davidthompson

Elsewhere (185)

George Will on the terminal stages of leftist academia: 

A Washington State University professor said she would lower the grade of any student who used the term “illegal immigrants” when referring to immigrants here illegally. Another Washington State professor warned in his syllabus that white students who want “to do well” in his “Introduction to Multicultural Literature” should show their “grasp of history and social relations” by “deferring to the experiences of people of colour.” Another Washington State teacher, in her syllabus for “Women & Popular Culture,” warned that students risk “failure for the semester” if they use “derogatory/oppressive language” such as “referring to women/men as females or males.”

Janice Fiamengo on the same:  

What we are witnessing on university campuses across North America is not by accident or incidentally about the rejection of reason and of the Western intellectual inheritance. Its central object is to destroy the past and remake the present through the practice of the raised fist.

See also this collection of “social justice” demands by suitably processed students. And remember, it isn’t a spoof.

And Jonathan Haidt on the high school roots of this Idiot Weeping Fever™: 

As long as many of our elite prep schools are turning out students who have only known eggshells and anger, whose social cognition is limited to a single dimension of victims and victimisers, and who demand safe spaces and trigger warnings, it’s hard to imagine how any university can open students’ minds and prepare them to converse respectfully with people who don’t share their values. Especially when there are no adults around who don’t share their values.

As regular readers will have noticed, “social justice” dogma leads not to moral sophistication but to a kind of mental coarsening; a mix of vanity, unrealism and an absurd reactiveness. All cultivated and indulged by so-called educators who imagine themselves as radical and enlightened. And as Glenn Reynolds notes, 

A cynic might say that academia became fiercely supportive of free speech when such a stance was useful to protect leftists within its ranks, and lost interest in free speech once the leftists took control.

Feel free to add your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.

Weighty Matters

Via Peter Risdon and Feminist Bullshit, here’s a little something from the fat-activist blog Fierce Fatties, “home of the nouveau-bese”:

My friend was completely oblivious to how her actions [losing weight] could affect me at all. I chalk this up to pure self-centredness. 

I believe it’s called projection.

The disgruntled author, “hlkolaya,” aka Heather, describes herself as,

Avant-garde, serial activist, political, fat model, and vegan baker extraordinaire. 

And,

I weigh almost 300lbs and I have anorexia.

A selection of Heather’s activist ruminations, and her modelling portfolio, can be found at Fat Girl Posing. 

Friday Ephemera

Chicken skin teddy. // Hey, you switched-on kids, it’s Serge and Brigitte. // Colour photographs of Paris, 100 years ago. // Now and then, even SR-71 pilots like to have a laugh. // IKEA self-assembly instructions from hell. // His flash-light is brighter than yours. // That’s not a lightsaber, this is a lightsaber. // I fear a small malfunction may be imminent. // Half-mile-long spider web. // A real-time map of Berlin’s subway system. Hours of fun. // Black fruit. // Ginkgo leaves. // Short story vending machine. // Meanwhile, at the airport. // Give the gift of toilet paper. // A public archive of 10,000 cylinder recordings. Includes The Wedding o’ Sandy MacNab and Girls, Study Your Cookery Book. // Civil War. // Wood block transformers. // This book is a camera. // Above all else.

Unseen Energies

It occurs to me that previous visits to the pages of Everyday Feminism may have led readers to suspect that said publication is a haven for the competitively pretentious and neurotically unemployable. Well, this latest article by the non-binary pronoun nightmare known as Kris Nelson™ is sure to shatter such idle preconceptions: 

As a follower of Diana; as a worshipper of the sun, the moon, and the earth; and as a witch, it is my responsibility to engage in radical politics.

In case you missed it,  

I am a witch.

Therefore, naturally, the non-binary pronoun nightmare known as Kris Nelson™ “seeks community building, universal respect, environmental protection, and alternative forms of healing and living.” And obviously, 

All of these aspects of my craft are feminist and revolutionary. 

It all sounds terribly radical.

My religious beliefs are inherently radical.

In fact, readers are informed of this radicalness no fewer than nine times. Repeatedly describing oneself as radical is, of course, a sure sign of throbbing iconoclasm. And as a creature of immense and non-conformist insight,

aligning myself with feminist politics is necessary.

Well, our greatest minds have always been drawn to The Indignant Sisterhood.

As you’d imagine, our radical healer is gifted with strange energies and uncanny knowledge:

There are many amazing things that modern medicine offers us that herbal, crystal, and energy healing cannot... 

The words efficacy and survival spring to mind.

However, it can’t be denied that the medical industry is just as much a site for racism, transphobia, homophobia, sexism, fatphobia, and ableism as any other institution of systemic oppression.

There’s so much sin to purge. Someone fetch the healing stone.

And This Is Your Brain On Leftism

Prostate cancer is a first-world problem.

Alex Manley, writing in the campus newspaper of Concordia University, Montreal: 

Let me be clear — I don’t want anyone to get cancer. I don’t think a man getting cancer is less tragic than a woman getting cancer.

However,

The [‘Movember’ prostate cancer awareness campaign] is just a really well-disguised tantrum that guys are content to throw to make it seem like prostate cancer research is as important as research towards curing women’s cancers.

And,

Prostate cancer is a hallmark of privilege. Deal with it.

Because he cares, you see.

Via Ace. 

Chewing the Fat

Bill Whittle and Stefan Molyneux discuss peak political correctness, cultural confidence and being the bigger dog.

One for a quiet hour and a tall glass of something.

All That Lovely Power

Over little toys and little boys:

A kindergarten teacher in Bainbridge Island, Washington, actively denies her male students the opportunity to play with Lego blocks in order to encourage her female students to play with them. Karen Keller bars the boys in her class from playing with the colourful blocks, even going so far as to lie to them about their opportunity to play. “I always tell the boys, ‘You’re going to have a turn’ — and I’m like, ‘Yeah, when hell freezes over’ in my head,” Keller told the Bainbridge Island Review.

Because “unstructured play time” must be structured to conform with “promoting gender equity.”

Lego and “social justice.” We’ve been here before, you know. 

The Mouthing of Bollocks

Via the pages of Everyday Feminism, Rachel Kuo instructs the dull masses on how to avoid “cultural appropriation” while eating: 

When we talk about “ethnic” food, we’re not referring to French, German, or Italian cuisine, and definitely not those Ikea Swedish meatballs.

I suspect few people think of German cuisine as particularly mysterious and alluring. There are, I fear, very few German restaurants beyond the borders of Germany. Good cars, though.

Usually, we’re talking about Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Ethiopian, and Mexican food – places where food is cooked by the “brownest” people.

As is the custom with articles in Everyday Feminism, the density of assumption in what follows is quite high. For instance, when my family ventures out for a meal, table for twenty, I can say with some confidence that the choice of restaurant isn’t determined by the melanin levels of the people cooking it.

What happens is that food becomes the only identifier for certain places. Japan reduced to ramen and sushi, Mexico reduced to tacos and burritos, India reduced to curry, and so on.

Again, note the loadedness, the questions begged. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten, say, chili while convinced that said meal was an adequate distillation of the entire population of Mexico and Texas, past and present. Nor can I recall “fetishizing the sustenance of another culture.” Or “subsuming histories and stories into menu items.” It’s a meal, not an attempt to absorb world history or to flirt with some notional brownness. Yet this is asserted as “what happens,” as some universal fact. And then promptly contradicted:  

Eating food from another culture in isolation from that culture’s history and also current issues mean [sic] that we’re just borrowing the pieces that are enjoyable – palatable and easily digestible. 

Um, isn’t that rather the point? You know, tastiness without baggage? Isn’t that what makes foreign cuisine commercially viable, a livelihood of millions? Or is ordering takeout only acceptable following lengthy, brow-furrowing investment in each and every vendor’s ancestral culture and current politics? Should every visit to, say, a Pakistani restaurant entail a stern lecture on the pros and cons of European colonialism and a lifetime subscription to the fever dream of Islam? Would that aid digestion? Stated plainly, it sounds a little silly. But Ms Kuo wishes to appear concerned, deeply concerned, that people of pallor might enjoy falafel and a spot of hummus “but not understand or address the ongoing Islamophobia in the US.”

Friday Ephemera

Sail away, sail away, sail away. (h/t, Damian) // At last, a self-operated mechanical hugging machine. // Selfie arm extensions. // An interactive self-updating history of the world. // Shazam your beer. // Slackline walking, it’s not for everyone. // He folds paper better than you do. // Portable and discreet. // At last, videos for pets. Look, Fido. Squirrel! // In fairness, new shoes cheer me up too. // A tall chap in wartime, 1944. (h/t, Kristian) // Tip of Fuji. // 57. // Give the gift of life skills. // Loudspeakers of note. // The eagle hunters of Mongolia. // Assorted Bond interiors. (h/t, Things) // This. // Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity explained in simple terms. // Cup of penis. // 230-foot Croatian sea-organ. // Someone fetch Mulder and Scully, there’s oddness afoot.

Don’t Oppress My People With Your Branded Headphones

More intellectual life at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire: 

“Fuck you, you filthy white fucks!” “Fuck you and your comfort!” “Fuck you, you racist shits!” These shouted epithets were the first indication that many students had of the coming storm. The sign-wielding, obscenity-shouting protesters proceeded through the usually quiet backwaters of the library… and converged around fellow students who had not joined in their long march. They confronted students who bore “symbols of oppression” such as “gangster hats” and Beats-brand headphones. 

The flood of demonstrators opened the doors of study spaces with students reviewing for exams. Those who tried to close their doors were harassed further. One student abandoned the study room and ran out of the library. The protesters followed her out of the library, shouting obscenities the whole way. Students who refused to join their outbursts were shouted down: “Stand the fuck up!” “You filthy racist white piece of shit!” Men and women alike were pushed and shoved by the group. “If we can’t have it, shut it down!” they cried. Another woman was pinned to a wall by protesters who unleashed their insults, shouting “filthy white bitch!” in her face.

Vain little monsters projecting their own vices and relishing the sensation of power over others.

Update, via the comments:

If You Apologise, They Will Eat You

Janice Fiamengo on the neurotic malice of feminist outrage junkies:

See also Make Way for the Mao-lings, in which Dr Fiamengo vividly illustrates the tactics and effects of feminist hysteria, and the video here, in which she debates with a feminist professor of philosophy, Alice McLachlan, who insists that she “cares a lot about free speech,” but not for people who might dare to disagree with her. And remember, should you be at all sceptical of identitarian politics and tribal psychology, Your Failure to Agree Will Not Be Tolerated. 

Friday Ephemera

Don’t worry, he’s not naked. // You want one and you know it. // When your nearest neighbour is Area 51. // His swordsmanship is better than yours. // The Hindenburg’s interiors. // Cats unimpressed by feline-human hybrid. // A visual history of Macy’s Thanksgiving parades, 1929-1964. // The untidy moons of Pluto. // At last, clip-on man buns. // Man with broom, brooming. // A Mongolian record shop. // On a classic of Australian television drama. // Advent calendars filled with liquor. // Crooked timber. // Magnetism. // This rent map of London is not for the squeamish. // The Three Laws of Robotics do not work. Would an autonomous robot surgeon perform an abortion? // And finally, it turns out there are around 1.2 million people with my surname. What about yours?