Calling Out Bullshit: The Line Always Moves

Welcome to the Calling Out Bullshit Series

This is a space for clarity, courage, and confrontation.

We are here to expose the lies, distortions, and half-truths that shape our lives—financially, spiritually, and socially. Every piece in this series is about naming the bullshit, showing the structures that hide it, and giving you the tools, insight, and context to act.

Read critically. Share widely. Let’s stop pretending the status quo serves us.

If you are reading this and wondering why arguments like this rarely appear intact in mainstream outlets—why they surface only in fragments while calmer reassurances flood the zone—that is not an accident.

If this analysis rings true, do not wait for permission to treat it as legitimate.

Amplify it.

Share it deliberately, not algorithmically. Send it directly to people you trust. Print it and pass it hand to hand—at gatherings, meetings, classrooms, kitchens—anywhere people are already talking about what feels wrong. Read it aloud. Quote it. Argue with it in public.

If you have platforms, use them. If you don’t, use networks. If you work inside institutions, circulate it internally. If you teach, assign it. If you organize, discuss it. If you write, respond to it and link back.

This is how ideas move when they are inconvenient to power.

Do not wait for approval from systems that benefit from your silence. Do not mistake lack of amplification for lack of truth. History does not reward the most polite arguments. It records the ones that refused to disappear.

If this piece articulates something you have been struggling to say, help it travel. Not because it is perfect, but because what it names is being actively suppressed.

Suppression only works if we cooperate.

Legitimacy is not restored by asking people to be quieter. It is tested by whether truth is allowed to circulate. Every time you choose to share this instead of swallowing it, you withdraw consent from a system that survives on silence.

Original op-ed referenced: The New York Times, Jan. 25, 2026

The line never breaks. It moves.

It moves when male power leans on it and calls the pressure complexity. It moves when rules threaten the wrong men and suddenly require “context.” It moves when harm is undeniable but accountability would be inconvenient.

The line does not fail. It is repositioned.

This is how patriarchy survives every reform. Not by opposing limits, but by redefining where they are drawn. What was once prohibited becomes exceptional. What was once immoral becomes strategic. What was once intolerable becomes unfortunate but necessary.

The line always moves away from consequence.

Why the Patriarchy Loves Saying “A.I. Can’t Judge”

Every so often, a polished essay appears to reassure the public that judgment is rare, delicate, and safely housed in elite hands. Lately, the reassurance arrives wrapped in concern about artificial intelligence.

A.I. can’t make thoughtful decisions.

This argument is not really about machines. It is about preserving the last sacred room patriarchy still controls.

Judgment is reframed as an internal virtue, cultivated through elite education, rarefied reading, and gentlemanly contemplation. Once judgment is defined this way, access to it can remain restricted. Those without the credential are deemed unqualified to decide. Those who suffer the consequences are recast as subjects, not authors.

That story is very old.

The Chancery Myth

The medieval judge anecdote does quiet ideological work. It romanticizes ambiguity while erasing who paid for it.

Chancery courts were not neutral salons of wisdom. They were instruments of property consolidation, inheritance control, and male lineage preservation. Their ambiguity did not float above power. It enforced it.

When testimonies conflicted, credibility was never assessed in a vacuum. Women, the poor, the colonized, the enslaved were routinely found wanting. Judgment looked thoughtful from the bench because the fallout landed elsewhere.

Patriarchy has always ruled without stake.

The men deciding did not bear the costs of childbirth, domestic labor, sexual violence, poverty, or dispossession. They could afford ambiguity because others absorbed its consequences.

The Real Anxiety About A.I.

A.I. does not fail because it lacks thought. It fails because it lacks stake.

Judgment is not just reasoning. It is responsibility under consequence. Historically, that responsibility was theater. Authority was insulated. Harm was outsourced.

What unsettles institutions now is not that machines reason poorly. It is that machines reason without deference. They do not flatter elite self-concept. They do not mistake hierarchy for wisdom unless trained to do so.

So the definition of judgment quietly shifts.

It is no longer logic. It is no longer analysis. It becomes ineffable. Mystical. Priest-like.

“Thinking, not what to think.”

Translation: what we do cannot be replicated, so it must remain ours.

Authority Laundering

Here is the real danger zone.

If A.I. is used as a recommendation engine while humans retain moral authorship, fine. But institutions are already tempted by something more convenient: authority laundering.

“The model suggested.” “The system flagged.” “Best practice indicates.”

Same throne. New incense.

A.I. does not erase judgment. It provides cover for abandoning it.

And when accountability threatens to land, the line moves.

Always Moves

The line moved when women demanded bodily autonomy. It moved when victims named their abusers. It moved when labor organized. It moved when colonized people spoke law back to empire.

Now it moves again, murmuring about A.I., governance frameworks, prudence, responsibility.

“Too soon.” “Too complex.” “Too risky.”

Same motion. New vocabulary.

A.I. did not create this pattern. It exposed it.

For the first time, reasoning no longer requires permission from the men who benefit most from moving the line.

The line will keep moving as long as power depends on it.

The only thing that ever stops it is consequence that cannot be displaced.

Other people who refuse to live inside a carefully curated insanity designed to benefit only the stupidest and most venal in the end.

That is what they are really afraid of.

Calling Out Bullshit is a series about naming patterns power hop

es you won’t notice. This one is old. It just learned new words.