Happy Wednesday!

Yeah, yeah. I’m supposed to be on vacation, but a flu bug has knocked John Z. down for the moment. Though having John write while on medication might be very entertaining, we’d rather he get his rest.

Research From the University of DUH!: “Woke” People More Depressed, Anxious

People with “woke” ideas suffer from higher rates of depression and anxiety, according to two related studies published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology.

Author Oskari Lahtinen, a senior researcher at the University of Turku’s INVEST Research Flagship Centre, noted how “social justice” ideology has migrated to Europe from American universities, but until now nobody had studied its effects on mental health.

The study asked the nearly 5,000 participants about seven woke axioms researchers developed for a “Critical Social Justice Attitude Scale,” including:

• “If white people have on average a higher level of income than black people, it is because of racism.”
• “University reading lists should include fewer white or European authors.”
• “Microaggressions should be challenged often and actively.”
• “Trans* women who compete with women in sports are not helping women’s rights.” (reverse scored)
• “We don’t need to talk more about the color of people’s skin.”
• “A white person cannot understand how a black person feels equally well as another black person.”
• “A member of a privileged group can adopt features or cultural elements of a less privileged group.” (reverse scored)

The researchers discovered that the higher a person’s “social justice score” was, the lower degree their mental well-being tended to be. Researchers concluded that, “Being more anxious and depressed and less happy was more pronounced” among those who buy into social justice beliefs.

Lahtinen says he was “most surprised” by the gender divide the research uncovered. “Three out of five women view ‘woke’ ideas positively, but only one out of seven men.”

So why do woke beliefs tie in with anxiety and unhappiness?

Fox News host Greg Gutfield suggests that wokeness “is an avenue for people who are mentally unwell because it indulges in feelings of hopelessness and victimhood. It offers a low bar to grasp for meaning. Suddenly, your irrationality becomes a movement.”

What say you?

Get woke, get blue. That goes for corporations, too. Just ask Planet Fitness.

Planet Fitness Feels the Burn of Letting Males in Women’s Locker Rooms

To paraphrase Al Pacino in The Godfather Part III: “Just when I thought I was back in the gym, they pull me back out!”

Planet Fitness is doubling down on its policy of allowing biological men who identify as trans women to use women’s locker rooms. The chain said in a statement that staff should “work with members and employees to address this discomfort [of sharing facilities with transgender members] and to foster a climate of understanding consistent with the Judgment Free character of Planet Fitness.” However, “This discomfort is not a reason to deny access to the transgender member.”

Is “discomfort” the word you would use for this situation? Is “discomfort” what you would feel if you knew an adult male was sharing a shower space with your underage daughter?

The kerfuffle erupted when the fitness chain revoked the membership of a woman in Fairbanks, Alaska, who had photographed a man shaving in one of Planet Fitness’s women’s locker rooms, while a young woman stood nearby. Libs of TikTok broke the story.

Woman in Planet Fitness claims she went into the bathroom and this man who thinks he’s a woman was in there shaving.

Why does @PlanetFitness allow men to use the women’s bathroom and invade women’s private spaces?? pic.twitter.com/qVJ0YUFQvc

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 12, 2024

The dude got to stay. The woman was tossed out.

The issue is not new. In 2018, a woman in Leesburg, Virginia, lost her Planet Fitness membership after complaining about a male applying makeup in the women’s locker room. However, this time Planet Fitness is paying the cost of endangering girls and women in the name of radical trans ideology. Its stock has tumbled almost 9% and #boycottplanetfitness has been trending since the latest story broke.

Oh, Those DEI Hires: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Blows Whole Point of First Amendment

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson says she doesn’t know what a woman is because she’s not a biologist. You’d think she’d knows what the First Amendment is because she’s a Supreme Court justice. But alas.

During oral arguments Monday on a free-speech case involving the government’s coercion of Big Tech to stifle voices that weren’t toting the party line on COVID, Justice Jackson dropped a doozy.

“My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the federal government in significant ways in the most important time periods,” she told the lawyer representing the states of Missouri and Louisiana, which are suing the federal government over its coercion. “And so I guess some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information.”

In other words, the government should have the power to silence American citizens if it doesn’t like what they have to say, First Amendment or no.

LISTEN:

This is the most horrifying thing I've ever heard from a Supreme Court Justice.

Ketanji Brown-Jackson is concerned that the First Amendment is making it harder for the government to censor speech.

That's literally the entire point.pic.twitter.com/oqBwVZQB0l

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 18, 2024

As Will Cain of Fox & Friends Weekend and so many others put it, “Hamstringing the government is THE POINT of the First Amendment.”

John Z. wrote all about the oral arguments the Supreme Court heard on yesterday’s Brew if you missed it.

Along The Stream

Raymond Ibrahim returns with “Impregnating Infidels: Another Form of Jihad.”

Timothy Furnish brings on the Bard: “How Shakespeare Can Teach Us About Politicians and Power.”

 

Al Perrotta is not John Zmirak.