Woker Than Thou

Lifted from the comments because… well, apparently, this is where we are now as a culture: 

You see, it’s not enough for a blockbuster film to feature lots of heroic women being no less feisty and capable than their male counterparts, or for said film to end with a call for help to a cosmically powerful female superhero. No, these ass-kicking female characters must also have certain woke-approved hairstyles. Which in fact at least four of them do. But that doesn’t count, somehow. Because what matters is contriving an excuse, however slim and improbable, for some feigned indignation. And the words “gender fascism.”

Comments

[Liz]

Black Widow's hair is shorter than Bucky's.

[David]

Black Widow’s hair is shorter than Bucky’s.

Hey, I’m just illustrating your point.

[Connor]

My reply to Rebecca Jennings.

[Black Ball]

Is she upset that the ladies have a nice mane of hair, or does Ms Jennings wish to have them with short hair? I'm confused. So where is the tequila?

[Alice]

#HairDiversityNow

[David]

I’m confused. So where is the tequila?

So far as I can tell, the grievance is that “flowing hair” is terribly sexist and problematic when the hair in question is a woman’s. Thor’s formerly flowing locks, and Loki’s, and Bucky’s, don’t count. And likewise, the numerous female characters who don’t fit with Ms Jennings’ predetermined conclusion. (Among them, Shuri, Okoye, Maria Hill, Pepper Potts, Nebula, and so on.)

But then, if you’ve been taught that all you need is to find some incredibly trivial thing and then pretend to disapprove of it, while congratulating yourself, this will happen.

[MC]

Sometimes I can't tell the difference between idiots and lunatics.

[David]

It’s woke journalism Don’t you dare mock it.

[pst314]

Thor’s formerly flowing locks, and Loki’s, and Bucky’s, don’t count.

Presumably some woke creature will tell us that this is evidence that they are "trans" or something.

[Hector Drummond, Vile Novelist]

They're fighting for their gender. Even though they clearly despise anyone who has ever displayed traits typcially associated with that gender.

[R. Sherman]

Question: Should I be alarmed that I have no idea who these people are, whom we're discussing? Or, should I just stay at the bar and sample the selection of vodkas until there's a change of topic?

[billdehaan]

I've concluded that Woke Journalism is synonymous with Poe's Law

[David]

Or, should I just stay at the bar and sample the selection of vodkas until there’s a change of topic?

[ Slides faded, dusty cocktail menu along bar. ]

[David]

Next week, why ponytails are sexist.

[Squires]

If they had worn ponytails it would have been sexist.

Nothing you do will ever keep a sadist fully satisfied.

[David]

Remember, this is sexist.

And this is also sexist.

But this isn’t.

Just so we’re clear on this. Because, God knows, there will be a test at some point.

[Daniel Ream]

Helicopters. I keep telling you people.

[Mike]

It’s woke journalism Don’t you dare mock it.

Whatever it is it's not journalism.

[David]

Helicopters. I keep telling you people.

This is my baffled face.

[David]

Whatever it is it’s not journalism.

How dare you, sir. She identifies as a journalist.

[R. Sherman]

Helicopters. I keep telling you people.

Is this what you mean? It would seem up to the task of taking care of the problem.

Fun fact: My dad did some engineering on the Viper's predecessor, the Cobra, in the way back.

Ok, back to the bar. David, would you be so kind as to hand me that bottle of Grey Goose from the upper left shelf? There's a good lad.

[Chester Draws]

And there was I thinking that the pneumatic chests of most of the females was the sexist bits! (More obviously in the comics though.)

[R. Sherman]

BTW, I tossed something into the tip-jar in hopes that we'll soon get back to normal around here. Where "normal" is defined as fat, ugly, lesbian performance artists rolling around in paint or something.

You know, something we can get our teeth into.

[David]

David, would you be so kind as to hand me that bottle of Grey Goose from the upper left shelf?

Grey fat, you say? Help yourself. I’ll get you a spoon.

[David]

I tossed something into the tip-jar in hopes that we’ll soon get back to normal around here.

Bless you, sir.

[ Fetches larger, fancier spoon. ]

[jabrwok]

helicopters

This is more what I had in mind (no idea whether Chester was thinking the same thing or not).

[jabrwok]

D'oh! Daniel, not Chester.

It was a natural mistake!

[Spiny Norman]

Shorter Rebecca Jennings:

[high-pitched shrieking]

NOT BUTCH ENOUGH!!!

[Burnsie]

Why do I suspect Ms. Jennings has lousy hair and can't contain her jealousy?

[[+]]

Next week, why ponytails are sexist.

That. ;-D

[Julie Christie]

Why do I suspect Ms. Jennings has lousy hair and can't contain her jealousy?

I suspected Sailer's Law too, but judging by her Twitter photo she has very nice hair.

[David]

That.

But that’s the thing. The game being played seems to involve finding something both trivial and improbable to complain about – the more trivial and improbable, the better - thereby alerting readers to one’s woke credentials. The fact that the complaint may be incoherent, badly researched and generally unconvincing doesn’t seem to matter much. Presumably on grounds that the goal posts must continually move, with ever more rarefied agonies being signalled, even if this means that next week’s complaint contradicts the current one.

[Daniel Ream]

And there was I thinking that the pneumatic chests of most of the females was the sexist bits!

Fun fact: it is somebody's job to spray Scarlet Johansen's breasts before each scene with silicone so they stay shiny.

fat, ugly, lesbian performance artists rolling around in paint or something.
You know, something we can get our teeth into.

Well, there's an image I'm not going to be able to get out of my head.

[WTP]

The only logical explanation for this article is that Ms. Jennings is, in fact, a princess but for some reason, presumably something to do with discretion being the better part of valor, she cannot let on that she is indeed a princess. She seeks to be rescued and this is her secret cry for help. See there was once a prince who wanted to marry a princess, but was having difficulty finding a suitable wife. Something was always wrong with those he met, and he could not be certain they were real princesses because they had bad table manners or they were too fat or thin or not beautiful. One stormy night a young woman drenched with rain sought shelter in the prince's castle. She claimed to be a princess, so the prince's mother decided to test their unexpected, unwitting guest by placing a pea in the bed she was offered for the night, covered by 20 mattresses and 20 feather-beds. In the morning, the guest told her hosts that she endured a sleepless night, kept awake by something hard in the bed that she was certain has bruised her. The prince rejoiced. Only a real princess would have had the sensitivity to feel a pea through such a quantity of bedding, so the two married.

The pea was placed in a museum, where it can still be seen today, unless someone has removed it.

[David]

Well, there’s an image I’m not going to be able to get out of my head.

Think good thoughts.

[Hal]

. . . . even if this means that next week’s complaint contradicts the current one.

Oh, no no, David, and you must now report to room 101.

You should know better than anyone else that next week is completely in alignment with this week, and last week, and . . . .

[R. Sherman]

Well, there’s an image I’m not going to be able to get out of my head.

Think good thoughts.

See. All you need is a furtive glance, a hint of a raised eyebrow, a whiff of a smile and a few quid in the tip jar and shit happens around here.

It's sort of like a strip club, now that I think about it, hump fat notwithstanding.

[David]

It’s sort of like a strip club, now that I think about it, hump fat notwithstanding.

A new tagline for the brochure.

[Richard]

In these movies, everyone is so damn clean and the bad guys never grab the good guys by that long beautiful clean hair and break their neck. But then I suppose that it is a fantasy.

Regarding Ms. Johansen and shiny boobs. I suppose that this is a family blog so I'm not allowed to express approval.

[lotocoti]

Regarding Ms. Johansen and ...

Scrolls back through thread more slowly.

[Black Ball]

Just regarding the perceived sexism. I Googled 'shows with gay chracters' and I was pointed to one where Netflix has a list of 21 series/fillums with 'awesome gay characters'. Now a quick perusal of the 21 in question reveals that there is not a great deal of wymynses in lead roles for gayness. I am sure this will be rectified by Ms Jennings, riding in on horseback to save the day. Sans ponytails of course.

https://www.pride.com/netflix/2016/3/25/21-netflix-shows-awesome-gay-characters#slide-21

[Squires]

No Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival, as expected. Author clearly has a poor grasp of what is "awesome".

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

In the next movie, they should give all the white women superheroes dreadlocks.

[champ]

I guess we should all just admit that everything is racist...

https://www.redstate.com/kiradavis/2018/04/30/hotel-shampoo-racist/

[Hal]

No Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival, as expected.

Oh, bother. That looks like it could be fun.

Oh, well.

We'll just have to make do.

[Emil Zatopek]

The new hero, the intellectual, didn't need to burden himself with the irksome toil of reporting or research. For that matter, he needed no particular education, no scholarly training, no philosophical grounding, no conceptual frameworks, no knowledge of academic or scientific developments other than the sort of stuff you might pick up in Section 9 of the Sunday newspaper. Indignation about the powers that be and the bourgeois fools who did their bidding-that was all you needed. Bango! You were an intellectual.

From the very outset the eminence of this new creature, the intellectual, who was to play such a tremendous role in the history of the twentieth century, was inseparable from his necessary indignation. It was his indignation that elevated him to a plateau of moral superiority. Once up there, he was in a position to look down at the rest of humanity. And it hadn't cost him any effort, intellectual or otherwise. As Marshall McLuhan would put it years later: "Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity."

Tom Wolfe, "In the Land of the Rococo Marxists"

[Captain Nemo]

Thanks for that, Emil. A most enjoyable read. I'd forgotten just how good Tom Wolfe can be at his best. Also from the above, this, I think, will appeal to our gracious host:

[A] fool can be any age, twenty-eight as easily as fifty-eight, if he is one of that minority on the faculty who still believe in the old nineteenth century Germanic modes of so-called objective scholarship. Today the humanities faculties are hives of abstruse doctrines such as structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, deconstruction, reader-response theory, commodification theory ... The names vary, but the subtext is always the same: Marxism may be dead, and the proletariat has proved to be hopeless. They're all at sea with their third wives. But we can find new proletariats whose ideological benefactors we can be - women, non-whites, put-upon white ethnics, homosexuals, transsexuals, the polymorphously perverse, pornographers, prostitutes (sex workers), hardwood trees - which we can use to express our indignation toward the powers that be and our aloofness to their bourgeois stooges, to keep the flame of skepticism, cynicism, irony, and contempt burning...

We won't get too hung up on political issues, which never seem to work out right anyway. Instead, we will expose the stooges' so-called truths, which the Fools ignorantly cultivate, and deconstruct their self-deluding concoctions of eternal verities.

[David]

The more things change...

[Turk Turkleton]

Accused of pushing 3rd-rate SJW clickbait, Matthew Yglesias proudly owns it: "We’ve pushed it from Day One. Both social justice and getting people to click on the articles are good."

[TomJ]

The game being played seems to involve finding something both trivial and improbable to complain about – the more trivial and improbable, the better - thereby alerting readers to one’s woke credentials.

I would point, once again, to Dr Niemietz's explanation of virtue signalling as a positional good.

[David]

Dr Niemietz’s explanation of virtue signalling as a positional good.

Absolutely.

[TimT]

The low point for me was the SJW hissy fit at Black Widow's grief she couldn't have children in Ultron. Because for some reason this very real grief that millions of women (and men) encounter is not something an empowerful womyn is allowed to have.

[David]

the SJW hissy fit at Black Widow’s grief she couldn’t have children

Which says more about the pretensions and insecurities of those doing the hissing than anything about the character.

The Romanov-Banner romance, on the other hand, was a bit of a shambles.