Via Farnsworth M Muldoon, a tale of feminist romance:
A discussion ensues. The teller of said tale, Ms Kelly Jo-Bluen, describes her interests as “feminism, international justice,” and “coloniality.” “White supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy” is, we’re told, “the problem.”
Consider this an open thread, in which to share links and bicker.
The following is lifted from an article titled Why Are So Many Smart, Gorgeous Women Single? It’s Almost An Epidemic:
7. We’re Becoming Our Own Husbands.
Thanks to feminism and our ability not only to work but to take on positions of leadership in our careers, women are now able to provide ourselves all the benefits husbands used to provide us. We don’t need a guy to spoil us or buy us a house – we’ve got that locked down already. We don’t even need a husband for kids; if we really want to become mothers, there are ways to achieve that without having to tie the knot with someone we’ll just end up divorcing a few years later.
As Damian Counsell quips in reply,
And you know the worst thing about men these days? Their seemingly endless sense of male entitlement.
Oh, and from the same publication, this.
Following a number of enquiries as to why I don’t have a specific tag for items involving the cartoonish Laurie Penny, I thought I’d compile a few of my posts on the British left’s foremost unreliable narrator. It’s necessarily incomplete – there are several short posts and endless, lengthy comments I haven’t included – but it should convey a flavour of Laurie’s intermittent relationship with reality, her ongoing struggles with logic, and her delightful personality.
Continue reading "The Laurie Penny Chronicles" »
Lifted from the comments, an intriguing choice of adjective:
This discovery of general preference, some 71%, is not only deemed “alarming,” but also “startling,” and what’s more, it apparently constitutes a “masculinity crisis within the LGBTQ community.” Says a website quoting a magazine, the front cover of which looks like this.
As Ted S notes in reply, “How dare you gays not like the type of man we think you should like!”
I realise it may be difficult to feel great concern for the kinds of people who base their worldviews on the high and noble teachings of the publications Attitude and Queerty, but still. The unstated contortion required to achieve the indignation that is now social currency – in this instance, a belief that not being aroused by overly effeminate men is obvious and damning proof of “misogynist attitudes” and “toxic masculinity” – is a thing to behold. We’re also informed - quite confidently, yet with no elaboration - that, “[Gay men] enjoy the privilege of being male in a patriarchal society that for some reason values our genitals way above a woman’s.”
Update, via the comments:
Continue reading "Panic Sweeps Nation" »
Ian Tuttle on leftism and thuggery:
It is clear that, for Antifa, the purpose [of their language] is to cloak reality. Antifa’s reason for describing something or someone as “fascist” is not that it is actually fascist… but that describing it that way is politically advantageous. Likewise with any number of other slurs. Antifa are in effect claiming to oppose everything that is bad — and, of course, it is Antifa who decide what is bad. Hence the organisers of the Inauguration Day protests could write, as their mission statement, that “#DisruptJ20 rejects all forms of domination and oppression.” That is a good monopoly if you can get it… They are, in the final analysis, simply claiming that people who think like them should be exempt from the law’s constraints, and that people who do not think like them should not receive the law’s protections.
When your political worldview is premised on the coercion of others, and on pathological self-flattery, it’s not too much of a stretch.
Heather Mac Donald on a real “rape culture” that’s oddly unacknowledged by campus feminists:
In March, a 15-year-old girl in Chicago was lured into a basement and gang-raped by five to six males. The girl was threatened with a pit bull if she tried to flee… One of the participants live-streamed the rape on Facebook. So far, two boys, 15- and 14-years-old, have been arrested for the attack… Up to 40 people watched the rape live; none reported it to the police or to Facebook. Since then, threats, taunts, social-media bullying, and physical assaults have been directed at… the victim and her family, not at the rapists. A group of girls beat the victim’s twelve-year-old sister last week, reports DNA Info Chicago. One of the girl’s attackers said: “Why [did] you send my brother to jail,” according to her mother. You want to see an example of “blaming the victim?” This is it.
Tim Newman on attempts to glamorise polyamory:
Ah, this old chestnut: ‘traditional marriages often fail so polyamorous ones are worth considering.’ What nobody ever does is closely examine the rate at which polyamorous relationships fail, the mental state of the people involved in them, and the effect on any children unfortunate enough to be caught up in them.
Related, in two contrasting parts, the views of Laurie Penny and Brad Wilcox, only one of whom uses data.
And Dominic Mancini on a grave threat to the wellbeing of minority students at the University of Michigan:
Anna Wibbelman, former president of Building a Better Michigan, an organisation that voices student concerns about university development, stated at a student government meeting in late March that “minority students felt marginalised by quiet, imposing, masculine [wood] panelling” found throughout the 100-year-old building, the meeting’s minutes state.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Or, So Empowered, Yet Oppressed By Everything.
Faced as we are with the news that Everyday Feminism may soon flicker out of existence, leaving a gaping void in our intellectual lives, perhaps it’s time to revisit some of the many offerings to have entertained us, albeit inadvertently:
Feminist “creative” and “multi-dimensional creature” Katherine Garcia attempts to justify her sub-optimal life choices. Things go badly wrong.
Rachel Kuo tells us how to order takeaway in a suitably fretful and intersectional manner.
A “white grrl with dreadlocks” atones for her “whiteness” and “appropriated” hair.
Melissa Fabello is a feminist intellectual and therefore terribly oppressed. How dare you question her?
Fat We Can Fix, The Excuses Are Trickier.
An empowered feminist of girth says not being fat makes you complicit in her oppression.
“Social justice” devotee describes herself to employers as “a political troublemaker,” and wonders why employment is hard to find.
Melissa Fabello shares her interracial dating advice with those less enlightened. Naturally, it’s complicated.
“As a witch,” says Kris Nelson, “it is my responsibility to engage in radical politics.” She’s also clairvoyant and sells magic sea shells.
Oh, you laugh now, but who will scold us when they’re gone?
For newcomers, more items from the archives:
An Intellectual Being Rides Again.
Empowered feminist Melissa Fabello explains the deep, deep trauma of being disagreed with.
Ms Fabello chastises those who ironically use the term “social justice warrior” – which, she explains, is an “invalidating behaviour,” one that can get “really oppressive really quickly.”
We Can’t Promise Not To Hit You.
The Clown Quarter is a foretaste of left’s corrected, more compassionate society. Hence all the threats and punching.
To recap, the university’s stated rationale for censorship is that it can’t protect either the speakers or their audience from disruption and thuggery by its own students, which is quite an admission, really. And as we’ve seen, the threat of physical intimidation and mob harassment – by these would-be intellectuals of the left – is quite real. What the university doesn’t admit, however, is that this problem won’t be solved by banning any speakers deemed remotely controversial – in this case, two speakers who prefer evidence and debate over threats and hysteria. The problem will only be addressed, or begin to be addressed, when leftist students no longer feel that mob censorship and physical intimidation are things they can get away with, and get away with repeatedly, without facing consequences. Say, being expelled.
Avowed “feminist killjoy” Josefin Hedlund wants to correct your erotic preferences and make them egalitarian. For “social justice.”
Love and sex are unequally “distributed,” says Ms Hedlund, with an unfair amount of both going to people who are deemed lovable and attractive by the people loving them, and not to insufferable sociopaths with horrific disfigurements. Or, one suspects, self-styled “feminist killjoys.” And this is because of capitalism. It’s “obvious,” you see.
There’s more, should you want it, in the greatest hits. And tickling the tip jar is what keeps this place afloat.
Robert Stacy McCain on the myth of the beauty myth:
One notices, of course, that feminists never criticise gay men for adoring male beauty, nor are lesbian preferences subject to feminist critique. No, in feminist discourse, it is only the heterosexual male’s attitudes and behaviour that are the target of this kind of “fuck your beauty standards” rhetoric.
Mark Bauerlein on the ideological desiccation of the humanities:
When English turned into a practice of reading literature for signs of racism, sexism, and ideology, it lost touch with why youths pick up books in the first place, said University of Virginia Professor Rita Felski. And Duke professor Toril Moi told the Chronicle of Higher Education, “If you challenge the idea of suspicion as the only mode of reading, you are then immediately accused of being conservative in relation to those politics.
Heather Mac Donald on progressive discipline policies and subsequent delinquency:
The idea that such street behaviour does not have a classroom counterpart is ludicrous. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic males of the same age. The lack of socialisation that produces such a vast disparity in murder rates, as well as less lethal street violence, inevitably will show up in classroom behaviour. Teens who react to a perceived insult on social media by trying to shoot the offender are not likely to restrain themselves in the classroom if they feel “disrespected” by a teacher or fellow students.
Joe Concha spies an asymmetry:
Democratic voters are almost three times as likely to have “blocked, unfriended, or stopped following someone on social media” after Donald Trump’s victory, according to a study… The survey shows considerable splits along gender lines as well. Women were “twice as likely as men to report removing people from their online social circle because of the political views they expressed online,” 18 percent to 9 percent, according to the study conducted by Daniel Cox and Robert P. Jones… Meanwhile, 5 percent of those polled said they will alter plans to spend less time with select members of their family because of their political views. This, too, showed a partisan divide: 10 percent of Democrats said they planned to avoid certain family members, and 2 percent of Republicans said they would do likewise.
Continue reading "Elsewhere (221)" »
Newcomers and the nostalgic will be thrilled to hear that the greatest hits archive has (finally) been updated. Among the additions are Laurie Penny’s not-at-all-disastrous lifestyle advice, how not being fat makes you an oppressor, why your erotic preferences are in need of egalitarian correction, and the Guardian’s Sarah Marsh on the traumatising horror of being offered free cake.
Speaking of wordplay, we’re once again being told that Baby, It’s Cold Outside is actually an ode to date rape. As so often, the umbrage-takers display a remarkable level of tin-earedness regarding the sentiment of the song. And as noted in the comments over at Instapundit, “There was a time progressives would have said it was about a woman who obviously wants to have sex, but is being oppressed by slut-shamers through fear.”
Heather Mac Donald on the world’s real unsafe spaces:
Because Albinos’ body parts are believed to carry magical powers, their limbs are highly marketable — once obtained, of course, through mutilation or murder. Attending school for sisters Bibiana and Tindi Mashamba was a nightmare; not only did other children throw rocks and spit on them and teachers beat them, but the threat of murder was ever-present. So, like many Third World girls, they simply stayed home. But even such a retreat from the public realm couldn’t protect them. The day after their father’s funeral, Bibiana’s leg and two fingers were hacked off in the hope of a lucrative sale.
Good Samaritans brought the girls to the Orthopaedic Institute for Children in Los Angeles so as to provide Bibiana with a new prosthetic leg. And then students from USC’s law school started an asylum appeal for them. Did those law students seek to get them asylum in Nigeria, say, or Haiti, so that they wouldn’t be oppressed by white privilege? No, oddly, they targeted their asylum petition at the U.S. government, the place where victims of the brutality, superstition, and hatred that characterise so many Third World countries flee to (along with equally reviled Western Europe). The petition was successful, and now Bibiana and Tindi are students in Ojai, California, where they are eager to catch up on their lost schooling and go on to college. There are no reports as of yet of the girls being stoned in Ojai.
Seth Barron on the unmentionable costs of illegal immigration:
New York’s Health + Hospitals Corporation, which runs the city’s massive public health infrastructure, takes it as its mission to provide care to anyone who needs it, without regard for immigration status. This policy is a major reason why HHC is on constant verge of financial collapse. During the last fiscal year, HHC needed an emergency allocation of $337 million from the city [i.e., taxpayers] just to keep its doors open, and the prognosis for the future is even worse. At an April press conference, Dr Ram Raju, president of HHC, said that caring for illegals consumes about one-third of his $7.6 billion annual budget. Rounding down, that means that $2.5 billion — of which the city is picking up an increasingly large chunk every year, as state and federal aid dries up — goes toward providing health care to illegal aliens in New York.
And Cathy Young on the alleged gender politics of headphone use:
Back in 2013, Dan Bacon posted a piece titled “How to Talk to a Woman Who Is Wearing Headphones.” This three-year-old blogpost was dug up and pilloried by a Twitter activist named Brandon Evers, whose Twitter bio states, “I support intersectional feminism, but only women can decide if I’m a feminist” and helpfully clarifies that his personal pronouns are “he/him,” and whose Twitter feed is mostly one long exercise in ‘look how progressive and pro-feminist I am’ moral posturing. Brandon’s tweet quickly went viral with 18,000 retweets, and the outrage machine kicked in, with Bustle, Slate, and numerous other sites denouncing [Bacon’s] post as a creepy and misogynistic call to sexual harassment and boundary violation. Revelist, a publication for millennial women, compared Dan Bacon to mass murderer Elliott Rodger, who killed six people (four of them men) in 2014 because he was mad about being rejected by women.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.
For newcomers, more items from the archives. A ladies-of-the-left edition:
Melissa Fabello, managing editor of Everyday Feminism, shares her interracial dating advice with those less enlightened:
If you’re creasing the sheets with someone and you’re continually fretting about pseudo-sociology and imagined racial power dynamics, and about who’s being “marginalised” by virtue of their melanin levels, and thinking about sex “in relation to social power,” then it doesn’t sound like a relationship so much as an elaborate fetish. Seemingly oblivious, Ms Fabello goes on to stress the wickedness of “racial fetishization” and of “exotifying” sex with “people of colour.” “It’s never appropriate to stereotype people,” says she. And yet her own article is premised on “othering” and “exotifying” people with browner skin than hers. Chiefly by viewing them as eternal victims of some all-pervasive “white supremacy,” which apparently renders them “marginalised” and powerless, and in need of endless, neurotic accommodation by immensely sensitive white people, even in the bedroom.
“Racial justice educator” Rachel Kuo tells us how to order takeaway in a suitably agonised and intersectional manner:
For Ms Kuo, neurotic fretting is, and should be, a staple of eating out: “Food can be used as a tool of marginalisation and oppression… It’s critical for us to reflect on how we perceive the cultures that we’re consuming and think about the relationships between food, people, and power.” And yet the family running my local Chinese takeaway actively encourages heathen white folk to sample their wares, regardless of whether those paying customers are intimately familiar with All Of Chinese History. And I very much doubt that they expect their patrons to acquaint themselves with “the complex relationships and power dynamics between Asian countries” and issues of “labour equity and immigration policy” as a precondition of buying hot tossed chicken. No. What they want is custom. Pretentiously agonised pseudo-sensitivity is, alas, not billable.
Continue reading "Reheated (47)" »