as a situated and relational method for holding critique and possibility together. Bringing feminist ageing studies into conversation with ecofeminist, posthumanist, and decolonial feminist scholarship, and grounding the discussion in brief empirical illustrations from crone-identifying women and elder-led formations, I ask: what forms of ethical and epistemic work become thinkable when elderhood is read as an unevenly distributed location of vulnerability, memory, and relational endurance? I argue that thinking with the crone makes visible a mode of climate witnessing attuned to slow violence, intergenerational injustice, ecological grief, and more-than-human dependence, without romanticising old age or collapsing diverse older women into a single category. The analysis is conceptual and interdisciplinary: it traces how contemporary “successful ageing” discourses inherit earlier modern/colonial projects that disciplined women’s bodies, knowledge, and reproduction, while also attending to counter-genealogies in which elder female figures carry different cosmological and ethical weight. The article’s contribution to women’s ageing scholarship lies in articulating crone epistemology as slow, situated knowledge that foregrounds limits, interdependence, and responsibility while remaining accountable to decolonial and intersectional difference.

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In preparation for the group discussion, I watched the movie and read Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto. After taking notes on both, I re-read the article in The Guardian. This re-reading was critical. An understanding of SCUM Manifesto (published in 1968) and how Solanas was depicted in the movie allows one to confidently critique Mary Harron’s filmmaking philosophy and the message behind I Shot Andy Warhol, as discussed in the article in The Guardian.

Janice Fiamengo has also recently written on some of the above topics. I did not want to hijack any of Janice’s ideas, so I did not read her article before publishing the current article. It will be fascinating to compare our takes on Solanas, SCUM Manifesto, I Shot Andy Warhol, and the article in The Guardian.

The current article is divided into five sections:

• Background

• SCUM Manifesto

• Moral Ambiguity Always Favours Evil: The Guardian, Mary Harron, and I Shot Andy Warhol

• Romantic Art and a Movie That Could Have Been Made Instead

• Conclusion

Background

I Shot Andy Warhol is a biographical drama about Valerie Solanas and the events leading up to the publication of her SCUM Manifesto and assassination attempt of Andy Warhol. The attempted assignation occurred in Warhol’s art studio on June 3, 1968—about three months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and three days before the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

However, Solanas’ violence that day was not limited to Warhol. Before she arrived at Warhol’s studio, she had, according to Freddie Baer in her afterword to SCUM Manifesto (published by AK Press in 1996), intended to also assassinate book publisher Maurice Girodias. Girodias had given Solanas a $600 advance for a novel to be based on SCUM Manifesto, but apparently Solanas wanted to kill him anyway. She had apparently gone to either the hotel where Girodias was staying at or to his office to assassinate him. Girodias was apparently away for the weekend, sparing him injury or death. A couple of hours later, Solanas went to Warhol’s studio.

As I was researching this article, I was surprised to see inconsistent accounts about what happened in the studio that day. The number of shots fired by Solanas, the number of bullets that hit Warhol, and the order of Solanas’ victims differ across sources. Below, I provide different accounts of what happened.

• The Guardian article says that Solanas “fired three shots” and “[t]he first struck Mario Amaya, an art critic, in the hip, the second lodged in a wall and the third pierced Warhol’s chest.”

• I Shot Andy Warhol depicts Solanas firing four shots and attempting to fire a fifth. Solanas fires her first three shots at Warhol: the first two miss him, and the third, fired at point blank range at his rib cage, hits him. Solanas then fires a fourth shot that hits Mario Amaya. Solanas then attempts to fire a fifth shot at Fred Hughes, but the gun jams.

• According to Freddie Baer, in her afterword to SCUM Manifesto, Solanas initially shot at Warhol three times. Her first two shots missed him, and the third hit him, puncturing his lungs, spleen, stomach, liver, and esophagus—leaving him critically injured. Solanas then directed her fourth and fifth shots at Mario Amaya. The fourth shot missed Amaya, but the fifth shot hit him above the hip. Solanas then put the gun to the head of Fred Hughes and fired. The gun jammed. Solanas then left the studio.

• A newspaper article published the day after the shooting included a quote from the executive medical director of the hospital where Warhol was treated. The director said that Warhol was hit by a single bullet that “entered his belly on the side.”

• An article in The Nation in 2004 said Solanas “shot Warhol in the chest three times. (And the art critic Amayo as well—no one ever seems to remember the poor guy.) She aimed the gun next at Warhol’s manager, Fred Hughes…”

• The Warhol website says “[a]pparently a single bullet had damaged his lungs, esophagus, spleen, liver, and stomach” and that Solanas “also shot art critic Mario Amaya, and Fred Hughes was in her sights when the elevator doors suddenly opened.”

• An article published at history.com says that “two bullets from Solanas’ gun tore through Warhol’s stomach, liver, spleen, esophagus and both lungs.”

• An article published at The Parallel says that “three shots tore through the Pop artist’s stomach, liver, spleen, esophagus and lungs.”

Assuming that the accounts about Girodias and Hughes are true, Solanas attempted to kill at least four men that day: Girodias, Warhol, Amaya, and Hughes. Interestingly, The Guardian article only mentioned two of these men, even though the movie that the article was promoting depicts her attempting to killing all four men.

On the evening of the assassination attempt, Solanas turned herself into a police officer in Times Square. According to Freddie Baer’s account, Solanas was represented in court by a radical feminist lawyer, Florynce Kennedy, who called Solanas “one of the most important spokeswomen of the feminist movement.” On June 28, Solanas was indicted on charges of attempted murder, assault, and illegal possession of a gun. In August, she was declared incompetent and sent to hospital. After pleading guilty in June 1969, Solanas was sentenced to three years in prison for “reckless assault with intent to harm.” The time that Solanas had spent in the psychiatric ward awaiting trial counted as time served. In September 1971, Solanas was released from prison. She was arrested a month later for making threatening phone calls and writing threatening letters, including to Warhol. Solanas was in and out of hospitals and mental institutions in the 1970s. She died in 1988 at age 52. Andy Warhol died in 1987 at age 58.

According to Baer, when journalists asked Solanas why she shot Warhol, she responded, “I have a lot of reasons. Read my manifesto and it will tell you what I am.”

SCUM Manifesto

A reading of SCUM Manifesto does indeed tell people who Valerie Solanas was. Solanas was an anarchist and a misandrist. SCUM stood for “Society for Cutting Up Men,” and in SCUM Manifesto, Solanas presented her utopian view of the future—one without laws, a judicial system, a monetary system, productive work, and men. The elimination of the male sex was central to Solanas’ vision.

Misandry

Today, books and academic papers written by gender studies academics are layered in intersectional and critical theory jargon, rendering many of those works unintelligible, or, at minimum, exhausting to decipher. SCUM Manifesto is different. It is a rant full of hate and contradictions. Nevertheless, Solanas’ writing was clear. She did not attempt to disguise her message in academize or the language of care. Nearly every page of SCUM Manifesto spews misandry explicitly. Her misandry had no gradations. It was a 10 out of 10 in all cases. What’s more, she also expressed contempt for some women, particularly those who supported men.

In the two lists below, I present a selection of evidence of Solanas’ misandry. The first list presents the various terms that Solanas used to describe men. The second list presents the things that Solanas said that men were incapable of. The terms in both lists are presented in order of appearance in SCUM Manifesto.

Solanas called men the following:

“incompetent female[s]”

“walking abortion[s]”

“deficient”

“emotionally limited”

“emotional cripples”

“worthless”

“half dead, unresponsive lump[s]”

“utter bore[s]”

“inoffensive blob[s]”

“halfway between humans and apes”

“machine[s]”

“walking dildo[s]”

“obsessed with screwing”

“completely egocentric”

“unable to relate, empathize, or identify”

“worthless piece[s] of shit”

“garbage”

“bundle[s] of conditioned reflexes, incapable of a mentally-free response”

“interchangeable with every other male”

“completely self-absorbed”

“empty”

“not being a complete, separate being”

“[h]aving no sense of right or wrong, no conscience”

“totally sexual”

“cowardly”

“totally physical”

“having a very limited range of feelings”

“degenerate[s]”

“subhuman animal[s]”

“totally sexual, incapable of cerebral or aesthetic responses”

“totally materialist and greedy”

“leech[es]”

“emotional parasite[s]”

“not ethically entitled to live”

“turd[s]”

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Solanas referred to men as being incapable of the following:

“empathizing”

“identifying with others”

“love”

“friendship”

“affection”

“tenderness”

“mental passion”

“mental interaction”

“giving or receiving pleasure or happiness”

“cooperat[ing] to achieve a common end”

“mental rapport”

“empathiz[ing] or feel[ing] affection or loyalty”

“a positive state of happiness”

Solanas did not mention anything about men that she thought was beneficial to society. She thought that the underlying cause of men’s behaviour was their desire to be women, and she believed that women were superior to men in nearly every way. She believed that the “female function is to explore, discover, invent, solve problems, crack jokes, make music—all with love” and thus create a “magic world.”

Solanas wanted most men eliminated. She wanted men to be murdered domestically or killed through war, race riots, or excessive drug use. She also advocated for use of reproductive technologies to ensure that more men were not born.

Solanas had one exemption to her male extermination program: the Men’s Auxiliary of SCUM. Solanas stated that SCUM will “kill all men who are not in the Men’s Auxiliary of SCUM.”

For Solanas, the role of the Men’s Auxiliary was to help SCUM achieve its long-term goals, including the elimination of men. Solanas said the following types of men could be permitted to live:

• Men who are willing to kill other men

• Male biologists “working on constructive programs”

• Male journalists, writers, editors, publishers, and producers who “disseminate and promote ideas that will lead to the achievement of SCUM’s goals”

• “Faggots” who “encourage other men to de-man themselves”

• Men who “consistently give things away” like money, material objects, and services

• Men who tell women that “a woman’s primary goal in life should be to squash the male sex”

Revolution

Eliminating the male sex was not the only outcome that Solanas desired. She also envisioned SCUM as an organization that would overthrow the entire social and political system of the United States. She was an anarcofeminst of sorts. She believed that the elimination of capitalism and the male sex would be complimentary. By eliminating capitalism, Solanas believed that men would lose their power, leading to their demise. By eliminating men, Solanas believed that capitalism would come to an end.

Contradictions

Solanas held contradictory views. She was a misandrist and wanted the male sex eliminated. Yet, like every other human who has ever existed, Solanas relied on men directly and indirectly everyday of her life. In fact, scenes of women helping Solanas are practically non-existent in I Shot Andy Warhol.

Solanas was entirely dependent on men to make her famous and spread her message. This included artist Andy Warhol and book publisher Maurice Girodias—both of whom she attempted to kill. Girodias gave Solanas a $600 advance for a novel that would be based on SCUM Manifesto, and Warhol paid Solanas for acting. Solanas also begged men (and women) for money on the streets, and she made money from men via prostitution. Later in life, she was also the beneficiary of social welfare services, which would have been funded largely by male taxpayers and the wealth created through capitalism.

Other contradictions were also apparent in Solanas’ thinking. Below are some examples:

• Solanas hated male sexual behaviour, but she facilitated it by working as a prostitute.

• Solanas said that “[s]ex is the refuge of the mindless” and that women who were more sexual were “more mindless” and “more deeply embedded in the male “culture.”” Yet, Solanas worked as a prostitute.

• Solanas accused men of having no ability to empathize or identify with others. Yet, Solanas demonstrated an obvious lack of empathy when she attempted to kill men.

• Solanas wanted to overthrow capitalism, but she relied on it and wanted the benefits from it. She wanted to earn money from her writings, and she relied on the materials produced by capitalism to promote her message (e.g., typewriters, paper, pencils, ink, housing).

• Solanas wanted to make everything automated, but she also wanted to eliminate the sex who created the technology that made automation possible.

• Solanas deplored male artists saying, that “a “male artist” is a contradiction in terms” because a “degenerate can only produce degenerate “art.”” Yet, Solanas’ repeatedly attempted to get Warhol, a male artist, to produce her story Up Your Ass as a play or movie.

• Solanas wanted a utopia of peace and magic, but she promoted and used violence.

• Solanas criticized traditional aspects of family and society but then could not personally demonstrate how her vision of life worked any better. Her personal path was characterized by mental instability, prostitution, low productivity, and violence. Remarkably, all the things that she was against, such as employment, the suburbs, and healthy relationships with men, would have helped create the stability that she desperately needed in her life.

Falsehoods

Beyond her contradictions, Solanas also said things in SCUM Manifesto that were untrue.

Solanas claimed that men are more likely than women to censor and suppress ideas, including in the field of psychology. Today, we know the opposite is true. We are currently closer than ever to Solanas’ utopian view of complete female control over education. Yet, academic censorship and cancellations now occur regularly.

Similarly, Solanas accused “insecure male professionals” as being responsible for disseminating propaganda to “guard their positions, so that only a highly select few can comprehend abstract scientific concepts.” Today, we know the opposite is true. In academia, government, and the non-profit sector, feminists constantly publish propaganda and use floating abstractions and critical theory jargon to disguise their ideas and plans.

Solanas also believed that “it is possible…never to age and live forever” and that “[a]ll diseases are curable.” This is obviously wrong.

Moral Ambiguity Always Favors Evil: The Guardian, Mary Harron, and I Shot Andy Warhol

Valerie Solanas was a disturbed and hate-filled individual who was confused about reality. This is obvious from SCUM Manifesto and her attempts at killing multiple men on June 3, 1968. Yet, rather than letting Solanas fade into oblivion, Mary Harron and Emma Madden have insisted that she be brought back to life.

Madden started her article with a minimal and incomplete (and perhaps inaccurate) presentation of the shooting. Madden then shifted to the article’s main purpose: to highlight the re-release of I Shot Andy Warhol, and, with Harron’s help, re-introduce the world to Solanas.

From Harron, one learns that she first discovered Solanas in the 1980s. In a different interview with The Believer in 2014, Harron said that she discovered SCUM Manifesto one day while walking home in South London. Apparently, Solanas’ book was in the window of a left-wing bookshop, and Harron bought it for reading on the train. From that reading, Harron concluded that SCUM Manifesto was a “work of genius” and a “life-changing, cataclysmic experience.”

Twelve years later, in the interview with The Guardian, Harron confirmed that SCUM Manifesto hit her “like a lightning bolt.” Harron then repeatedly referred to Solanas in glowing terms, calling her “sexy,” “witty,” “really funny” and “very, very smart.” In the interview with The Believer, Harron also called Solanas and SCUM Manifesto “brilliant.” Harron also said that she “love[s]” Solanas, and that Solanas was “somebody who the world already recognised as great”—a statement that is hardly true considering that most people do not know who Solanas is, let alone think of her as “great.”

Harron also expressed empathy toward Solanas (but not her victims), referring to her as a “neglected person” who deserves “attention and love.” Harron explained that I Shot Andy Warhol is “a story about the pain of isolation, and desperately needing to be heard.” Harron then connected the movie’s theme with the lives of other violent people like the Unabomber and Luigi Mangione, who, according to Harron, also communicated “truth,” but were isolated from their communities.

Interestingly, Harron did not say how a lonely, confused individual might benefit from watching her movie. She did not explain how such a person might feel inspired to overcome their difficulties in personal relationships or professional work by watching a biographical drama of an irrational woman who tries to kill men. Rather, by highlighting and stylizing Solanas’ violence and failures, I Shot Andy Warhol reinforces perceived hopelessness, communicating to vulnerable viewers that brighter futures are not possible for them and that the only way that they will be heard is if they kill men.

But neither Harron nor Madden seem to truly care about lonely would-be assassins or their potential victims. Instead, their goal is to promote I Shot Andy Warhol as a “belated act of recognition.”

Recognition? Of what?

Of the rise of radicalized young women, whose politics continue to steer further left?

Of the ongoing problem of female-perpetrated violence?

Of women’s endorsements for violence against major political figures?

Of the constant stream of prejudices against boys and men in academia?

No, of course not. Readers of The Guardian are not supposed to know about those things. Instead, the re-release of I Shot Andy Warhol is a belated act of recognition of Solanas and her supposedly “visionary ideas.”

In recent years, assassins have shot at, and sometimes, killed men of power and influence in the United States, including President Donald Trump; political activist and commentary Charlie Kirk; and UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson (allegedly assassinated by Mangione). Yet, these recent events appear to be of little or no concern to Harron, who referenced Mangione and framed the re-release of the movie in the current political environment as follows:

“I think people will understand [the movie] better now. Our culture’s taking this big back step towards male dominance and authoritarian regimes; everything women like Valerie were fighting against.”

Did the implications of those statements not occur to either Harron or Madden? Are they unable to see that the next logical progression in Harron’s thinking is that viewers of the movie might consider fighting back against the “male dominance and authoritarian regimes” in the same way that Solanas did—by shooting men? Remember, it was Solanas who insisted that males were the sex incapable of empathising. Yet, neither Harron nor Madden appeared to be able to tap into their special female empathy centres to express compassion for Solanas’ victims or to express concern for women who might watch the movie, get drunk off the text of SCUM Manifesto, and destroy their lives in the process.

In her interviews with The Guardian and The Believer, Harron revealed an inability to acknowledge the immorality of Solanas’ wicked act. This lack of moral judgement parallels Harron’s belief that filmmakers can create content that does not contain moral messaging. In her interview with the The Believer, Harron said:

“One thing I’m not is a moralistic filmmaker. I’m not trying to tell people what to do, and I’m not trying to lead. Americans always think they have to lead. I’m interested in ambiguity.”

Those lines are all one needs to know about Harron to understand why she wrote and directed I Shot Andy Warhol.

Harron seems to believe that by shrugging her shoulders, and trying to be Ms. Neutrality, Ms. Non-Judgmental, and Ms. Ambiguity, that she gets free license to present immoral historical figures as important and interesting.

Sorry, Mary, that is not how this works.

Every artist is a moralist, whether they want to be or not.

Art is a “selective recreation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.” Thus, in choosing what to re-create, the filmmaker makes judgments about what she believes is important and unimportant. In this case, we already know that Harron is fascinated by SCUM Manifesto and thinks highly of Solanas.

So, why is Harron claiming moral ambiguity?

Personal accountability.

Harron seems to believe that by claiming she is morally ambiguous about the Solanas-Warhol case that she can excuse herself from being held accountable for what she presents in I Shot Andy Warhol. Yet, the basic facts of the Solanas-Warhol case are clear. In premeditated fashion, Solanas attempted to kill Warhol and other men. Anyone who is not high off the fumes of the pages of the 1960s or 1990s editions of SCUM Manifesto knows that Solanas is a villain. Thus, in claiming moral ambiguity, Harron has made a fool of herself. She has performed an act of evasion, so that she can present Solanas as a quasi-hero.

Regarding heroes versus villains, Harron tried to play the moral ambiguity card, when she said that I Shot Andy Warhol is “not about heroes and villains.” However, in a follow-up statement, she contradicted herself. She said that the movie did not “have to turn [Solanas] into a 100% hero.”

What?

No person with a sound moral compass was suggesting that Solanas should be presented as any percent hero, let alone 30%, 50%, or 70%.

In her statements to The Guardian, Harron implied that she believes that Solanas’s act was at least somewhat righteous. Consequently, Harron is not entitled to make the claim that she is morally ambiguous about the matter.

Moral ambiguity (claimed or otherwise) always favours evil. Moral ambiguity allows villains to gain credit that they do not deserve, and it causes heroes to lose credit that they deserve. No one other than a few radical feminists believes that an assassin and misandrist should be presented as anything more than 0% hero. And this is why I Shot Andy Warhol is not a movie that most people are likely to buy for their collections and rewatch. It is a story that takes the villain and turns her into a quasi-hero, while there is no true hero for audiences to connect with and feel inspired by.

The hero-villain story structure often succeeds because people relate to it. They know that “good” and “bad” exist in the real world, and they appreciate seeing those concepts concretized in the decisions and actions made by movie characters. (NB. It is not insignificant that Hannon also directed American Psycho, which, through its main evil character, also depicts the worst in humanity, along with anti-capitalism and anti-male themes.)

I suspect that Harron and Madden would be struck with moral clarity if the sexes of the case were reversed. I doubt that Harron would be morally ambiguous about a historical event that involved a man attempting to assassinate multiple women. I also do not think that Madden would use the phrase “triumphant return” to describe a re-release of a biographical drama that depicts a man trying to assassinate women. Instead, such a re-release would likely be condemned by feminist organizations for encouraging “femicide” and “gender-based violence.”

Finally, it is important to note that Harron chose to make a biographical drama of the Solanas-Warhol case rather than a documentary. This distinction is critical because the non-documentary route gave Harron more flexibility; it allowed her to stylize Solanas and present her as more interesting and important than she really was. Exaggeration is normal in dramas, but by choosing to make I Shot Andy Warhol a drama rather than a documentary, Harron necessarily took on responsibility as a moralist—the responsibility that she desperately has tried to evade or cover up.

Romantic Art and a Movie That Could Have Been Made Instead

It is easy to criticize filmmakers and other artists. So, here I propose a drama that Harron could have made instead, which still communicates some of the messages that Harron apparently wanted to communicate (“a story about the pain of isolation, and desperately needing to be heard”) but also works in more volition-based, forward looking, benevolent themes (i.e., romantic themes).

In the story that I have created, a similar female hero to keep in mind is Jodie Foster’s character, Clarice Starling, in the movie Silence of the Lambs.

In my story, the female hero is a police investigator named Lisa Raines. A secondary hero is a police officer named Matt Thompson, who is one of Raines’ colleagues.

Raines is a relatively young investigator. She originally worked in her department’s Cybercrime Unit, but due to the sudden retirement of an investigator in the Sex Abuse and Trafficking Unit, along with the increased activity in that portfolio in recent months, Raines has been told by her captain that her services are needed in the Sex Abuse and Trafficking Unit. The captain told Raines that he is confident that she will do a good job in the new role, and that she will receive a pay increase if she takes the position.

Raines initially fights the transfer. She does not clearly articulate why she is fighting the transfer, but the underlying reason is that she was sexually abused by her stepfather when she was girl. (NB. It has been said that Valerie Solanas was molested by her father).

Raines is still scarred from her childhood experience: she has lived a mostly isolated life in which she has been focused on her work and pet animals, and she has been unable to form trusting, romantic relationships with men. While taking a couple of days to consider the transfer, Raines has vague flashbacks to the time when she was abused by her stepfather.

In the days that Raines was taking to contemplate the transfer, an officer in the Sex Abuse and Trafficking Unit was shot and killed. The captain begins to lose his patience with Raines, telling her that the unit is now further understaffed and activity in the profile continues to increase, with few cases getting solved. The captain gives Raines an ultimatum: she can either work in the new role or she will be transferred out of town.

While presented with this ultimatum in the captain’s office, Raines looks out the window and sees Officer Matt Thompson. Thompson has an easy-going and friendly nature. He is smiling and laughing with fellow police officers. Thompson glances toward the captain’s office and catches Raines looking at him. Raines quickly turns back to the captain and accepts the new role.

While working in the new unit, Raines is introduced to many unsolved cases. She cannot believe the magnitude of the problem of missing children across the state and the vast enterprise of sexual exploitation of children online. Members of the department, most of whom are men, are convinced that there is a rich, socially prominent person behind the whole thing, operating through complicated networks.

The more that Raines studies the cases, the more she becomes obsessed with them. As her obsession grows, so do the number of flashbacks that she is having about her childhood. With every subsequent flashback, she gets closer to seeing the images that she has suppressed for many years. At the same time, she feels like she is getting closer to solving some of the cases. Consequently, Raines does want to quit her job. Instead, she starts to accept that she will need to experience more mental anguish and push through it to help save children.

Another reason that Raines does not want to quit her new role is Officer Thompson. As the story builds, a relationship between Raines and Thompson grows slowly. Thompson gives signs that he is interested in Raines as a friend and likely more, but Raines has her guard up—she is still traumatized from her past, and she is not sure whether she can trust Thompson. At the same time, she does not want to outright reject him. She is conflicted.

From her intense investigative work, Raines develops a new theory about the cases. Her theory is different than the one put forward by her male colleagues. She thinks that the “mastermind” is more local, non-prominent social figure, who operates through a different set of online networks than proposed by her male colleagues. Raines’ colleagues tell her that she is wrong and that she is too inexperienced to know what she is doing. Consequently, Raines feels professionally isolated and desperately wants to be heard (like Valerie Solanas). Officer Thompson is the only one who does not completely dismiss Raines, though he thinks that her theory is still incomplete.

Raines is convinced that her theory is correct after an incident that happened to her at a local grocery store. As she was checking out, there was a man and a young girl in line ahead of her. A statement made by the man to the girl instantly caused Raines to have a flashback to her youth. The statement was nearly identical to something that Raines’ stepfather had said to her just before he abused her. As the man and young girl walked out the store, the girl turned back and made eye contact with Raines. The girl’s look was familiar to Raines. It was the look that she had as a girl after her stepfather abused her.

As Raines’ relationship with Thompson builds, Raines begins to reveal more of the details of her theory, but she is hesitant to reveal everything, including the incident at the grocery store. She knows, by telling Thompson the totality of her theory, she will also need to tell him about her history of being abused. Right now, she is unsure if she can trust him with that information. She is fearful that he might tell the other officers, causing her to feel further isolated from the group.

A little later in the story, Raines and Thompson are in the office. Raines finally decides that she is ready to reveal everything to him. She knows that this will mean that their friendship will either turn romantic or that Thompson will reject her. Nevertheless, she invites Thompson over for dinner. They organise for the dinner to take place later that day at Raines’ house after they both finish with work.

Thompson is scheduled to finish work in a few minutes, while Raines still needs to finish another couple of hours of work before heading home. After Raines finishes, she remembers that she has only a few snacks and drinks at home. So, on her drive home, she stops by the grocery store. While she is picking items off the shelf, she sees the man that she saw in the grocery store a couple of months ago. This time, the man is with a different girl. Raines momentarily makes eye contact with the girl, but the man forcefully tugs on the girl’s arm, pulling her out of Raines’ sight.

Raines is convinced that this man should be questioned regarding the disappearance of children throughout the state. Raines puts the snacks and drinks back on the shelf and begins to tail the man and the girl out of the store and then all the way back to the man’s house.

The ascension to the story’s climax is now accelerating.

Raines parks in the driveway and knocks on the house’s front door. The man opens the door. Raines introduces herself as a police investigator who has a few questions about crimes that have occurred across the state. Raines enters the house and immediately feels uncomfortable, and the tension between Raines and the man build as she asks him targeted questions. Eventually, Raines asks a question that convinces the man that she knows about his crimes. The man attacks Raines, hitting her over the head, knocking her unconscious. He ties Raines up, while he figures out what to do with her.

Meanwhile, Thompson is driving over to Raines’ house for dinner. The man’s house is on a street that is part of Thompson’s route.

Thompson notices Raines’ car in the driveway. Thompson thinks nothing of it initially. Then, as he remembers a minor detail about one of the crimes, he slams on the brakes, turns his car around and speeds back toward the house.

Thompson pulls into the driveway and gets out of his car with his gun drawn. He knocks on the front door, but no one answers. Thompson walks around the house, peering through the windows. Eventually, he spots Raines tied up in one of the rooms. He breaks throughs a side window and starts attending to Raines. As he is attending to her, the man comes from another room and attacks him. Thompson and the man start fighting, causing Thompson’s gun to fall to the floor. While they are fighting, Raines begins to regain consciousness.

The man shoves Thompson, causing him to trip over a stool and fall back against the wall. The man pulls the gun that he had early taken from Raines and points it at Thompson. The rope tying Raines’ hands together had been partially loosened by Thompson, and Raines quickly shimmies her hands free, grabs Thompson’s gun from the floor and shoots the man before he has a chance to fire on Thompson. (NB. The main good character should always be the one who performs the final act that resolves the story. That is what makes them the hero.).

With the villain dead, Raines attends to Thompson, crouching next to him. As she begins treating him, he says, “Don’ worry, Lisa. I’m fine.” He then puts his arm around her, and she embraces him putting her head on his shoulder. It is the most feminine that she has appeared the whole story.

Moments later, the girl from the grocery store peaks her head around the corner. Raines waves her over. The girl approaches hesitantly. As she is approaching, Raines sees her younger self in the girl, and for the first time in the story, tears fall from Raines’ eyes—symbolizing the release of the memories of her past.

Raines extends her hand to the girl. The girl takes it, and Raines cuddles her next to Thompson.

In the next scene, a full police and ambulance squad are on site. As Raines and Thompson walk out of the house, the male officers from the unit are there waiting to greet them, particularly Raines. As she walks by, all the men shake her hand.

“Nice job, Raines,” said one officer.

“You did it, Raines.” said another.

“You were right all along,” admitted another.

The final officer in the queue then says, “Great work, Raines. Drinks on me!”

The whole unit smiles and shares a brief chuckle. Raines, through her bravery and excellence, has now earned her colleagues’ respect, and is now an accepted member of the group.

The movie ends with Raines and Thompson walking off the police scene together. Raines moves her hand to and from her pocket a few times, unsure of what to do with it. She looks up at the sky and then she looks back down. With no further hesitation, she grabs Thompson’s hand, and the credits begin to role.

My story represents an endless number of options that are available to filmmakers to try to spark the best in viewers rather than communicate to viewers that their lives are determined to fail. Lisa Raines’ character displayed hard work, dedication, competence, critical thinking, intuition, courage, and emotional strength. She felt isolated and unheard, working in a male-dominated unit, but instead of using those feelings as an excuse to kill innocent men (i.e., Valerie Solanas), she stayed the course. She worked hard to prove her theory. In doing so, she overcame childhood trauma and rechannelled those experiences into a passion for solving crimes that save girls. Raines decided that she no longer wanted to run away from her past; she knew it was holding her back from forming healthy relationships. Consequently, she was able to form a romantic relationship with Thompson, who she eventually learned was a man that she could trust and look up to and who was willing to protect her rather an abuse her. Moreover, through her excellence, Raines won over the respect of her fellow officers—another example of relationship building. Finally, rather than attempting to kill innocentmen, Raines shot and killed a bad man. Unlike Solanas, Raines’ shooting was not premeditated. It was reactionary and was done to save others from being harmed. There was no moral ambiguity. The heroes and villains were clearly defined.

In sum, my story does not sugar coat life. It shows human ugliness, hardship, and evil. However, it also shows the good in life and how characters can use their minds and bodies to overcome challenges to achieve their rational values. That is what Romantic Realism is all about.

CONCLUSION

The Guardian and the writer and director of I Shot Andy Warhol, Mary Harron, have not done society any favours by bringing Valerie Solanas and her SCUM Manifesto back into the limelight. The SCUM Manifesto, which calls for violence and the overthrow of traditional political systems and cultural norms, contains internal contradictions, falsehoods, and misandry. But that was not enough to dissuade Harron from believing that Solanas and the SCUM Manifesto were brilliant. Instead, because Solanas was a women who hated capitalism and attempted to kill men, her violence was given a free pass. It was contextualized, if not celebrated or considered interesting or stimulating.

Solanas acted in accordance with her own manifesto. That should not be overlooked. She said that men should be murdered, and that was what she tried to do on June 3, 1968. Why should we not believe that other troubled woman who discovers SCUM Manifesto and I Shot Andy Warhol will not try the same, particularly given the current political environment, where women’s political views and activism are becoming more extreme and where assassinations and assassination attempts are somewhat regular news?

Reflecting on how Harron discovered SCUM Manifesto, it is a shame that she did not take a different route home that day when walking through South London. Imagine, for a moment, that instead of walking past the left-wing bookshop with SCUM Manifesto in its window display, she walked past a different bookshop that had a different manifesto in its display: Ayn Rand’s The Romantic Manifesto (published a year after SCUM Manifesto).

In The Romantic Manifesto, Rand, a successful female fiction and non-fiction writer, whose books have sold millions of copies and impacted countless lives in positive ways, explained the nature of art and its purpose in flourishing on Earth.

Had Harron discovered Rand’s manifesto rather than Solanas’s manifesto presumably the world would have never been introduced to I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho—two movies that present a malevolent view of the universe and the worst in man.

From Rand, Harron would have learned the difference between good and evil and crafted stories that inspire people rather than make them feel disgusted or like they have been psychologically taken advantage of.

As Rand said, art is “the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal.” Thus, moral messages are foundational in storytelling, and meaningful stories show people the ingredients for living healthy and happy lives. They present a benevolent view of the universe and depict man as he ought to be or could be.

Perhaps Valerie Solanas would have benefited from reading more stories of that type.

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Earlier this year, eight academics from Brazil published a meta-analysis on transgender physical fitness in the British Journal of Sports Medicine—one of the most historically prominent journals in the fields of exercise and sports science. From their analysis, the authors concluded that “transgender women do not exhibit significant differences in upper-body strength, lower-body strength, or maximal oxygen consumption relative to cisgender women after 1–3 years of [gender-affirming hormone therapy].”

On May 12, 2026, I critiqued the meta-analysis in an article published at Reality’s Last Stand. I highlighted numerous glaring errors in the research. The errors were not minor. They reflected gross incompetence, such as including in the analysis studies that obviously did not meet the authors’ own stated eligibility criteria and excluding from the analysis studies that obviously did meet the authors’ own eligibility criteria.

Reality’s Last Stand

How a Flawed Meta-Analysis Misled the Public on Transgender Athletes

Read more

2 months ago · 87 likes · 16 comments · James L. Nuzzo

The number and types of errors amounted to one of the worst research performances that I have seen in my ~20 years in the field. I concluded, based on these errors, that the authors misled the public when they stated that there were no differences in muscle strength between women and transgender women.

Apparently, the authors got wind of the public criticism of their work. On June 15, they issued a correction.

The authors’ correction is welcomed. However, their correction is also misleading, and here I explain how.

Misleading Correction

The correction starts by stating that the authors “initiated” the correction after “constructive methodological concerns were raised by the scientific community.”

That is an understatement.

Some people familiar with the original paper thought that the errors were so egregious that the paper should be retracted not corrected. For example, in my critique, I did not provide “constructive methodological concerns.” I detailed the errors made by the authors and suggested that one could not trust them to do the research properly. Moreover, it was the scientific community, not the authors, who were the root initiators of the correction. Without public criticism, it is unlikely that the authors would have identified and/or corrected their errors.

I am also not convinced that the authors truly appreciate the magnitude of their ineptitude or care about its consequences. Public trust in the authors was deflated based on the errors that they made. In submitting a correction, one might think that the authors would be apologetic and go to great lengths to convince the public that they are competent researchers, who, uncharacteristically made a couple of mistakes that they deeply regret. One might expect that the researchers would go into analytical overdrive, repeatedly examining every spreadsheet, graph, table, references, and line of text—ensuring that no errors go undiscovered. One might also envision a team supervisor circulating a checklist, requiring that each team member indicate that they have completed a list of tasks that will nearly guarantee that no additional mistakes are made in the revised paper.

These are the types of things that conscientious, empathetic people do when they regret the confusion or harm caused by their errors. They seek redemption through future excellence.

Yet, trust and confidence in the authors was hardly re-established by their correction statement. They did not apologize for the mess that they put into circulation, nor did they detail all their original errors and corrections. In other words, the authors obfuscated.

In their correction, the authors stated that in the revised paper they removed three studies (Ceolin et al. 2024; Van Caenegem et al. 2013; Klink et al. 2015) and added one study (Ceolin et al. 2024). The authors provided some explanations for these decisions. For example, they admitted that both the Ceolin et al. 2024 and Van Caenegem et al. 2013 studies were removed because both studies tested physical fitness in individuals before they received gender-affirming hormone treatment.

Nevertheless, the correction statement did not detail many other changes that the authors made to their paper. These changes are only apparent when one compares the original version of the paper, which is no longer available online, to the revised paper.

For example, in the revised paper, I identified four changes that the authors made in Figure 2 (i.e., muscle strength meta-analysis) that they did not inform readers about in their correction statement:

1. The authors correctly removed the Andrade et al. 2022 study from their meta-analysis on upper-body muscle strength (Figure 2A in the paper).

2. The authors correctly added the Jenkins et al. 2020 study to their meta-analysis on upper-body muscle strength (Figure 2A in the paper).

3. The authors correctly added the Alvarez et al. 2022 study to their meta-analysis on upper-body muscle strength (Figure 2A in the paper).

4. The authors correctly added Hamilton et al. 2024 study to their meta-analysis on lower-body muscle strength (Figure 2B in the paper)

Another confusing change to Figure 2A pertains to the two studies by Ceolin et al. The effect size for the Ceolin et al. 2024 study differs between the original and revised figures. The reason that the effect size differs between the two figures is because the authors correctly removed the Ceolin et al. study that tested participants prior to receiving gender-affirming hormone treatment and replaced it with Ceolin et al. study that tested participants after they received gender-affirming hormone treatment. However, this change is not obvious in the figure because the two studies have same author name (Ceolin) and year (2024). This lack of clarity is an issue because the correction statement does not include a statement about the Ceolin et al. studies and the analysis on muscle strength (i.e., Figure 2). Instead, the authors stated that the reasons that they added the other Ceolin et al. study was because it included relevant data on “body composition.” Thus, the correction statement does not inform readers about the impact of switching the Ceolin et al. studies on the muscle strength analysis.

So, the key issue with the authors’ correction statement is that they did not clearly communicate the details of their errors and revisions. What’s more, the editor assigned to the paper did not catch any of this or encourage the researchers to provide more details.

Errors Still Exist

The authors also appear to have made at least one new error in the revised paper. Specifically, as pointed out by Professor of Exercise Science Greg Brown, the reference numbers in some of the figures appear to be incorrect.

In Figures 7 and 8 of the revised paper, one can see that the reference numbers for the van Caenegem et al. 2015b study and the van Caenegem et al. 2012 study are different. In Figure 7, the reference number for the van Caenegem et al. 2015b study is 64, but in Figure 8 it is 65. Moreover, in Figure 7, the reference number for the van Caenegem et al. 2012 study is 68, but in Figure 8 it is 69. If one then looks at the relevant section of the reference list in the revised paper, it is unclear which papers are the correct ones. From the reference list, the papers numbered 65 and 68 are probably the relevant ones, but further confusion comes from the fact that the year listed for the van Caenegem et al. study labelled as 68 in the reference list is 2013, but in Figure 7 it is listed as 2012.

No Cautionary Note is a Red Flag

One of the remarkable things about this paper is how confident the researchers are in their conclusions about muscle strength, though we know that the original analysis was riddled with errors. Given the public criticism of their work, one might think that the researchers would take a moment to reflect and consider being more cautious in their conclusions. Instead, the researchers doubled down. In their correction statement, they said the “main conclusions and key messages remain unchanged.”

Yet, it is obvious to many people that the Alvarez et al. 2025 study is a bizarre, outlier of a study that is clearly impacting the results of the meta-analysis for upper-body muscle strength. Without that study, the conclusion about upper-body muscle strength would be different. It would show that transgender women (i.e., males) have greater muscle strength than women, which is what most scientists who are not trans activists would expect.

Conclusion

The Brazilian researchers were right to revise their problematic meta-analysis on transgender physical fitness, though a good argument existed and perhaps still exists for retraction. However, in their correction statement, the authors were not fully transparent about the magnitude and types of errors that they made in their original paper, nor were they fully transparent about all the changes that they made in the revised paper. What’s more, after all this, the researchers still had the audacity to conclude, without any cautionary notes, that there is no difference in muscle strength between women and transgender women, when it is clear that one outlier study of unusually small men (Alvares et al. 2025) is impacting the analysis on upper-body strength.

Other issues that I raised in my critique were also not addressed. For example, the upper-body strength data reported by Saitong in 2025 were not added to the relevant analysis. Also, the authors have continued to refer to “1-3 years” of gender-affirming hormone treatment in their summary statements, while multiple studies in the muscle strength analysis reported treatment durations that exceeded 1-3 years.

Finally, the abysmal track record of the British Journal of Sports Medicine publishing papers on transgender physical fitness warrants restating. Prior this correction, the British Journal of Sports Medicine had already required corrections of two papers published on transgender fitness. Importantly, two of those problematic papers were included in the meta-analysis by the Brazilian researchers. The correction made by the Brazilian researchers marks the third paper on transgender fitness in the journal that has required correction. This is a remarkably high correction rate given that so few papers have been published on this topic in the journal. As I argued before, the journal could improve its ability to appraise scientific papers by spending less time focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

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LEADING ARTICLE

What the Researchers Missed About Boys

Men Are Good

WEEKLY VOICE

Nuzzo note: For how to add The Nuzzo Letter to your list of “recommended” Substack pages, see this post. If so inclined, you can also write 1-2 sentences explaining why you recommend The Nuzzo Letter (i.e., a review). Some reviews end up on the landing page of The Nuzzo Letter, and I am also now starting to add most reviews to the About page. Thanks for helping The Nuzzo Letter grow!

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

Sex/Gender

The Invisible Lessons Fathers Teach

Men Are Good

Do Women Love Their Husbands?

Men Are Good

On the Evolutionary Asymmetry of Bonding Between Men and Women.

Why Are We So Cruel To Men About Features They Can’t Change?

Evie Magazine

Gender Differences in Intimate Partner Violence Service Use

Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority

Abstract: Although males experience intimate partner violence (IPV) at a rate only slightly lower than females, they are much less likely to receive formal victim services. We examined differences in males and females who received services for IPV victimization. Using InfoNet data web-based case management system used by domestic violence and sexual assault victims service providers in Illinois—we compared non-fatal male and female IPV victim demographics collected between 2015 and 2019. We analyzed their characteristics, IPV victimization type, and service receipt. We found that the racial/ethnic representation among male IPV victims was more proportionate to their representation among Illinois residents than that of female IPV victims. Females more often reported having a disability or limited English proficiency, both barriers to accessing services, in addition experiencing abuse that presented an increased risk of escalating to homicide. Female victims received three times the number of service contacts that males did and were more likely to need and receive counseling, housing services, and shelter. Findings suggest male IPV victims needed legal services more often than female IPV victims; they were more often referred to a victim service provider by a legal source, to receive civil legal advocacy, and to have filed for an order of protection.

Education

The University of California Caves to Activists

City Journal

Under pressure from Mellon Foundation-funded activists, the UC system restored its DEI initiatives.

Journal retracts paper skeptical of ‘white power’ in psychology, says it conflicts with ‘values’

The College Fix

Health Sciences

Do No Harm Report Addresses the Concerning Rise of ‘Social Determinants of Health’ Ideology in Medical Literature

Do No Harm

38 DEI officials oversee University of Washington ‘health equity’ office

The College Fix

University offers ‘please don’t weigh me’ cards at health appointments

The College Fix

Pentagon demands human performance data from services in fitness overhaul

Military Times

Mental Health Treatment Among Adults: United States, 2024

NCHS Data Brief

Abstract: In 2024,19.3% of adults took medication for their mental health and 14.0% received counseling or therapy from a mental health professional in the past 12 months. Women were more likely than men to have received either treatment. Adults ages 30–44 were more likely to have taken medication than those ages 65–74 and 75 and older. Adults 75 and older were least likely to have received counseling or therapy. Adults with incomes less than 100% of the federal poverty level (FPL) were more likely to have taken medication and as likely to have received counseling or therapy as adults with incomes greater than 400% FPL. Adults living in nonmetropolitan areas were most likely to have taken medication and least likely to have received counseling or therapy from a mental health professional.

Causes of Excess Deaths in the US Compared With Other High-Income Countries

JAMA Network Open

Abstract: Importance: The US has higher mortality rates than other high-income countries (HICs). However, a comprehensive analysis of excess US deaths encompassing all leading causes of death over the past 2 decades is currently lacking. Objective: To investigate causes of death responsible for excess US mortality compared with other HICs and how the causes of death involved in this US mortality disadvantage have changed over time. Design, setting, and participants: This repeated cross-sectional study included mortality data from the World Health Organization Mortality Database spanning 1999 to 2022 for the US and 17 other HICs. Data were analyzed from September 2023 to December 2025. Exposures: Residing in the US vs another of the included HICs. Main outcome and measures: The main outcome was excess US mortality in each year due to specific causes of death. Differences between the US and other HICs were quantified for each cause of death as (1) excess US deaths (ie, absolute difference between observed deaths and deaths expected if US death rates equaled the rates of other HICs); (2) years of life lost (YLL) resulting from excess US deaths; and (3) mortality rate ratios (ie, ratios of observed to expected age-standardized death rates). Results: A total of 63 547 318 deaths occurred in the US from 1999 to 2022 (50.4% among males; mean [SD] age at death, 73.2 [18.5] years). In this period, 12 675 646 excess US deaths occurred, increasing from 346 166 in 1999 to 905 159 in 2022. Circulatory diseases were the leading cause of excess US deaths every year except 2010, increasing after 2001 for ages 45 to 64 years and after 2009 for ages 65 years or older. Together, circulatory and metabolic diseases accounted for 52% of excess US deaths in 2022. Excess US deaths due to drug poisonings, alcohol, and suicide increased from -5762 in 1999 to 131 151 in 2022; together, these 3 causes accounted for 24% of the increase in excess US deaths overall and most of the increase in excess US deaths for individuals aged 0 to 44 years. In 2022, deaths from drug poisonings were 7.48 times higher in the US than in other HICs. In 2020 and 2021, 19% and 23% of excess US deaths, respectively, were attributed to COVID-19, but excess US deaths from other causes also increased. Conclusions and relevance: In this repeated cross-sectional study of cross-national mortality, the US had substantially higher death rates than other HICs between 1999 and 2022, despite having similar access to advanced medical technology. Many of these excess US deaths could likely be avoided by adopting health and social policies that have benefited other HICs. These descriptive findings should be interpreted in light of uncertainty arising from differences in death coding, data completeness, and other aspects of data comparability across countries.

Treating the Pathological Female: Why the Current Model Fails

Episode description: Most treatments for Borderline Personality Disorder focus on emotional dysregulation. The goal is to reduce distress, self-harm, anxiety, and crises. But that misses the mark. In this episode, I argue that modern psychiatry has adopted a model of Borderline Personality Disorder that is incomplete. By focusing almost exclusively on suffering, it neglects the maladaptive strategies harm others. I also examine the striking contrast between how psychiatry approaches Borderline Personality Disorder—predominantly diagnosed in women—and Antisocial Personality Disorder, diagnosed predominantly in men. Why do we define one disorder primarily by the patient’s suffering and the other by the harm inflicted on others? And what has this double standard done to treatment? In the second half of the episode I outline what I believe a more realistic treatment model would look like. If you’ve ever wondered why Borderline Personality Disorder remains so difficult to treat, this episode offers a very different way of thinking about the problem.

HISTORICAL ARCHIVES

Sexual Violence Inside Prisons: Rates of Victimization

Journal of Urban Health (2006)

Abstract: People in prison are exposed to and experience sexual violence inside prisons, further exposing them to communicable diseases and trauma. The consequences of sexual violence follow the individual into the community upon release. This paper estimates the prevalence of sexual victimization within a state prison system. A total of 6,964 men and 564 women participated in a survey administered using audio-CASI. Weighted estimates of prevalence were constructed by gender and facility size. Rates of sexual victimization varied significantly by gender, age, perpetrator, question wording, and facility. Rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization in the previous 6 months were highest for female inmates (212 per 1,000), more than four times higher than male rates (43 per 1,000). Abusive sexual conduct was more likely between inmates and between staff and inmates than nonconsensual sexual acts. Sexual violence inside prison is an urgent public health issue needing targeted interventions to prevent and ameliorate its health and social consequences, which spatially concentrate in poor inner-city areas where these individuals ultimately return.

Boys in Custody and the Women Who Abuse Them

Propublica (2013)

The nation’s system of juvenile justice has long been troubled. But recent studies have revealed a surprising new menace: female staffers at detention facilities sexually abusing the male youngsters in their care.

RUBBISH BIN

Proposed tougher penalties for theft would punish mostly women – and harm their daughters

The Conversation

Current State of Gender Inequities in Transplantation Professionals Worldwide and Call for Prioritizing Gender Equity

Transplantation

Mobilization of Sexual Violence within the Manosphere: A Mixed Methods Systematic Review

The Journal of Sex Research

Abstract: The manosphere, a decentralized network of online communities united by anti-feminist and male supremacist ideologies, has increasingly been recognized as a site of radicalization, violence, and cultural influence. This mixed methods systematic review synthesizes 105 empirical studies on the manosphere (e.g., The Red Pill, incels, Men’s Rights Activists, Men Going Their Own Way, Pickup Artists) to examine how sexual violence is mobilized in these communities. Sexual violence mobilization refers not only to abusive incidents, but also broader discourses, attitudes, and practices that work to reproduce gendered power. Using a convergent integrated approach to synthesis and reflexive thematic analysis, we identified that manosphere actors leverage sexually violent acts and rhetoric to consolidate group identity and further their ideological goal of male supremacy, though, paradoxically, they do so under the guise of personal victimhood. Drawing on these findings, we propose a framework for conceptualizing sexual violence mobilization within the manosphere, highlighting how this mobilization is being used as a tool for recruitment, indoctrination, application of core ideologies, and the maintenance of these communities. The scope of this issue requires multi-level interventions, centering liberatory, gender-transformative programming for men.

The childhood gender assessment—a novel tool for assessing gender identity in children

International Journal of LGBTQ+ Youth Studies

Abstract: Objective: To evaluate how well a novel childhood gender assessment captures aspects of gender development and identity construction in children under age 12. Method: Retrospective examination of self-reported gender identity and expression of 112 children aged 3 to 12, 65 assigned male at birth (AMAB) and 45 assigned female at birth (AFAB) presenting to a gender multidisciplinary clinic for assessment including a novel tool—the Childhood Gender Assessment—which evaluates children’s understanding of their gender along several key contextual axes, including the potential for gender development over time. Children were encouraged to fill out the assessment, with assistance from the psychologist as needed. Results: Participants were 77% white, 7% biracial, 5% unknown, 4% Latino/a/é, 3% Asian, and ∼5% another specified racial or ethnic group. Findings challenge traditional binary frameworks, with 46% endorsing a female gender, 38% a male gender, 6% a nonbinary gender, and 11% other diverse options. Age-related differences indicate greater variability in younger children’s gender identification and expression. Individualized descriptions highlight unique ways children perceive their gender, including through the use of metaphor as metacommunication. Conclusions: This research contributes essential insights into the complex landscape of childhood gender development, emphasizing the need for diverse perspectives in understanding these processes.

(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)

The Emotional Experience of Pregnancy in a Transgender Man: A Case Report

JBRA Assisted Reproduction

Abstract: The present study aimed to understand the lived experience of a transgender man who underwent pregnancy. The existing literature indicates that many professionals are not prepared to assist transgender individuals, often supporting a heteronormative view of sexuality and reproduction. This case report explored whether the experience of pregnancy impacted the gender identity and experience of masculinity in a transgender man. A clinical case study methodology was employed. Initially, it was hypothesized that pregnancy would neither compromise the participant’s male identity nor weaken his experience as a transgender man. One transgender man expressed a desire to carry his genetic child. Our findings revealed that he began to enjoy the experience and was positively reconnected with his pregnant body by the sixth month of pregnancy. The psychic elaboration of the fantasy that “carrying a pregnancy is not a man’s thing” made him reconsider the feelings of impotence and vulnerability that are traditionally attributed to the females. He had a satisfactory experience with the healthcare team. He actively assumed the role of “father-birthgiver,” demonstrating that fathers are also capable of sensitively responding to a baby’s emotional needs. Although it mobilized complex psychological processes, the pregnancy experience did not cause identity disruption. This study indicates that transgender men can be psychologically and emotionally available for a baby in a state of absolute dependence.

‘They Not Like Us’: a kitchen-table talk on Black queer thriving in early childhood teacher education

Pedagogy, Culture & Society

Abstract: In Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’, the central refrain is one of naming the gap between performed identity and actual impact. As Black queer teacher educators, this dynamic resonated immediately with our experiences navigating critical early childhood spaces, where peers openly communicate their allyship while their actions tell a different story. Grounded in a Queer of Color Critique lens, we utilised bi-weekly kitchen-table talks to transparently and vulnerably share our experiences navigating higher education. The objective of this inquiry was to centre Black queer women and nonbinary early-career educators and scholars in early childhood teacher education and to clarify who ‘us’ is and what makes our standpoint unique. Our reflections illuminated three themes: advancing criticality, disrupting respectability politics, and reflecting on becoming new. We imagine a future where Black queer scholarship and intersectional knowledge empower educators and children, promoting true safety, belonging, and thriving across teacher education.

How Whiteness Works: Evasion, Protection, and Conditionality in White Staff Narratives on Race and DEI in Higher Education

Journal of Higher Education

Abstract: Grounded in Critical Whiteness Studies, this article examines how white staff in higher education narrate race, racism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and in doing so reproduce broader racial logics. Using qualitative thematic analysis of 1,806 open-ended responses to the National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates staff survey (collected between Fall 2021 and Spring 2023), we analyze how whiteness operates not only through institutional policy but also through the everyday stories staff tell about themselves, their institutions, and the value of DEI. We identified three themes: (a) whiteness maintained through discursive evasion, (b) discomfort with equity demands as a form of whiteness protection, and (c) conditional support masking structural resistance. These findings reveal how discursive and affective practices sustain whiteness within higher education, often under the guise of neutrality or even support for equity. We conclude by discussing the implications for research, practice, and policy to prompt interventions that aim to dismantle whiteness as an institutional logic in higher education and, in turn, better meet the needs of racially minoritized communities on college and university campuses.

Anti-Racism Project Coordinator

Edith Cowan University

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Anti Racism Project Coordinator

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Equity Projects Coordinator

Edith Cowan University

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Equity Projects Coordinator

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If you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you!

If you prefer to donate to a specific project, please see the Go Fund Me page for my current research on sex differences in muscle strength in children.

University humanities departments are the root cause of many societal ills. Critical theory has been widely adopted as the intellectual framework in those departments, and we are all its cannon fodder through its impact on policy and culture.

Because the bars for scholarship and academic appointments have been lowered in recent years, universities are now increasingly staffed by political activists. These academic activists do not engage in the disinterested pursuit of truth through rigorous scholarship, which is the traditional mission of the university professor. Instead, academic activists use the university as a vehicle for transmitting critical theory, and they constantly scheme about how to best accomplish this goal. Evidence of this scheming is found in a paper recently published in Pedagogy, Culture & Society. The paper, “The moral-political economy of discomfort: who is allowed to feel uncomfortable in higher education,” was written by a Michalinos Zembylas—a professor of education at the Open University of Cyprus and Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Reform at the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.

In the paper, Zembylas suggested that universities have become so good at institutionalising “pedagogies of discomfort“ that these discomforts are now less surprising to students and perhaps losing their impact. Zembylas called these pedagogical techniques “authorised discomfort” because university administrators view them as acceptable forms of intellectual torture for enhancing student “critical consciousness.” Zembylas then discussed the pedagogies of discomfort that are not broadly accepted by university administrators. Zembylas referred to these pedagogical techniques as “unauthorised discomfort.” Zembylas recommended that academic activists press forward with these “unauthorised discomforts” to achieve their broader political aims.

Below, I provide excerpts from Zembylas’ paper. While reading them, I encourage readers to contemplate academic activists and how they spend their days plotting to gradually increase student and staff thresholds of “discomfort”—often at taxpayer expense.

Remember, Zembylas and his ilk are not genuine researchers or educationalists. They are political revolutionaries disguised as “scholars.” They seek to dismantle traditional systems of education, politics, law, culture, and civility. They want to gain political power to change policy based on their subjective whims. They repeatedly state or imply these things in their academic papers. The time to push back against them is now.

Excerpts from the paper:

“One risk that has received comparatively little attention in the literature over these years concerns the ways in which discomfort can gradually be absorbed into institutional pedagogical repertoires. Rather than remaining an unsettling interruption, discomfort may become reframed as an expected – indeed, even desirable – component of pedagogies that can somehow be ‘productively’ addressed. In other words, what was once framed as a critical intervention challenging emotional and institutional norms now risks becoming a ‘normal’ component of ‘virtuous’ and ‘productive’ pedagogies.”

“As discomfort becomes institutionalised, it risks turning from something emergent into something structured, from disruptive into normative, from open-ended into time-bound, and from a practice that holds tensions open into one that seeks to settle them... Of course, the institutionalisation of discomfort does not eliminate it but renders it predictable and governable. To put this differently, discomfort becomes something that can be planned for, contained, and evaluated – an affective and pedagogical resource that institutions can deploy to signal ethical engagement without necessarily destabilising existing relations of power.”

“As I have shown, some forms of discomfort are readily absorbed into institutional narratives of learning and inclusion. These forms may produce important insights, but they rarely unsettle the structures that generate injustice in the first place. Other forms, namely unauthorised discomfort, are more difficult to incorporate. Precisely because they exceed institutional tolerance, they expose the limits of affective governance and the fragility of institutional claims to ethical authority. The political promise of discomfort in pedagogy and higher education more broadly, then, does not lie in its mere presence but in its capacity to disrupt the institutional emotional norms and render visible the boundaries of institutional legitimacy.”

“To take discomfort seriously, then, is not to domesticate it into a pedagogical model, but to attend to how it strains against the very conditions that seek to contain it. If discomfort is to retain any critical force in higher education, it will be not because it makes us feel uneasy, but because it continues to press against the affective, moral, and political limits of what the university is willing to recognise, accommodate, and legitimise – even when doing so unsettles its own claims to virtue and neutrality.”

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NB: For 2001, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics excluded workplace injury deaths caused by the terrorist attacks on September 11. I think it is debatable whether this exclusion was scientifically sound.

Number of Workplace Injury Deaths

• About 10-13 times more males than females die each year from injuries sustained at work.

• Between 1980 and 2024, 234,437 males and 18,539 females died from injuries sustained at work (92.7% males).

• Between 1980 and 2024, the average annual number of males and females who died from workplace injuries was 5,210 and 412, respectively.

• The number of male workplace injury deaths ranged from a low of 4,216 in 2009 to a high of 6,914 in 1980.

• The number of female workplace injury deaths ranged from a low of 319 in 2013 to a high of 539 in 1995.

• In 2024, 4,657 males and 413 females died from injuries sustained at work (91.9% males).

Proportion of Workplace Injury Deaths

• Males made up over 90% of workplace injury deaths each year between 1980 and 2024.

• Between 1980 and 2024, males made up 92.7% of workplace injury deaths.

• The male proportion of workplace deaths ranged from a low of 91.4% in 1995 to a high of 94.6% in 1981.

Number and Proportion of Workplace Injury Deaths

• This graph combines the data from the first two graphs into one visualization.

• No new data are presented in this graph.

Workplace Injury Deaths by Cause of Death, 1980-1995 Total

• In 2001, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) published a report that summed the total number of workplace injury deaths by cause over that 16-year period. Below are the results from that report.

• Between 1980 and 1995, more males than females died from all causes of workplace injuries.

• Between 1980 and 1995, the most frequent cause of male death at the workplace was motor vehicle accidents. Other leading causes of male death at the workplace were machine accidents, homicides, and falls.

• Between 1980 and 1995, the most frequent cause of female death at the workplace was homicide. Other leading causes of female death at the workplace were motor vehicle accidents, falls, and machine accidents.

Workplace Injury Deaths by Cause of Death, 2003-2022

• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics now publishes annual data on the causes of workplace injury deaths (compiled in the graph below). Note that the categories and associated terminology differ somewhat from NIOSH’s 2001 report.

• Between 2003 and 2022, more males than females died from all causes of workplace injuries.

• Each year between 2003 and 2022, transportation incidents were the leading cause of male death at the workplace.

• Each year, approximately 1,800 males die from transportation incidents at work.

Workplace Homicides and Suicides, 1992-2024

• Each year between 1992 and 2024, there were more workplace homicides than workplace suicides in the U.S.

• Between 1992 and 2024, there were 20,190 workplace homicides and 7,948 workplace suicides in the U.S.

• NB. Sex-segregated data on workplace homicides and workplace suicides were unavailable for the years 1992-2024. However, a report by NIOSH, which summed the number of workplace injury deaths between 1980 and 1995, revealed that 80% of victims of workplace homicides were males over that 16-year period (10,302 males; 2,560 females) and 92% of workplace suicides were males over that period (2,907 males; 248 females).

Sources

For data 1980-1995: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Fatal Injuries to Civilian Workers in the United States, 1980-1995 - National and State Profiles. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication Number 2001-129S. 2001.

For data 1992-2002: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Miscellaneous CFOI Data Tables - All Worker Profile, 1992-2002.

For data 2003-2018: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Miscellaneous CFOI Data Tables - All Worker Profile, 1992-2002.

For data 2019-2024: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Annual Reports of Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries.

Bonus Commentary

Since the early 1980s, workplace injury deaths in the U.S. have decreased modestly, namely from reduced numbers of deaths from transportation accidents. Nevertheless, transportation accidents are still the leading cause of workplace injury deaths in the U.S. Self-driving vehicles might help resolve this problem, but they present their own challenges.

The past 45 years of data illustrate that workplace injury deaths are primarily a men’s health issue. Oddly, big public health and the Bureau of Labor Statistics rarely discuss these deaths in a sex-specific way. In fact, in graphs published on page 1 of its press releases last year and this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not present workplace injury deaths in a sex-segregated way. Moreover, in the text of the press releases, the Bureau emphasized the number of female workplace injury deaths. The number of male workplace injury deaths were presented data tables later in the press releases.

The Bureau’s decision to not clearly visualize sex-segregated data on workplace injury deaths is problematic for a couple of reasons.

First, in recent years, big public health and academia have called for more sex-segregated data. Thus, groups like the Bureau of Labor Statistics do not meet this call when their graphs combine male and female. Also, the Bureau’s decision to not clearly visualize sex-segregated data on workplace injury deaths reveals a double standard, where calls for sex-segregated data are met only in situations where women exhibit worse health outcomes.

Second, when data on workplace injury deaths are presented in graphs in a sex-segregated way, readers become aware of the substantial sex difference immediately. Displaying this stark contrast is important. It can promote empathy for men’s dangerous work; it can combat misguided ideas like “male privilege”; and it can facilitate understanding of a factor that contributes to the “gender pay gap” (i.e., men’s riskier work).

For further commentary on the sex bias at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, see my interview with Tom Golden at Men Are Good and my essay/podcast, “Dead Men and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

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LEADING ARTICLE

Why the Worst Get on Top in Academia

Martin Center for Academic Renewal

If scholarship is to remain a priority in higher education, a rethinking of incentives is in order.

WEEKLY VOICE

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

Sex/Gender

Presidential Message on Men’s Health Week

The White House

Suicidal Men Don’t Need More Feminism

The Daily Sceptic

Do we really need a women’s budget statement?

Institute of Public Affairs

(NB. If this topic interests you, see my article from April 2025, “Australia’s Federal Budget Forgets Men: Women’s Health Labelled “Critical” and a “National Priority.”

Why Do Men Masturbate?

Reality’s Last Stand

And why do they sometimes watch pornography when they do?

Website compiles list of female athletes robbed of titles by biological males

Western Standard

Education

New Book Encapsulates Higher Ed’s Problems

Martin Center for Academic Renewal

A collection of expert essays says “it’s worse than you think.”

From Courtrooms to Classrooms

Martin Center for Academic Renewal

The ABA’s DEI retreat could reshape legal education.

The Politicization of Scholarship

City Journal

A new Vanderbilt–WashU report warns that parts of the humanities and social sciences have abandoned the pursuit of truth.

UNC Trustees Were Right to Block Hiring of Activist Scholar

Reality’s Last Stand

Kiran Asher’s rejected appointment shows that trustees can—and should—intervene when universities confuse political activism with scholarship.

The 2025-26 campus hate crime hoaxes: A complete roundup

The College Fix

From dismantling capitalism to ‘queering menopause’: Top 10 craziest campus events of the 2025-26 school year

The College Fix

Law professors report widespread self-censorship and fear of speaking freely

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

Freedom of expression at universities

Menzies Research Centre

Data reveals scale of student self-censorship on campus.

Inside the rotten work culture at Australia’s universities

Nine News

(NB: This story is about male suicide and the toxic work environments at universities in Australia.)

Health Sciences

Incidental Rotator Cuff Abnormalities on Magnetic Resonance Imaging

JAMA Internal Medicine

Abstract: Importance: Shoulder pain is a common musculoskeletal complaint often attributed to rotator cuff (RC) abnormalities. Diagnostic imaging is frequently used, but the association between RC abnormalities and shoulder symptoms remains uncertain. Objective: To determine the prevalence of RC abnormalities in a general population sample and their association with shoulder symptoms. Design, Setting, and Participants: Population-based cross-sectional study in a nationally random sample of adults aged 41 to 76 years who underwent standardized clinical assessment and bilateral 3-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the shoulders conducted from February 2023 to April 2024 in Finland. Eligibility criteria included ability to undergo MRI and absence of previous shoulder replacement surgery. Exposures: Structured interviews, standardized questionnaires, clinical shoulder tests, and shoulder MRI. Main Outcomes and Measures: RC tendon status was classified on MRI as normal, tendinopathic, partial-thickness tear (PTT), or full-thickness tear (FTT). Shoulder symptoms were defined as pain or dysfunction in the preceding week. The prevalence of RC abnormalities was compared across age groups and between symptomatic and asymptomatic shoulders, adjusting for demographic factors, concurrent MRI findings, and clinical examination. Results: Among 602 participants (median age, 58 [range, 41-76] years; 52% female), RC abnormalities on MRI were found in 595 (98.7%; 95% CI, 97.5%-99.5%): 25% tendinopathy, 62% PTT, and 11% FTT. The prevalence and severity of abnormalities increased with age but did not differ between sexes. RC abnormalities were present in 96% of asymptomatic shoulders (1039 of 1076) and 98% of symptomatic shoulders (126 of 128). Only FTTs were more prevalent in symptomatic shoulders (14.6%) than in asymptomatic shoulders (6.5%), but this difference diminished after adjustment (absolute difference, 0.8%; 95% CI, −3.4% to 6.0%). Conclusions and Relevance: In this population-based study, RC abnormalities were nearly universal after age 40 years and showed poor concordance with shoulder symptoms. These findings suggest that RC abnormalities often represent normal age-related changes rather than disease and call into question the clinical value of routine imaging for atraumatic shoulder pain.

Was COVID Deliberately Released? | Dr. Steven Quay

Episode description: Victor Davis Hanson interviews Dr. Steven Quay, one of America’s top scientists and inventors, on his explosive new book “The Code as Witness: How the Covid Genome Reveals its Lab Origins and How to Prevent Future Outbreaks.” Dr. Quay presents clear genetic evidence that COVID-19 was engineered in the Wuhan lab, not a natural spillover from bats or pangolins. From the virus’ own “fingerprints” in the genome to China’s suspicious early actions, this hard-hitting conversation reveals what really happened in 2019 and why dangerous gain-of-function research continues to threaten the world.

RUBBISH BIN

Commission presents new Gender Equality Strategy 2026-2030 for a more equal, cohesive and successful Europe

European Commission

Integrating an antiracism curriculum into public health core courses

Frontiers in Public Health

Abstract: In public health, we are dedicated to training the next generation of leaders at local, national, and global levels. To achieve this goal, it was essential to integrate antiracist principles into our curricula and address issues related to racial justice, bias, white privilege, and systemic oppression. A report from the Association of Schools and Programs in Public Health (ASPPH) called on schools and programs of public health to “adopt and adapt public health curricula to highlight how racism and other forms of discrimination impact the health and well-being of populations and individuals.” Starting in the spring of 2024, our six core courses explored antiracism from various perspectives, fostering a comprehensive understanding of the topic. This interdisciplinary approach encouraged diverse viewpoints and facilitated dynamic discussions, emphasizing the interconnectedness of racism with all aspects of our society.

Towards a feminist psychiatry

BJPsych Bulletin

Conclusion: “It is possible to be a feminist psychiatrist. A feminist psychiatry acknowledges the reality of mental illness but also that sexism, sexual exploitation and oppression play a major role in predisposing, precipitating and prolonging mental illness for all of us, and that this impact is greatest on those with the least power, on the margins, which includes women. Women’s mental health needs are misunderstood, misdiagnosed and underserved. But feminism isn’t only for women: it is about challenging harmful stereotypes, improving relationships, sharing responsibility and dismantling the oppressive power structures that affect all of us, patients and professionals.”

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If you prefer to donate to a specific project, please see the Go Fund Me page for my current research on sex differences in muscle strength in children.

Episode description: James Nuzzo examines sex differences, men’s health, academic ideology, and the erosion of male spaces. Drawing on physiology, sports performance, and cultural trends, he argues that biological reality still matters while universities, media, and social institutions increasingly reshape debate around feminism, masculinity, and the need for male-only arenas across society.

NB. This interview occurred on June 1, 2026. Also, in this interview, I said that Australia has approximately 33 universities. That statement was incorrect. Australia has approximately 40 universities, as I have discussed elsewhere at The Nuzzo Letter.

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On May 1, 2026, I published an essay exposing how The Australia Institute engaged in data spin and sex-biased reporting when it concluded that its poll revealed widespread “medical misogyny” in Australia. After I published the essay, an X user brought to my attention another possible instance of data spin in Australian sex/gender research. The X user shared a report titled, “Identifying and understanding child sexual offending behaviours and attitudes among Australian men.” The report was published by researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 2023. One of the groups associated with the report was Jesuit Social Services, which is the group that works with Michael Flood on the Man Box survey. See David Maywald’s essay at Celebrating Masculinity for a critique of the Man Box survey.

The report described results from a study in which 1,945 Australian men were surveyed about their sexual feelings and behaviours toward “children”. The results received widespread media attention. Headlines declared the findings as “grim,” “shocking,” “disturbing,” and “horrifying.”

Much of the media attention focused on the first two findings in UNSW’s press release:

• Around one in six (15.1%) Australian men reports sexual feelings toward children.

• Around one in ten (9.4%) Australian men has sexually offended against children.

Yet, inspection of the report reveals that these two findings are not what they seem.

“Children” and the Age of Sexual Consent

The study focused on men’s sexual feelings and behaviours toward individuals 18 years of age and younger. Yet, when describing the men’s feelings and behaviours, the researchers repeatedly used the phrases “towards children” and “against children.” The media latched onto the researchers’ choice of words. Many of the newspaper headlines included the word “children”

However, the researchers’ and media’s use of the word “children” was misleading. The ages men were asked to consider when answering the questions included teenagers old enough to provide sexual consent. In fact, age of sexual consent was an obvious limitations of the study. In Australia, the legal age of sexual consent is under 18 years of age. In Tasmania and South Australia, the age of sexual consent is 17 years old. In New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and the Australian Capital Territory, the age of sexual consent is 16 years old. Notably, 15.2% of the men who completed the survey were 18-24 years old, and 17.7% were 25-34 years old. Thus, many men who completed the survey were just few years older or were the same age as the individuals who they were asked to consider when answering the questions. The researchers acknowledged this limitation. They explained that the survey was international and included responses from men who lived in the United Kingdom and United States, where ages of sexual consent range from 16-18 years old.

Yet, this major limitation did not make the researchers particularly cautious in communicating their results with the public. Instead, they doubled down, stating that they believed that this limitation did not greatly impact their findings on contact offenses: (a) “[c]ontact offenders in our study were more likely to be older, not younger”; (b) “[t]he majority of men who reported sexual contact with a child had other indicators of sexual feelings or offending; and (c) “[t]he rate of contact offending in our study is supported by other research.”

However, that rationale is mostly irrelevant for the results on sexual feelings, and that rationale does not justify inflating statistics by lumping together categorically different items (described below).

Inflated Statistics

The statistic that 15.1% of “Australian men” reported sexual feelings toward children was inflated in two ways. First, the survey was international, and the 15.1% statistics was the prevalence of the entire international sample not the Australian sample. In Supplementary Table 2 (shown below), one can see that 185 Australian men were classified as having sexual feelings “towards children.” To determine the percent of Australian men who reported those feelings, one divides 185 by the total number of Australian men who answered the relevant questions. According to this table, the number of Australian men who answered the relevant questions was 1,253 (1,068 + 185). However, 185 divided by 1,253 is not 15.1%. It is 14.76%.

The 15.1% statistic is the result of dividing the 294 Australian and non-Australian men who were classified as having sexual feelings “towards children” by the 1,940 Australian (1,295) and non-Australian (687) men who answered the relevant questions. Thus, the 15.1% statistics reported for Australian men was inflated by roughly 0.3%. This 0.3% difference is not huge, but it shows the carelessness or deception involved in the report.

Importantly, even the 15.1% international statistic is misleading. To arrive at the 15.1% statistic, the researchers combined the number of men who answered positively to at least one of six survey items on sexual feelings. Yet, the six items differed ethically and legally. Below is the section of the report that shows the results from the six items.

Of the six items in the bulleted list, bullets 1, 5, and 6 are not associated with ethical wrongdoing according to Australian sexual consent law. Each of those items says, “below the age of 18 years,” which includes 16- and 17-year-olds who are, by law, able to provide sexual consent in Australia, depending on the state. Thus, items 1, 5, and 6 are categorically different from items 2-4. Items 2-4 refer to specific ages that are younger than the age of sexual consent in Australia. Thus, to arrive at the 15.1% statistic, the researchers compiled categorically different survey items.

Also, in Supplementary Table 2, one can see that men who were 18-34 years old were the most likely to report sexual feelings “towards children.” Of the 293 men who reported such feelings (middle column in table below), 140 (47.8%) were 18-34 years old. Thus, the 15.1% statistic was inflated by the responses from these young men—some of whom were only a few years older than the individuals who they were asked to think about.

The statistic that 9.4% of Australian men reported sexually offending “against children” was also inflated. It was inflated by allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to be considered in men’s responses and by combining the number of men who answered positively to categorically different survey items. The screenshot below from the report shows the results from the five items that were combined to create the statistic on “sexual offending.”

Below are the data from Supplementary Table 3, which show the percentage of men (not segregated by country), who answered positively (middle column) to one or more of the five items in the bulleted list. Of the 182 men who answered positively, 57 (31.3%) were 18-34 years old. Thus, the 9.4% statistic was inflated by the inclusion of young men who said that they have “sexually offended” against individuals who were of legal consenting age.

Finally, the researchers also misled the public by repeatedly using the word “offending” in their report. Offending suggests an unlawful act. Yet, some of the survey items did not represent illegal acts.

Data Suppression and No Female Comparator Group

Inflated statistics were not the only way that the researchers misled the public about the study’s findings. A second way was that the results from the women who completed the survey were not shared.

The below screenshot from the report reveals that 732 individuals who participated in the survey indicated that they were “either female at birth, did not identify as male, failed the mid-survey attention check, or reported that they had not answered the questions honestly.” The researchers did not specify how many of the 732 individuals were women, so it is unclear how much female data the researchers sat on. Nevertheless, even if the survey was only open to men, and somehow a handful of women snuck in, this highlights a more fundamental issue with the survey: no serious attempt was made at sampling women’s sexual feelings and behaviours toward children and teenagers. This lack of symmetry in the study is problematic, because the impression that one receives when reading the UNSW report and the various media accounts is that only men exhibit sexual feelings and behaviours toward children and teenagers. This then perpetuates the stereotype that only men are child sexual abusers. Yet, previous quantitative and qualitative research has documented that adult women have sexual feelings toward children and teenagers, and stories of female teachers having sexual relations with students are consistently documented. Thus, by not publishing the women’s results, and by not making a legit attempt at surveying a representative sample of women, the researchers biased their findings.

Conclusion

In 2023, researchers at UNSW spun data, and consequently, misled the public on Australian men’s sexual feelings and behaviours toward children. They did so in the following ways:

• They used the word “children,” when, in fact, the men were simultaneously being asked about teenagers who were of legal age for sexual consent.

• They repeatedly used the word “offending,” when, in fact, the men were asked about scenarios that did not represent criminal offending.

• They aggregated responses from ethically and legally different items to inflate their statistics.

• They did not report the results from the small sample of women who completed the survey, nor did the researchers make a genuine attempt at measuring the same feelings and behaviours in a large representative sample of Australian women.

The reality of the UNSW research was that most men did not express sexual feelings or behaviours toward children and teenagers, and of the men who did express those feelings or behaviours, many did so consistent with Australian law.

Concerningly, the actions taken by the UNSW researchers are consistent with widespread bias against male research participants. Relevant examples of data suppression, data spin, rigged surveys, and unethical treatment of male interview data have been previously documented at The Nuzzo Letter.

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LEADING ARTICLE

Women Complain about Men

The Existential Contrarian

But Women Have Unprecedented Control over, and Hence Responsibility for, How Men Are Raised.

WEEKLY VOICE

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

Sex/Gender

The left fueled the male crisis. Now it’s shocked

USA Today

Boys are falling behind in school, and some experts say it starts in kindergarten

CBC

New Quebec report says boys ‘systemically disadvantaged’ in school system.

Education

For the 100th anniversary of the SAT, a look at standardized test scores over time

Pew Research Center

UNC uses bridge funds for DEI-targeted research

The Carolina Journal

Expanded implementation of Fast & Fair paid peer review reduces time to first decision without reducing review quality in a biology journal

bioRxiv (pre-print)

Abstract: Traditional peer review is often slowed by delays in identifying willing reviewers and waiting for completed review reports. In a 2024 pilot on the journal Biology Open, we showed that Fast & Fair peer review, which uses pre-contracted paid reviewers and a structured editorial timeline, could deliver rapid, high-quality peer. Here, we report the expanded implementation of Fast & Fair at Biology Open in 2025. From 1 April 2025 onward, all direct submissions to the journal were considered for Fast & Fair peer review unless appropriate pre-contracted reviewer expertise was unavailable. Reviewers were paid £220 per manuscript only if they completed the review on time, and the review met editorial quality expectations. Among peer-reviewed manuscripts submitted in 2025, Fast & Fair reduced time to first decision with reviews from a mean of 37.7 working days under conventional peer review to 5.5 working days. Reviewer commitment also improved. Fast & Fair invitations were accepted more often than conventional invitations (67% versus 23%), had lower nonresponse (13% versus 39%), and had higher completion among accepted invitations (98% versus 87%). Faster review was not associated with reduced review quality. Handling editors scored each review for usefulness in editorial decision-making. Fast & Fair produced fewer low-scoring reports than conventional peer review. Editorial behavior was also unchanged, with similar first-decision profiles and final acceptance rates (59% versus 61%). While financial sustainability remains to be tested at scale, the Fast & Fair model addresses a major bottleneck in traditional peer review by replacing ad hoc reviewer recruitment with conditional compensation, predefined quality standards and a strict editorial timeline.”

Health Science

Births: Final Data for 2024

National Center for Health Statistics

Excerpt: A total of 3,628,934 births occurred in the United States in 2024, an increase of 1% from the record low reported for 2023. The general fertility rate declined 1% from 2023 to 53.8 births per 1,000 females ages 15–44 in 2024.

A Decade of Decline in Twin Childbearing in the United States, 2014–2024

National Center for Health Statistics

Three New Papers on Wokeness in Psychology

Nature-Nuture-Nietzsche Newsletter

How activist scholars are suppressing science, squandering public trust, and undermining psychotherapy.

Leading Medical Journals Care More About DEI Than Major Diseases

City Journal

A new report finds that the JAMA Network ran more articles recently mentioning “inequity” than “asthma.”

Trends in National Institutes of Health Investigators by Sex, Race, Ethnicity, and Disability Status

JAMA

MISCELLANEOUS

Moral Acceptability Falls for Several Behaviors

Gallup

Moral acceptability of birth control, having a baby outside of marriage, gambling, teenage sex and cloning animals down significantly.

On the Country’s 250th Anniversary, the American People Are in a Sour Mood

Pew Research Center

But there are some signs of optimism about the future.

RUBBISH BIN

Bumble ends the era of “women first” and the romantic swipe

Women’s Agenda

(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)

‘It’s not about heroes and villains’: the triumphant return of long-lost indie I Shot Andy Warhol

The Guardian

(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)

An Evaluation of the Gender Inclusivity of UK Senior Academic Job Advertisements

Gender, Work & Organization

Abstract: Previous research demonstrates that small changes to the content of job advertisements can influence an applicant’s perceived fit with the role being advertised and has analyzed the effects of specific features on women. This paper presents an original gender inclusion analysis framework and reports on its use to critically assess 140 senior academic job adverts as an underexplored institutional mechanism that may help sustain gender inequality in academic leadership. This research concludes that such adverts are not gender inclusive, as most do not explicitly encourage nor support gender diversity, and many contain subtle signals that could increase women’s perceived lack of fit with advertised roles; 41% of adverts utilized masculine wording, which could deter female candidates; just 15% (n = 21) prioritized women via a positive action statement; specific employee benefits, which could signal support for applicants with (child)caring responsibilities, were not prioritized, with 11% (n = 15) and 6% (n = 9) of adverts promoting family-friendly policies or an on-site nursery, respectively, and only 6% of roles were listed with a part-time working opportunity. 97% of institutes in this research held an Athena Swan Charter award in recognition of gender equality work, suggesting a lack of impact on recruitment and highlighting scope for development of gender-fair recruitment practices.

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PubMed, which is maintained by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. National Library of Medicine, is a digital database of millions of academic articles in the biomedical and life sciences. PubMed indexes most biomedical and public health journals. Thus, a search of Woke terminology in the titles and abstracts of articles indexed in PubMed can reveal the extent to which the philosophical underpinnings of Woke - critical theory, intersectionality, etc. - have been adopted in medical and health science.

The current data brief extends my previous analysis in a couple of ways. First, and most importantly, the search has been extended from the year 2024 to the year 2025. Thus, the current data brief allows for an examination of whether peak Woke medicine has been reached. Second, the current data brief presents results from Woke terms that were not included in my previous analysis (e.g., climate anxiety, critical race theory, neoliberalism). Third, for a couple of terms, I altered my previous search strategy to more accurately capture the term being studied. For example, in my previous analysis, I graphed the results for the term “underrepresentation” without considering that a search for that term will not identify titles and abstracts that include the spelling “under-representation.”

Notes on the Search Strategy

• Many Woke words have an inverse. For example, the inverse of “equity” is “inequity.” The inverse of “justice” is “injustice.” The inverse represents the same general concept as its counterpart. In such instances, both words were searched to represent the concept.

• Many Woke words have plural versions. The plural versions were also searched using the asterisk (*) wild card operator. For example, the keyword search of birthing person* finds the phrases “birthing person” (singular) and “birthing persons” (plural).

• Woke words that represent the same concept sometimes share the same root or prefix but have different suffixes. Thus, the asterisk (*) wild card operator was used at the end of word roots or prefixes to identity all relevant referrals to the concept. For example, the keyword search of misogyn* identifies articles that included the following words in their titles or abstracts: misogyny, misogynist, misogynistic.

• Some Woke words have different spellings in American and British English (e.g., “decolonize” and “decolonise”). In such cases, both spellings were searched to represent to identify that concept in the titles and abstracts of articles.

• The exact PubMed search that I performed for each term is shown at the bottom of each graph.

Limitations of the Search Strategy

• The current data brief does not examine all Woke terms. Many other Woke words and phrases exist. Thus, these graphs do not represent the totality of Woke words and phrases in articles indexed in PubMed. Please see the encyclopedia of Woke terminology at the New Discourses website for an extensive list of Woke terms and their definitions.

• Only the titles and abstracts of articles were searched. Some articles will have discussed Woke concepts in the main body of the text but not included that terminology in the article’s title or abstract. Thus, these graphs do not represent the totality of Woke words and phrase in articles indexed in PubMed.

• Only PubMed was searched. Several other databases of academic articles exist. PubMed indexes journals in the biomedical and life sciences. Journals in other academic areas, including many areas in the humanities, where Woke is most common, were not searched. Thus, the current graphs do not represent the totality of Woke in academia. Instead, the current graphs primarily represent Woke medicine and healthcare.

See the Bonus Commentary at the end of this data brief post for a discussion on the implications of the results. If you would like to support more research like this, one-off or recurring monthly donations can be made to The Nuzzo Letter’s Donorbox in two simple steps. Thank you!

“Birthing People” and “Birthing Person”

• The first year that the phrase “birthing people” or “birthing person” was used in the title or abstract of an article indexed in PubMed was 2019.

• Use of these two phrases increased noticeably in 2021.

• In 2025, 200 articles indexed in PubMed had the phrases “birthing people” or “birthing person” in their titles or abstracts, which is down from 240 articles in 2024.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the words “birthing people” and “birthing person” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 768 articles indexed in PubMed.

Climate

• Climate can be studied in an objective and politically neutral way. However, in recent years, climate research has become highly political. This is evident from the graph below.

• Use of the phrases “climate crisis,” “climate justice,” and “environmental justice” has increased noticeably since 2019.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “climate crisis” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 1,382 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “environmental justice” (or “environmental injustice”) appeared in the titles or abstracts of 1,743 articles indexed in PubMed.

Colonialism

• Critical theorists have advocated for “decolonizing” academic curricula, public policy, and clinical practice. They have also railed against “neoliberalism” and “Eurocentrism.”

• The graph below confirms the increased use of these words, particularly “colonialism” (or “decolonize”), in the titles and abstracts of articles indexed in PubMed.

Critical Theory

• Reference to specific critical theories in the titles and abstracts of articles in PubMed has increased in recent years.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “critical race theory” was used in the titles or abstracts of 418 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Articles on the use of “critical pedagogy” in health and medical education have also become more common.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

• The first year that the phrase “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (or “equity, diversity, and inclusion”) was used in the title or abstract of an article indexed in PubMed was 2020.

• Between 2020 and 2025, the phrases “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and “equity, diversity, and inclusion” were used in the titles or abstracts of 416 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Use of these phrases peaked in 2024 (136 articles) and decreased in 2025 (96 articles).

Disability

• Critical disability studies is part of the critical theory and social justice milieu.

• Notable increases in the use of the words “ableism” and “ageism” in articles indexed in PubMed occurred in 2020 and 2021 and continued to increase most years thereafter.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the word “ableism” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 861 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the word “ageism” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 2,014 articles indexed in PubMed.

Epistemology

• Epistemology refers to what knowledge is and how we obtain it. Critical theorists often reject the idea that the world can be understood objectively through the scientific method. Instead, critical theorists view knowledge as dependent on one’s position in either an oppressor group or oppressed group. In this view, “ways of knowing” the world are believed to differ between people who are oppressors or the oppressed. Between 2019 and 2025, 491 articles indexed in PubMed included the phrase “ways of knowing” in their titles or abstracts.

• “Epistemic justice” (or injustice) is the idea that oppressed people’s “ways of knowing” are not adequately valued by society. Between 2019 and 2025, 561 articles indexed in PubMed included the phrase “epistemic justice” in their titles or abstracts.

• Indigenous people, who are said to have their own way of knowing called “indigenous knowledge,” are often referred to as an oppressed groups. Between 2019 and 2025, 1,041 articles indexed in PubMed included the phrase “indigenous knowledge” in their titles or abstracts.

• Because one’s position in the oppression hierarchy is thought to impact one’s way of knowing things, academics now regularly write “positionality” statements in their papers. “Positionality” or “reflexivity” statements are declarationsmade by academics about their own social identities or “lived experiences” that shape their perspectives on the research topic. However, as explained by Colin Wright of Reality’s Last Stand, positionality statements undermine scientific integrity. Between 2019 and 2025, 485 articles indexed in PubMed included the word “positionality” in their titles or abstracts, and 1,407 articles included the word “reflexivity” in their titles or abstracts.

• Autoethnographies are qualitative papers that involve academics using their own life experiences to explain broader social trends. Autoethnographies are prone to researcher bias, and the reliance of many academics on this technique is problematic. Between 2019 and 2025, 521 articles indexed in PubMed included the word “autoethnography” in their titles or abstracts.

Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation

• Words that refer gender identity or sexual orientation (e.g., “cisgender,” “queer”) have been used more frequently by academics over the past few years.

• In the current analysis, the most frequently used of these word was “transgender.” Between 2019 and 2025, the word “transgender” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 15,741 articles indexed in PubMed. Use of the word “transgender” peaked in 2024 (2,828 articles) and declined slightly in 2025 (2,730 articles).

Gender/Sex Differences

• The rise of Woke medicine has been associated with a heightened focus on sex/gender differences. Relevant words or phrases have included “gender parity,” “gender equity,” “gender equality,” and “gendered.”

• Use of all four of terms has increased noticeably in recent years and their trajectories in use follow a similar pattern.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “gender equity” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 2,702 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “gender equality” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 4,441 articles indexed in PubMed.

Gender Mistreatment

• Women, particularly minority women, are considered an oppressed or “marginalized” group, and focus on female victimization is a key component of Woke.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “gender-based violence” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 2,784 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “gender bias” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 2,192 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “MeToo” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 335 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the word “misogyny” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 274 articles indexed in PubMed.

Group Differences

• Group differences in health outcomes exist, and these group differences are a key focus of Woke medicine. Woke medicine focuses on demographic groups rather than individual patients, and the objective of Woke medicine is to create “parity,” “equality,” and “equity” in group health outcomes, usually by acting on the “social determinants of health.” Because critical theory says that these group differences are due to unjust systemic or structural factors associated with the oppressor-oppressed paradigm, the ethically neutral word “difference” is replaced with words like “parity,” “equality,” and “equity,” which imply some level of injustice or wrongdoing. Between 2019-2021, use of these words in the titles and abstracts of articles indexed in PubMed accelerated.

• Interestingly, use of the word “equality” plateaued starting around 2021, while use of the word “equity” continued to increase. Between 2019 and 2025, the word “equality” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 45,535 articles indexed in PubMed. Between 2019 and 2025, the word “equity” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 85,239 articles indexed in PubMed.

• The word “underrepresentation” falls within the Woke lexicon. It is often used in discussing group differences in positions of power or influence, and academics often advocate for new policies that they believe will create “parity,” “equality,” or “equity” in those positions. Between 2019 and 2025, the word “underrepresentation” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 21,271 articles indexed in PubMed.

Hate

• As universities have become increasingly feminized, articles on the safety of women and other intersectional groups have become more common. “Hate speech,” “microaggressions,” “safe spaces,” and “trigger warnings” are terms that reflect this heightened safetyism.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the word “microaggression” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 1,313 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “safe space” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 1,407 articles indexed in PubMed.

Health Differences

• Above, I presented a graph showing use of the words “parity,” “equity,” and “equality.” Those words could have been used in various contexts, such as “gender equity” or “racial equity.” In the graph below, I show use of the phrases “health equity,” “health equality,” and “health parity.”

• Accelerated use of the phrase “health equity” and “health parity” occurred starting in 2020. Interestingly, use of phrase “health equality” plateaued, while use of the phrases “health equity” and “health parity” continued to increase.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “health parity” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 23,722 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “health equity” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 23,441 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “health equality” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 7,939 articles indexed in PubMed.

Intersectionality

• “Intersectionality” refers to one’s multiple group identities – e.g., sex, race, sexual orientation. Intersectionality and concepts like patriarchy and social construction are key to feminist theory.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the word “intersectionality” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 7,863 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the word “feminism” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 3,248 articles indexed in PubMed.

Justice and Activism

• The activist nature of contemporary academia has become obvious in recent years. Changing policies, laws, and clinical practices are the aims of Woke academics. Thus, the words “justice” and “activism” appear regularly in articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, 22,237 articles indexed in PubMed contained the word “justice” in their titles or abstracts.

• Between 2019 and 2025, 3,583 articles indexed in PubMed contained the word “activism” in their titles or abstracts.

Lived Experience

• In critical theory, “lived experience” refers to “one’s life experiences in allegedly systemic power dynamics of dominance and oppression that shape society structurally…”. A claim of “lived experience” by a person of an alleged oppressed group is then often used by that person to make unsubstantiated claims against an alleged oppressor group.

• Accelerated use of the phrase “lived experience” in the titles and abstracts of articles indexed in PubMed occurred starting around 2019. Between 2019-2025, the phrase “lived experience” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 10,631 articles indexed in PubMed.

Masculinity and Femininity

• Masculinity Studies is part of the critical theory project, and research and commentary on sex/gender has grown enormously in the past few years.

• The below graph compares how often the words “masculinity” and “femininity” have appeared in the titles and abstracts of articles indexed in PubMed.

• The word “masculinity” has been used significantly more than the word “femininity.”

• Between 2019 and 2025, the word “femininity” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 966 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the word “masculinity” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 2,595 articles indexed in PubMed. Thus, word “masculinity” appeared over 2.5 more times than the word “femininity.”

Masculinities

• As shown in the graph above, the topic of “masculinity” has received significant attention from academia in recent years. The graph below shows how often subtopics in Masculinity Studies have been referred to in articles indexed in PubMed.

• Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “hegemonic masculinity” (i.e., the dominance of men and the subordination of women) appeared in the titles or abstracts of 220 articles indexed in PubMed; the phrase “toxic masculinity” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 38 articles; the word “manosphere” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 23 articles (15 in 2025); the word “manels” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 29 articles (10 in 2021); and the phrase “male privilege” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 27 articles.

Menstrual and Reproductive Justice

• “Reproductive justice,” and more recently “menstrual justice,” are key issues for feminists.

• Use of the phrase “reproductive justice” in articles indexed in PubMed began to accelerate in 2020 and has risen markedly in most years since 2020. Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “reproductive justice” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 688 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Use of the phrases “period poverty,” “menstrual justice,” and “menstrual equity” increased most noticeably between 2002 and 2025.

Multiculturalism

• Part of Woke involves a belief that cultures associated with oppressed/”marginalized” groups are as valid, ethical, and important (if not more so) than the culture of the oppressor group. Thus, part of Woke medicine involves teaching students about multiculturalism via “cultural competency” training and assessments.

• “Cultural safety” refers to the idea that people from “marginalized” groups are likely to feel unsafe around individuals of an oppressor group and that students and employees must undergo “cultural competency” training to make individuals from “marginalized” groups feel safer.

• Notable increases in use of the phrases “cultural competency” and “cultural safety” were observed between 2019 and 2025, with a substantial increase in reference to “cultural competency” in 2025.

Oppression

• Within intersectionality, the greater the number of “marginalized” identities that a person has, the more they are considered a victim of “oppression.” The purpose of critical theory and social justice work is to “dismantle” the structures that oppress marginalized groups.

• A notable increase in use of the word “marginalized” occurred in 2020 and its use has continued to increase since 2020. Between 2019 and 2025, the word “marginalized” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 3,387 articles indexed in PubMed.

People (Woke Theorists / Critical Philosophers)

• A couple of individuals whose thinking underlies critical theory are Michael Foucault, Paulo Freire, and Jacques Derrida. These three men are referred to regularly in academic papers published in humanities journals, but they also are now referred to in articles indexed in PubMed.

• Of the three, Foucault has been mentioned the most. Between 2019 and 2025, Foucault (or “Foucauldian”) appeared in the titles or abstracts of 617 articles indexed in PubMed.

Phobias of Intersectional Groups

• Fear, hatred, or prejudice against “marginalized” groups by oppressor groups is thought to lead to discrimination against marginalized groups, leading to their continued oppression. “Homophobia,” “transphobia,” and “Islamophobia” are examples.

• As can be seen in the graph below, interest in “homophobia” pre-dates the contemporary era of Woke medicine. However, “transphobia” parallels the heightened interest in transgender persons that has occurred in the era of Woke medicine. Between 2019 and 2025, the word “transphobia” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 611 articles indexed in PubMed.

• “Islamophobia” has been referred to less often than “homophobia” and “transphobia” in articles indexed in PubMed.

Race Differences

• The concepts “parity,” “equity,” and “equality” are often applied to differences in health outcomes between groups of different races or ethnicities. These racial differences in health outcomes are fundamental to Woke medicine.

• As seen in the graph below, a significant increase in use of the phrase “racial disparity” occurred in 2020. Its use peaked in 2023 and then trended downward in 2024 and 2025, albeit at still much higher levels than before 2020.

• Use of the phrase “racial equity” increased markedly in 2021 and then plateaued.

• Use of the phrase “racial equality” has been less common than use of the phrase “racial equity” since 2021.

Racism

• The death of George Floyd in May of 2020 was a key cause of heightened Woke culture in academia. Floyd’s death markedly increased discussions on race in academia, including in health and medical journals. In fact, George Floyd’s name appeared in the titles or abstracts of 269 articles indexed in PubMed between 2020 and 2025. Similarly, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 343 articles indexed in PubMed between 2020 and 2025, with a peak in its use in 2021.

• The terms “antiracism” and “systemic racism” also saw increased use after Floyd’s death, with peaks in their use occurring in 2022.

Social Determinants of Health

• In a previous post, I discussed the politicized public health movement known as the “social determinants of health.” The World Health Organization’s crusade on the “social determinants of health” predates the modern Woke medicine movement, which is why regular use of the phrase “social determinant” appears prior to 2019. However, from 2019 to 2020, one can see accelerated use of this phrase in the titles and abstracts of articles indexed in PubMed. This happened because the “social determinants of health” movement has, for most of its history, been associated with the concept of “health equity” and other aspects of Woke medicine.

• Between 2019-2025, the phrase “social determinant” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 23,756 articles indexed in PubMed.

Social Justice

• A goal of critical theory is to achieve “social justice,” including in health and medicine.

• The phrase “social justice” was used in medical and health research papers prior to 2019, but its use accelerated in 2020. Its use peaked in 2022, and after a decline, its used has plateaued over the past couple of years at about 600 articles per year. Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “social justice” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 3,954 articles indexed in PubMed.

• The phrases “social equity” and “social equality” have also appeared in the titles and abstracts of hundreds of articles indexed in PubMed.

Weight Bias

• “Body positivity,” “weight stigma,” and “weight bias” are all part of the Woke medicine lexicon, though weight stigma and weight bias have potential to be used in politically neutral ways. “Fat acceptance,” “fat inclusivity,” and “fatphobia” are other related concepts.

• Use of “weight stigma” and “weight bias” in articles in indexed PubMed has been increasing for many years, with noticeable increases occurring around 2020 and 2021.

Whiteness

• White Studies and Whiteness are part of critical theory. The graph below shows the use of related terms in articles indexed in PubMed.

• A marked increase in the use of the phrase “white supremacy” occurred in 2020, and its use peaked in 2022. Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “white supremacy” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 360 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Use of the phrase “white privilege” followed a trend similar to that of “white supremacy,” albeit to a lesser magnitude. Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “white privilege” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 128 articles indexed in PubMed.

• Use of the phrase “white fragility” peaked in 2022, appearing in the titles or abstracts of six articles indexed in PubMed that year.

Bonus Commentary

This scientometric analysis confirms the timeline of the rise of Woke medicine. The exponential increase in Woke medicine started around 2019-2020 and was associated with the COVID-19 pandemic (January 2020), the death of George Floyd (May 2020), and the 2020 U.S. presidential election (November 2020). Once the Biden White House was in place, further increases in the growth of Woke medicine occurred. Substantial government funding for research on the “social determinants of health” and related topics likely facilitated the growth of Woke medicine. However, under the new directorship of Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH began cutting its funding of Woke medicine in 2025. Thus, in the coming years, as funds for this type of research began to dry up, we can expect to see a decrease in the number of articles indexed in PubMed that contain Woke nomenclature in their titles or abstracts.

The results from the current analysis are broadly consistent with results from two other similar reports. A report published by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) in April of 2025 presented results from keyword searches in Google of 20 Woke words and phrases. Like the current analysis, the IPA found an exponential increase in the use of these terms around 2020-2021, with peak Woke occurring in 2023. A report published by the Manhattan Institute in April of 2025 presented results from keyword searches of 12 Woke words in the archives of The New York Times. The results tended to show a peak in the use of the words in 2020 (see Figure 29 in the report). Thus, the results published by the Manhattan Institute and IPA suggest that peak Woke has been reached. However, the current scientometric analysis, which examined academia’s use a wide range of Woke concepts in health and medical research papers, revealed that certain Woke topics have peaked, while others are still rising. Topics that are clearly still rising include “health equity,” “social determinants of health,” “intersectionality,” “lived experience,” “reproductive justice,” “Indigenous knowledge,” “cultural competency,” and “climate crisis.” Moreover, though some topics appear to have peaked, reference to them remains well above pre-2019 levels. Thus, some aspects of Woke medicine might have peaked, but Woke medicine is still widespread.

Finally, the ideas underlying Woke medicine have likely caused substantial misallocation of funds and thus harmed patients. Consequently, a shift away from identity politics in medicine is necessary. A focus on the individual patient, in all their physiological and psychological nuance, is a healthier, more ethical, and less polarizing way to move forward. For additional critiques of Woke medicine, see works by Do No Harm, Critical Therapy Antidote, Steve Stewart-Williams, and Sally Satel.

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If you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you!

Key Points

• The prevalence of experiencing online or in-person abuse or harassment by someone met through a dating app or dating website was often higher among gay and bisexual men and women compared to heterosexual men and women.

• In comparing heterosexual men and heterosexual women, some sex differences existed, depending on the specific type of online, in-person, or unmatching behaviours.

• A total of 61.5% of heterosexual men and 79.1% of heterosexual women reported experiencing at least one type of online abuse perpetrated by someone they met on a dating app or dating website.

• A greater proportion of heterosexual women than heterosexual men reported experiencing online sexual harassment and online abusive language, whereas no sex differences were observed in experiencing online image-based abuse or online stalking.

• A total of 26.6% of heterosexual men and 35.4% of heterosexual women reported experiencing at least one type of in-person abuse perpetrated by someone they met on a dating app or dating website.

• A greater proportion of heterosexual women than heterosexual men reported experiencing in-person sexual assault or coercion, whereas no sex differences were observed in experiencing in-person reproductive or sexual health-related abuse, in-person image-based abuse, or in-person stalking.

• A slightly greater proportion of heterosexual men (39.2%) than heterosexual women (35.7%) reported that a person unmatched them after abusing them online.

• A greater proportion of heterosexual men (54.0%) than heterosexual women (42.0%) reported that a person unmatched them after abusing them in-person.

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Source

Australian Institute of Criminology. Sexual harassment, aggression and violence among mobile dating app and website users in Australia. 2022.

Bonus Commentary

The results from the above study illustrate that high levels of abuse and harassment exist on dating apps and dating websites. Men and women who are homosexual or bisexual report the highest levels of abuse and harassment on dating apps and websites. Heterosexual women report higher prevalence rates for some, but not all, types of abuse and harassment. In fact, most of the results from the above study refute the common narrative that only women (or predominantly women) are the victims of online abuse and harassment. Just this year, Women’s Agenda was still framingdating apps as “unsafe spaces” only for “women and gender-diverse people.” Moreover, both the Australian eSafety Commissioner and the United Nations have framed online abuse in a female-centred way. Yet, consistent with results from many other surveys, the above results published by the Australian Institute of Criminology confirm that both men and women experience online abuse and harassment, with men sometimes experiencing higher rates of abuse and harassment than women.

The survey by the Australian Institute of Criminology also reminded of a tweet published by Zac Seidler, Global Director of Research at Movember, in 2023. Seidler had attended a meeting with Bumble – one the world’s most popular and feminist dating apps. In the tweet (shown below), Seidler said that he emphasised at the meeting that “engaging young guys is key” to “promot[ing] prosocial behaviours” on Bumble. From the tweet, it was unclear if Seidler or Bumble also emphasised engaging with women about their anti-social behaviours on dating apps. The data from the Australian Institute of Criminology clearly indicate that anti-social behaviours on dating apps are not limited to one sex. Large numbers of both males and females are perpetrators and victims of such behaviours. Finally, note the comment on Seidler’s tweet and the name of the individual who left the comment. Julie Inman Grant is Australia’s eSafety Commissioner.

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LEADING ARTICLE

The triple gender effect on death penalty prosecutions: Women and men as prosecutors, victims, and defendants in Texas

The Social Science Journal

Abstract: Studies examining the intersection of gender and the death penalty have identified gender effects in case outcomes. I build upon that previous research to simultaneously consider the gender of the defendant, victim, and prosecutor in more than 14,000 capital case prosecutions in Texas. I find the most death sentence-oriented gender combination (male prosecutor, female victim, and male defendant) produces death sentences at a vastly higher rate than the least death sentence-oriented combination (female prosecutor, male victim, and female defendant). The results support a theory of masculine focal concerns that posits decision-making shortcuts and the desire to impose social dominance allows gender to shape the process. The results also speak to a central debate in death penalty jurisprudence regarding the degree to which sentencing is a product of arbitrary factors unrelated to the severity of the crime and the culpability of the accused.

(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)

WEEKLY VOICE

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

Sex/Gender

Congressional Men’s Health Caucus Convenes Inaugural Men’s Health Conference on Capitol Hill

Office of Congressman McCormick

Australia’s failed suicide policies

Bettina Arndt

Male body count set to increase due to recent feminist takeover.

The 3 Mechanisms Behind Female Grievance

Psychobabble

The Evolved Male in the Modern Classroom

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Abstract: I elucidate the educational and occupational struggles of boys and men using an evolutionary framework. This perspective is useful in explaining boys’ relative disadvantage in language and reading development and their advantage in visuospatial and mechanical abilities. I show that classroom settings and the behavioral expectations of formal schooling are more of an evolutionary mismatch for boys than girls because of sex differences in physical activity levels and social relations. This results in boys being disproportionately identified as having behavioral difficulties. Further, there are universal preferences that influence occupational choices: More men than women, for example, show an interest in working with things, and these interests align with boys’ and men’s relative strengths. I argue that secondary schooling does not fully capitalize on boys’ evolved capacities to help prepare them for the modern workforce, and suggest how schools can adapt to better accommodate boys’ strengths.

Boys’ K–12 Education: Gaps, Trends, and Outcomes

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Abstract: Boys lag girls on several important measures of educational achievement and engagement. They begin school with weaker early literacy and self-regulation skills, perform worse in reading but not in math, and are more likely to exhibit behavioral problems and to drop out. These patterns are durable, widespread across countries, and largest among students with the greatest learning and behavioral challenges. This article synthesizes findings from major U.S. and international assessments—the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class; the National Assessment of Educational Progress; and the Program for International Student Assessment—to document where gender gaps are largest and how they have changed over time.

Do Male Teachers Matter to Boys’ Education?

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Abstract: Boys, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, increasingly trail their female peers across key educational and economic milestones. One long-proposed policy intervention aimed at ameliorating this inequity is to increase the share of male teachers, especially in earlier grades where men comprise just a small fraction of the teaching workforce. I review the theoretical rationale for this policy approach and the empirical evidence on how teacher gender affects student outcomes. Male teachers could benefit boys in at least two ways: They could serve as same-gender role models, or they could employ distinct pedagogical or disciplinary approaches that are helpful to boys. The causal evidence supporting either of these ideas is mixed. Some studies find modest positive effects of same-gender teachers on grades and test scores, but others detect no benefits, and research on long-term outcomes is largely absent. I conclude by identifying potential directions for future research on the topic.

Education

Justice Department launches probe into ASU for alleged illegal DEI practices following viral videos

The College Fix

How much do you know about NATO? Take our quiz

Pew Research Center

Health Science

National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2024

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

(My brief comment on this press release is available on X here.)

Trends in Selected Reasons for Being Uninsured Among Adults Ages 18–64: United States, 2019–2024

National Center for Health Statistics

Use of Sleep Aids Among Adults Age 18 and Older: United States, 2024

National Center for Health Statistics

Evidence over ideology: protect children by restoring clinical standards in climate anxiety treatment

Institute of Public Affairs

Parkinson Disease Mortality Among Adults Age 65 and Older: United States, 2024

National Center for Health Statistics

Key findings: In 2024, the age-adjusted Parkinson disease death rate for adults age 65 and older was 72.0 deaths per 100,000 standard population. Parkinson disease death rates increased from 2014 (57.2) through 2021 (76.3), but the rate in 2024 was lower than in 2021. In 2024, Parkinson disease death rates in adults age 65 and older were higher for men than for women in each age group (65–74, 75–84, and 85 and older). Death rates from Parkinson disease were highest among White non-Hispanic adults age 65 and older compared with other race and Hispanic-origin groups. Parkinson disease death rates varied by state of residence, ranging from 47.7 in New York to 102.1 in Utah.

HISTORICAL ARCHIVES

Challenges in calculating occupational fatality rates

Monthly Labor Review (2022)

Unusual fears in children with autism

Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders (2013)

Abstract: Unusual fears have long been recognized as common in autism, but little research exists. In our sample of 1033 children with autism, unusual fears were reported by parents of 421 (41%) of the children, representing 92 different fears. Many additional children had common childhood fears (e.g., dogs, bugs, and the dark). More than half of children with unusual fears had fears of mechanical things, heights, and/or weather. The most common unusual fear was fear of toilets, and the most common category was fear of mechanical things. Amazingly, many of the fears reported in our sample were described in children with autism 70 years ago by Kanner, including fear of vacuum cleaners, elevators, mechanical toys, swings, and the wind. Children with autism perceive, experience, and react to the world differently than children without autism. What is tolerable for most children (e.g., clouds in the sky, a change in activity or routine, sensory input, or a performance request) might be terrifying, distressing, or infuriating for a child with autism. It is critical to assess for unusual and common fears in children with autism because they are present in the majority of these children, they further impair functioning, and effective treatment is available.

RUBBISH BIN

How to talk to teens about the manosphere: a guide for parents and caregivers

UN Women

Boys are navigating a barrage of extreme content online. Give them the tools to understand it, question it, and push back.

(My brief comment on this article is available on X here.)

Impact Report 2019-2025

Institute for Research on Male Supremacism

America Has a Masculinity Crisis

New York Times

A much-needed, nuanced conversation about masculinity and feminism today.

Epistemic exclusion in higher Education: navigating racialised gatekeeping in Australia

Whiteness and Education

Abstract: This paper presents a collective autoethnography of our experiences as diasporic scholars navigating the racialised terrain of Australian academia. Writing from our lived realities as researchers of race, we examine the often invisible processes of gatekeeping that sustain whiteness, both structurally and interpersonally. We explore how racialised norms and forms of “white-speak” shape academic cultures, silencing and disciplining those who do not conform to dominant institutional expectations. Drawing on Critical Race Theory and the concept of whiteness as property, we argue that ostensibly neutral standards of excellence are embedded in exclusionary logics. Through collaborative autoethnography, we centre our shared and divergent positionalities, identifying patterns of marginalisation alongside practices of resistance. By exposing the racialised mechanisms that regulate belonging, we call for the creation of counter-spaces and urge institutions to move beyond symbolic inclusion toward systemic transformation grounded in racial equity and the full recognition of minoritised scholars’ humanity.

“It’s Remarkably White”: A Qualitative Investigation of Race(ism) within Group Sex Events in a Canadian Context

Journal of Sex Research

Abstract: Research on diversity within group sex communities in Canada tends to focus on gender, sexuality, and body size as indicators of inclusion and acceptance. Racial/ethnic diversity are notably absent from these discussions; in this study, we explored perceptions and experiences of race and racism in group sex spaces. We conducted two annual individual interviews with group sex participants living in southwestern Canada. Of our 20 participants, 40% identified as people of color (POC). We worked with a community advisory board of group sex participants/organizers on participant recruitment, interview questions, and data analysis. Through reflexive thematic analysis, we constructed three themes. In themes 1 and 2, we discuss barriers to entry for POC and manifestations of racism within group sex spaces, respectively; these include lack of racial diversity, white ignorance, cultural appropriation, and desirability politics. Some POC described being fetishized because of race, which non-POC downplayed as simply being “kinky.” In theme 3, we discuss change-making barriers, such as defensiveness, and change-making opportunities, such as integrating anti-racism into existing harm reduction practices. Participants expressed that community leaders and event organizers need to shift their responses to racism and how they create and manage group sex spaces. These results advance broader discussions of sexual racism and white defensiveness, as well as opportunities to advance anti-racism within group sex spaces and communities.

De(-)Meaning Anti-Racism

British Journal of Sociology

Abstract: Following David Theo Goldberg’s astute insights, this article discusses a form of neoliberal authoritarianism that extends incessant denial of systematic racial degradation by de(-)meaning anti-racism. It argues that de(-)meaning works to redefine anti-racist struggle-including demands for a free Palestine and scholarship explaining the politics of racism-as racist and hostile, while recasting racialised and militarised state power as anti-racist and humane. Thus, anti-racism is de-meaned of its ethical and emancipatory terms, re-meaned as an unethical and exclusionary endeavour threatening modern socio-political arrangements, demeaned in the traditional, non-hyphenated sense of the word, and subject to state warfare masquerading as ‘anti-racism’. As a specific strategy for maintaining structural racism, de(-)meaning necessitates resistance rather than defensiveness by reclaiming and renewing anti-racism that is at once political, collective, anti-militaristic and transformative.

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“Art…is the barometer of a culture. It reflects the sum of a society’s deepest philosophical values: not its professed notions and slogans, but its actual view of man and of existence.”

-Ayn Rand-

Over the past couple of years, I have observed a certain style of visual art common among groups affiliated with women’s causes and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The United Nations (UN), state governments, public universities, and non-profits have all created or shared this style of art—either on their websites, social media accounts, or in reports.

The art consists of illustrations characterized by human facelessness, disproportionate body segments, and/or a general simplification of human physical features—all amounting to a lack of realism of the art’s subject matter (i.e., humans). In other words, the art is dehumanizing.

Moreover, because art is a “selective recreation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments,” a piece of art tells us about the artist’s worldview and the worldviews of the individuals and groups who consume and reproduce it. Then, when many pieces of the same style of art become popular, they reveal the values and beliefs of the society. As Ayn Rand also explained: “The art of any given period or culture is the clearest and most immediate expression of its dominant philosophy.”

Thus, features of DEI visual art are not insignificant. They reflect the philosophy of the people who create the art, consume it, and share it.

One common feature of DEI visual art is facelessness. Specifically, human faces are drawn with few or no features, including the eyes, nose, lips, and ears. This artistic style projects human anonymity and shifts the focus from individual uniqueness to group identity, often the group’s race or gender. This focus on group identity is consistent with critical theory—the philosophy that underlies DEI. Also, facelessness minimizes personal responsibility and personal accountability—two things that should be heightened in contemporary society, not minimized.

Two other common features of DEI visual art are body shapelessness and disproportionate body segments. Often, in DEI art, body segments are shown as block-like objects. This also reflects a lack of prioritization of the uniqueness of the individual. It also reflects artistic laziness and a lack of appreciation of human anatomy. The lack of any muscular definition suggests a body that is incapable of movement and unfit to meet the physical demands of life. Therefore, the body is presented as a passive object acted upon by its environment. This view of man is consistent with the problematic field of “fat studies,” the high levels of obesity in society, and big public health’s misguided obsession with the “social determinants of heath.” The lack of appreciation of human anatomy is also consistent with a society that is confused about gender identity and the biological basis of the sexes.

This type of DEI visual art lacks beauty because it misrepresents the reality of the human body, and it shifts the focus from individual to tribal identity. Importantly, those who choose to create and share this art are not limited in their options or resources. For example, they could instead use photographs of humans rather than dehumanizing illustrations. They could also hire a professional illustrator to create better images, and if funds are lacking, they can use artificial intelligence to create meaningful images. Thus, individuals who create and use DEI visual art are choosing to do so against a backdrop of many other options that are available to them.

A counterrevolution in the arts is needed—from literature, to movies, to the visual arts. Postmodern nihilism has run its course, and it is time to restore beauty and romanticism. Part of this counterrevolution involves identifying unromantic art, revealing who creates and spreads it, and discussing the philosophical premises that underlie it.

Below, I present several examples of DEI visual art and briefly explain why they are problematic.

University of Illinois – Chicago

The illustrations below were published on the website of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The first set of six illustrations appeared on the Center’s homepage. The second set of eight illustrations appeared on the Center’s page dedicated to “inclusive & equity minded teaching practices.” The third illustration appeared on the Center’s page dedicated to “equitable assessments & grading practices.”

All the illustrations have similar dehumanizing characteristics, namely facelessness and disproportionate body segments. For example, in the third illustration, which depicts a person holding the scales of justice, the face has no features, and the head is tiny compared to the rest of the body. In fact, the head is smaller than the person’s hand. Also, the hands are block-like objects with little definition of the fingers, making the person’s grasp on the object ill-defined. Finally, note that the two grades on the scale of “equitable grading practices” are A’s. Meanwhile, grade inflation is already a problem at universities.

European Women’s Lobby

The illustration below was published on the website of the European Women’s Lobby. The individuals in the illustration have miniature heads. Note also the ambiguity regarding what is happening in the illustration. Are the people trying to erect the flagpole, prevent it from falling, or wave it in the air? If they are trying to erect or wave the flagpole, then the positioning of the person on the far right makes little sense. Such lack of mechanical precision is common in DEI visual art.

New South Wales Government

The illustration below is the cover of a workforce profile report published by the New South Wales government. The faces of the individuals have more defined features than in the above examples of DEI art. Nevertheless, the individuals lack certain details that would bring their faces more to life. Consequently, the viewer’s attention turns to the colors or skin tones of the faces. This then leads to an emphasis on racial or ethnic identity. In fact, the artist’s overemphasis on skin tone was taken to such an extreme, that the illustration includes an individual who has an unrealistic skin tone (i.e., pure white beyond albinism). Thus, the illustration communicates a prioritization of diversity in group identity.

Finally, all the individuals in the illustration are looking to the side. This communicates dismissiveness, and the meaning of the direction that they are looking is unclear. Likely, the direction that the individuals are looking holds no significance. Thus, it represents artistic inefficiency—a missed opportunity to communicate something meaningful.

Women’s Health Grampians

The illustration below was published in a report by Women’s Health Grampians—a non-profit women’s health organization in Australia. The individuals in the illustration have some basic facial features and some of their bodies have proportional segments. However, none of the individuals have necks, and at least one of them does not have arms. Moreover, the body segments of all the individuals are blocks. Also, two of the faces have a purple skin tone that is inconsistent with human skin tones and suggests sickliness, death, and dehumanization.

The ages of the individuals in the illustration are somewhat ambiguous, but at least two of them appear to be adolescent girls. It is not accidental that a society that creates, consumes, and shares illustrations of kids with odd, block-shaped bodies, which are also missing body segments, is the same culture that administers hormones to kids to try to change (“affirm”) their gender identities.

University of Chicago

The illustrations below were published on the “inclusive illustrations” website of the University of Chicago’s Office of the Provost of Diversity and Inclusion. Block-like body segments are present in the illustrations – for example, some of the individuals have triangle blocks as feet. Also, though the webpage proclaims to be dedicated to “diversity and inclusion,” only one or two of the people in the illustrations appear to be male.

New York Times

In February of 2026, the New York Times published an article titled, “Seeking a Man Who Doesn’t Throw Tantrums.” The subtitle of the article was, “I had set my bar for relationships so low that any man who didn’t yell easily cleared it.” Consistent with these titles, the illustration depicts women’s superiority over undesirable men who seek her attention and cannot get over the low bar that she has set for them.

The individuals in the illustration have rudimentary eyes, noses, and mouths. They have no necks, their bodies are oddly shaped, and the way that their arms and shoulders intersect with their torsos is careless and unscientific. All the men have the same shirt size, and their pants are not properly filled with color.

UN Women

The UN, specifically UN Women, has used dehumanizing DEI visual art many times. Several examples are provided below.

Few facial features are depicted in the illustrations. In the blue illustration of the “girls can” campaign, note how if the buns or ponytails are removed, one would not be able to discern whether the individuals in the illustration are female or male. An overreliance on one visual characteristic to define the sex of the illustrated person reflects the lack of individualization that is common in DEI art. Note also the lack of consistency with how the hands are drawn. Sometimes, the hands have defined fingers, whereas other times the hands are displayed as blocks.

Finally, to give credit where credit is due, I share one rare example of a UN Women illustration that focuses on individualization. The message explicitly communicated by UN Women in that illustration is “being unique is what makes us different.” It is unclear why UN Women does not use this type of illustration or messaging more often.

Related Content at The Nuzzo Letter

SUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTER

If you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you!