davidthompson

Anthropological Snippets

Three items presented for your betterment:  

First up, “Kids and kink can coexist at Pride in a totally fine way,” we’re told.  

You see, exhibitionist displays of fetishes – say, transvestism, sadomasochism, nipple clamps and cock rings - constitute a “justice space” and “kids and youth voices are vital to justice movements.” “Kids,” we learn, “are a vulnerable and marginalised group” and must therefore – yes, therefore - be exposed to narcissistic psychodrama and the penises of creepy, damaged men.

It’s all about those “intersecting identities and oppressions.”

This second item reminds us, inadvertently, of two fairly obvious options. You could, of course, regurgitate pseudo-scholarly prattle in a condescending tone, complete with facial theatre. Or you could just, you know, dial back on the carbs and sugar, and thereby live longer without the serious health problems. Or the mental contortions.

Oh, and somehow, inexcusably, I’ve only today discovered this.

I think it’s safe to say that your cross-cultural interview isn’t going terribly well when the interviewee starts throwing his own faeces at you.

Also, open thread.

Signal Received

On the subject of ostentatious hair colouring, Emil Kirkegaard has some thoughts:

For those not into memes: the idea is that poisonous animals advertise their dangerousness by [using] bright colours to scare away predators. Humans appear to do the same, as those who are poisonous -- mentally ill -- colour their hair in bright, dangerous-looking colours. Since this meme was made in about 2014, we’ve seen a strong increase in the number of people with unnatural hair colours. In the same time, we have seen a rise in mental illness in left-wingers…

Is unnatural hair colour associated with mental illness, or are we being misled by a few prominent people with this hair style who appear very mentally ill? We decided to find out using the venerable OKCupid dataset.

Charts and number-crunching ensue.

The full paper - Blue Hair and the Blues: Dying Your Hair Unnatural Colours is Associated with Depression - can be downloaded here. 

Only Looking (2)

And in, er, child-molestation-fantasy news: 

A professor of Ethics at Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway has called to legalise AI-generated child pornography, claiming that paedophilia should be seen as an innate sexuality that requires destigmatisation. Ole Martin Moen, a gay man who identifies as “queer,” currently serves as a member of the advisory board on Norway’s Patient Organization for Gender-Incongruence (PKI), a social and political lobby group for trans rights. […]

Moen details arguments for and against “adult-child sex” before ultimately coming to the conclusion that “adult-child sex is not categorically very harmful” but may result in “risks” of children being harmed… Moen also argues that paedophiles who do not sexually abuse children should be “praised” for their “admirable willpower,”

Not raping children - so far, that is - but really, really wanting to and thinking about it a lot - is praiseworthy, you see.

Update, via the comments:

If readers will forgive a little paraphrasing:

Frisky Nonce: “I didn’t utterly ruin a small child’s life today. I wanted to, quite a lot, but I didn’t.”

Woke Academic: “Oh well done. Have a sweet. And some more child-abuse pornography.”

We could, I think, paraphrase a little further:

“I didn’t stab any random passers-by in the face today.”

“Oh well done. Here are some pictures of random people being stabbed in the face.”

Farcical as it sounds, the dynamic is not entirely dissimilar.

Update 2:

The Mystery That Is Me

Meanwhile, in theological news:

He describes drag as a spiritual experience that allows him to connect with God. “Drag allows me to process the mystery of myself, the mystery of God, the mystery of love, and the mystery of pain,” he said. “When I walk the streets in six-inch heels and wear four pounds of hair, double-stacked wigs, the power which lies within my mystery is released into the world.”

When not releasing his mystery into the world, associate pastor Mr Isaac Simmons, aka Ms Penny Cost, performs slam poetry.

Also, open thread.  

The Bedlamite Hustle

Christopher Rufo mingles with the dysmorphics of “Decolonizing Gender”: 

The panellists represented a wide range of idiosyncratic identities, expressed in a mixture of New Age and intersectional language—the more obscure and oppressed, the greater the status within the community. The main presenter, trans activist Malcolm Shanks, said he was a descendant of black slaves and Taíno tribesmen and “used to identify as gender fluid,” but has been “identifying more recently as a little bit more gaseous or plasma-like.”

Needless to say, the educational content is somewhat outlandish, often farcical and stupefying - essentially, a shit test for the neurotic, the credulous and the chronically pretentious. Mr Ganesha Gold Buffalo, for instance, a trans activist and prostitute, tells us that his expertise is rooted in “Waking up at four in the morning, five in the morning, every morning, to sounds of my ancestors screaming from outside my window, coming from the ground, coming from the earth.” His mind, we learn, “was decolonised” in nearby woods by howling “nature spirits.” Mr Buffalo, who identifies as many things, bemoans his “constant struggle under colonialism,” and his need for affirmation as a woman with a penis:

I one-hundred percent want to still be able to look in the mirror and see every part of myself as a woman, see every part of myself as a two-spirit trans woman, a beautiful being: my moustache, all of my facial hair, my untrimmed brows, my fat ass, my belly, my big dick, everything.

Other participants – again, self-styled educators – air equally challenging demands, including a belief that they should be addressed with seemingly random words, depending on whim and state of mind at any given time. “I want you to call me ‘Mommy,’ ‘Queen,’ ‘Daddy,’ if I want you to,” says Randy Ford, a transgender activist for the Lavender Rights Project, and whose pronouns are she, her, and goddess. Other terms of address include cyborg, unicorn, and Wakanda.

Along with the lists of stipulated pronouns and honorifics, and repeated demands for cash “reparations,” and tales of ghostly visitations by long-dead ancestors, the decolonisers of gender also share their extensive scientific knowledge. Specifically, that “There’s no such thing as male genes or female hormones or a male body.” You see, these things, which don’t exist, are merely diabolical constructs of the white devil. Hence the reparations, of course.

Videos of the bedlamites and their teachings can be found here.

The organisations mentioned in the piece all receive taxpayer funding, and all have programmes aimed at children.

When Having Standards Is The Problem

Speaking, as we were, of woke educators and the wreckage left in their wake, I have more:

Oak Park and River Forest High School administrators will require teachers next school year to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin colour or ethnicity of its students… In an effort to equalise test scores among racial groups, OPRF will order its teachers to exclude from their grading assessments variables it says disproportionally hurt the grades of black students. They can no longer be docked for missing class, misbehaving in school, or failing to turn in their assignments, according to the plan. “Teachers and administrators… will continue the process necessary to make grading improvements that reflect our core beliefs,” the plan states.  

Teachers who question the wisdom of disregarding missed deadlines, general tardiness, and work not done – to say nothing of classroom disruption and repeated failures to show up at all - are, inevitably, accused of harbouring “unconscious biases,” which is tantamount to “racism.” You see, our fearless, forward-looking educators are “supporting the learning of all students” by reducing even further the amount of learning actually taking place.

The school’s “strategic plan,” in which we learn that 90 minutes is thirty minutes plus another thirty, can be found here.

Update, via the comments, where svh adds,

So black kids shouldn’t learn the importance of behaving, doing homework or turning up on time?

Expecting such things would apparently be unfair, an affront to “equity,” and damning evidence of “unconscious bias.” Instead, pupils should be spared the outrage of deadlines and time-keeping in general, and be given repeated opportunities to retake a test, and be given a license to misbehave with impunity, unlike their peers, depending on how brown they happen to be.

Needless to say,  during all of this, the word justice is deployed, unironically.

Jam At The Intersection

At the switched-on woke paradise of Ontario’s Western University:

Western initially stood firm in keeping the picture up, noting it “understood ‘how complex and intersectional this topic is’ and that the ‘imagery may be upsetting to some Muslims.’” However, Associate Vice President of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Opiyo Oloya, announced on Wednesday the picture had been removed.

The pecking order of victimhood is still, it seems, under construction.

Update, two more via the comments:

It’s perfectly straightforward and nothing could ever go wrong.

Setting aside the practical, structural shortcomings of polyamorous entanglements, and the likelihood of insecurity and resentment, there’s also the fact that such arrangements tend to attract a very high concentration of, shall we say, psychologically marginal people. By which I mean, the kinds of people one wouldn’t generally wish to be in an intimate relationship with. Say, the kinds of people who need you to know just how fascinating and complicated their sexual arrangements are, and by extension how fascinating and complicated they themselves must be. 

Hey, kids! Come to the library for Pokémon, Lego… and drag queens.

I’m still not sure why proximity to drag queens – i.e., men performing grotesque parodies of women – is supposed to be both imperative and affirming for toddlers. But apparently these things are somehow aspirational and representative, a role model for later adulthood. As if cartoonish transvestism were an unassailable, not-at-all-insulting shorthand for being gay. As if “story time drag queens,” a remarkable number of whom turn out to be registered sex offenders – three in Texas alone - were natural objects of kinship. As if being lurid and grotesque, or mentally ill, would be an obvious ambition. A way to feel good about oneself.

Also, open thread. 

An Explanation Comes To Mind

George Francis on the rise of “imposter syndrome” – and its possible causes:  

This study tracked 818 college students to look for what triggered the syndrome… Their most illuminating results were the simplest (as is usually the case) - the correlation matrix of their variables. Exactly in line with the theory that imposter syndrome is caused by incompetence, they find low course grades, low attendance, low course engagement (lack of curiosity), and classroom competition (the perception of others working harder than you) predict feelings of being an imposter. People have imposter syndrome because they are incompetent people pretending to be something they are not - a good student… Despite the good evidence for imposter syndrome being caused by students actually being imposters, the study never once brings itself to mention why low grades are associated with feelings of being an imposter. 

It’s a topic we’ve touched on before, when marvelling at the woes of Celia Edell, a “feminist philosopher interested in social justice,” including “critical race theory,” and her struggle to be taken seriously. Ms Edell, who signalled her gravitas and intellectual heft via the medium of endlessly changing Day-Glo hair colour, is accustomed to making claims with no obvious evidential support. When not, that is, making claims for which any evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary. We’re told by Ms Edell, who is also an “online creative,” that her feelings of being “unable to internalise” her own awesomeness are a result of sexism and “oppression,” not something more humdrum and, dare I say it, plausible.

As noted at the time, it may be worth considering the extent to which Ms Edell’s chosen environment, academia, has been politicised and annexed by the left, such that the ludicrous Nina Power, who boasts of finding rioting and arson “uplifting,” is employed as a senior lecturer, and such that “critical race theory,” so favoured by Ms Edell, is deemed intellectually respectable.

If a person’s career is even partly dependent on signalling their possession of the approved, rather narrow political views – and Ms Edell’s are almost exactly what you’d expect – then problems may arise if that signalling trumps expectations of coherence, probity, and rigour. You may score Career-Advancing Lefty Points by, for instance, invoking “whiteness” or “patriarchy,” or some other intersectional woo, or by claiming that women are paid less than men for doing exactly the same work; but a mismatch with reality seems likely to exacerbate any feelings of fraudulence.

Update, via the comments:

Feel Free To Take Notes

Christopher Rufo on when the Philadelphia School District encouraged teachers to brush up on transgender “wellness”: 

Chase Ross, a transgender activist and YouTuber, hosted a series of sessions on “packers,” “masturbation sleeves,” and “prosthetics for sex,” demonstrating various devices from his collection of more than 500 genital prosthetics. “I have tried and touched many dicks, right—prosthetics, real dicks, all dicks. This is one of the most realistic feeling in terms of like the inside of a penis,” he said during one demonstration. “It’s a big boy, this is, like, gigantic.”

Apparently, you can’t teach English or chemistry to any pupils who may think themselves transgender unless you know everything there is to know about puppy fetishes, polyamory, and “artificial ejaculation devices.”

If your own knowledge of such things is insufficiently comprehensive, Mr Rufo has several educational videos from the conference.

Craving Persecution

Or, The Minefield Of Modern Progressive Manners:

It’ll Be Our Little Secret

When we picked up our daughter, it was clear on her face that something was incredibly wrong.

Colorado mother Erin Lee describes her discovery of what her 12-year-old daughter is being taught:

She explained to my daughter that if she is not 100% comfortable in her female body, then she is transgender… She then told the kids that parents aren’t safe and that it’s okay to lie to them about where they are… She explicitly asked the kids who they’re sexually attracted to. There were 11, 12 and 13-year-olds in the room when this happened.

She doubled down, [saying] that parents aren’t safe, that heterosexuality and monogamy are not normal, and she then proceeded to hand out her personal contact information to the kids, encouraging them to connect with her without their parents’ knowledge, by cell phone, by email, and by chat platforms like WhatsApp and Discord, where parents can’t see the communication. She also sends them invites to her secret meetings through these channels.

This predacious stranger, it turns out, had absolutely no qualifications to be speaking with children about sexuality. She’s not a licensed therapist or counsellor, she’s not a full-time teacher in the district. Her only qualification is that she’s a lesbian.

A longer video, which may be somewhat eye-opening, can be found here. And a YouTube version here.

The described events, including subsequent meetings with the self-styled instructor, the school’s principal, and members of the school board - and the inevitable accusations of “homophobia,” “transphobia” and “intolerance” - don’t get any less concerning. One might say creepy.  

Update:

Reheated (67)

For newcomers and the nostalgic, more items from the archives:

Damned If You Do.  

How dare you like, or not like, her aboriginal-feminist poetry:

We’re told that being a “coloured” or “Indigenous” writer is fraught with “structural oppression,” on account of being “marginalised” – as when being invited to literary award parties and then swooned over by pretentious pale-skinned lefties. “Whiteness” and “white men” are particular burdens to Ms Whittaker and her peers, whose suffering – their “collective plight” - is seemingly endless and endlessly fascinating, at least among those for whom such woes are currency. As Ms Whittaker’s world is one of practised self-involvement, her point is at times unobvious. However, our unhappy poet appears to be annoyed both by “underwhelming responses” to her own writing and by insufficiently convincing displays of approval. All that “endless patronising praise.” At which point, the words high maintenance spring to mind.

She Does All This For Us, You Know. 

Or, The Thrill Of Hand Dryers:

I thought I’d cheer you with another chance to marvel at the mind-shattering talents of Ms Sandrine Schaefer, a performance artist whose adventures with lettuce and underwear have previously entertained us. Ms Schaefer, who teaches performance art to those less gifted than herself, has been described by the senior curator at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art as “amazing,” “compelling” and yet inexplicably “underfunded.”

You Can Either Concur Or Agree. 

At Edinburgh University, performative neuroticism reaches new heights: