davidthompson

The Pretending Can Get Competitive

Genevieve Gluck brings news from Scandinavia:

A man in Norway is sparking outrage on social media after he was sympathetically interviewed about his decision to begin identifying as a disabled woman... In the interview, [he] stated that he had always wished he had been born a woman who was paralysed from the waist down.

So not just a woman, but a woman in a wheelchair, which confers bonus points. So many intersections. So many opportunities to impose on others. The gentleman in question, Jørund Viktoria Alme, is a 53-year-old senior credit analyst for Oslo’s Handelsbanken. He is of course able-bodied, if a tad high-maintenance:

“In the same way that I experience being a woman in a man’s body, I experience that I should have been paralysed from the waist down. This is not a desire to be a burden on society. It is about the wheelchair being an aid for me to function in everyday life, both privately and at work,” Alme stated.

Unsurprisingly, many actually disabled people, whose use of wheelchairs is not recreational or a prop in some theatrical psychodrama, have aired their reservations about this new frontier in the world of make-believe identities. Among them, Noomi Alexandersen, a woman with cerebral palsy, who told Norway’s TV 2 that Mr Alme’s professed “identity” is an insult. Mr Alme, however, prefers to think of himself – an activity well-practised - as an activist of sorts, overcoming prejudice and facilitating “diversity and inclusion.” It’s all terribly selfless and heroic.

Oh wait. 

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More items from the archives:

She’s Seething With Empowerment.  

A Guardian contributor encounters a small act of courtesy, screaming ensues.

Ms Huckeba continues, “No, you cannot open this door for me! You wouldn’t have opened it two years ago, so you damn sure can’t open it now!” “I scowled and stormed away,” says she, “completely enraged.” You see, he’s not allowed to do that - holding open the door for her - or for any woman, presumably. Because although Ms Huckeba didn’t know this polite gentleman and had never seen him before, she’s nevertheless sure of what his views on holding doors open for people must have been two years previously, back when she was fat. It’s intersectional science. And this being the Guardian, what matters is that Ms Huckeba can invoke victimhood to rationalise having behaved like a complete and utter cow.

Don’t Oppress My People With Your Big Hooped Earrings.  

The pretentiously agonised, part 436.

When not struggling with oppressive punctuation, Ms Martinez spends her time fretting about the fact that she and her peers are “not taken seriously” as the radical titans they so obviously are. According to fellow umbrage-taker Jacquelyn Aguilera, who also emailed the entire campus, “winged eyeliner, lined lips, and big hoop earrings” are “an everyday act of resistance” by the brown and virtuous.

You Mustn’t Stop The Hysteria.  

A Professor of Education denounces consequences for… well, pretty much anything.

Make Way For The Activist-Wanker Caste

As the activist delight in vandalism and traffic obstruction has cropped up in the comments, along with their bizarre rationalisations, I thought it might be worth revisiting some earlier rumblings on the subject.

For instance,

It’s interesting just how often “social justice” posturing entails something that looks an awful lot like spite or petty malice, or an attempt to harass and dominate, or some other obnoxious behaviour. Behaviour that, without a “social justice” pretext, might get you called a wanker or a bitch. A coincidence, I’m sure.

It is, I think, worth pondering why it is that these supposed displays of righteousness routinely take the form of obnoxious or bullying or sociopathic behaviour, whereby random people are screwed over and dominated, and often reduced to pleading. Pleading just to get home, to children, or to work, or to get to the doctor’s surgery. Even ambulances and fire engines can be obstructed, indefinitely, with both impunity and moral indifference. Among our self-imagined betters, it seems to be the go-to approach for practically any purported cause. Which is terribly convenient. Almost as if the supposed activism were more of a pretext, an excuse, a license to indulge pre-existing urges.

And what kind of person would have urges like that? 

Update, via the comments:

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Some items from the archives:

How Dare You Not Pretend.

On pronouns, politeness, and the strange mental rumblings of Ms Laurie Penny.  

Regarding rudeness, I’m generally polite by default, at least in person, and don’t go out of my way to needlessly put a kink in someone else’s day. I’ve had perfectly civil chats with people who regard themselves as transgender or gender-non-conforming or whatever. Nobody got upset. But what is often being asked – or demanded – is not a small thing, not in its implications.

Taken broadly, we are being asked to affirm, wholesale, a bundle of phenomena that includes not only actual gender dysphoria, whether the result of developmental anomalies or childhood molestation, but also autogynephilia, serious personality disorders, adolescent pretension, and assorted exhibitionist and unsavoury compulsions. The expectation seems to be that we should take these different phenomena, with very different moral connotations, as being one and the same thing, and then defer to them, habitually and uncritically. Which is asking rather more than can readily be agreed to.

Turf War.

At Middlebury College, woke piety erupts. A 74-year-old scholar is quite literally chased off campus.

You Will Practise Not Noticing

Further to recent rumblings in the comments, the Globe and Mail’s Phoebe Maltz Bovy offers what I believe is called a hot take:

Most will be familiar with the following scenario: a young girl, a teen or tween, gets in trouble with her school’s administration for a dress-code violation. Her supposed crime against decency: looking provocative. It will turn out that the girl was wearing some normal teenager outfit, jeans and a T-shirt or something equally boring, but had the audacity to attend school in a body with breasts, hips and a post-pubescent-looking behind… She is not choosing to draw attention to herself simply by existing. It’s the fault of the adults around her for sexualising her.

Given what follows, do keep that last line in mind.

But in a twist to the typical narrative, this time around, a high-school teacher in Oakville, Ont., made headlines for her curvaceous classroom presence.

That would be this chap’s curvaceous classroom presence.

“The conservative press and right-wing social media” are then mentioned, complete with implied hissing, on grounds that those irredeemable right-wingers have noticed something untoward:

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Some items from the archives:

No Black Lights Were Available.

New York Times contributor is oppressed by pedestrian-crossing traffic lights.

Mr Kaufman - who can doubtless detect racism in the motions of subatomic particles - would have us believe that his friend was using the word white as a racial descriptor, rather than, as seems more likely, an unremarkable acknowledgement of a traffic light’s colour when talking to a child. In light of which, Mr Kaufman’s claims of being “bombarded” with racism – daily, everywhere – become at least explicable, if not convincing. 

The pedestrian crossing signal that so distresses Mr Kaufman – a rudimentary humanoid figure, made of white lights on a black background – can be seen here, from a safe distance. You may want to steady yourselves. It’s all very upsetting, at least for the exquisitely sensitive. Mr Kaufman then goes on an investigative journey, in which he learns why, in a society with lots of non-English speakers, crossing signals with words are being replaced by simple, universal graphics, calibrated to capture attention – say, by using lights of a certain hue. Which all sounds quite sensible. Rather than, say, a nefarious racial conspiracy intended to break the will of the negro.

You May Clap When Moved.  

Mr Reed Altemus rubs his trousers, awaits applause.

Just A Thought, But Hear Me Out

Maybe the racially neurotic should not be teaching children.

Say, the kinds of people who insist that maintaining discipline in class and ejecting those who seriously misbehave - thereby enabling the rest of the class to have some chance of learning something - is merely “upholding white supremacy,” and so, by implication, very, very bad. The kinds of people who, when their own words are quoted verbatim and they consequently encounter pushback, seemingly for the first time, complain about the stress of being disagreed with. 

As we’ve seen many times, when said neuroticism is made modish, statusful, and an institutional obligation, the practical results are not entirely inspiring. With six experiments in racial immunity from discipline, in six different cities, resulting in six surges in violent classroom assaults, up to and including actual riots. And with apologists for the policies doubling-down and subsequently claiming that “African-American boys” are more “physical” and “demonstrative,” and so punching teachers in the face, and groping them, and setting other students’ hair on fire, is how those students “engage in learning.”

And when educators have practised such dishonesties and have learned to perform the required mental contortions, the results can be quite eye-widening. We might, for instance, turn to Dr Albert Stabler, an assistant professor at Appalachian State University, whose thoughts are much aligned with those of our TikTok teacher linked above.

Not In Fact An Optimal Situation

“It was, like, so awesome.” 

Or, “Woman with mental health problems craves validation from other people’s eight-year-olds, whom she manipulates, seemingly with impunity.”

Readers may wish to devise captions of their own. 

Update: 

Via the comments, and somewhat related, this illustration of ideological capture.  

And so, a woman who has been raped and is understandably uneasy about cross-dressing men venturing into female-only intimate spaces, including changing rooms, showers, and rape support groups, is patronised and scolded – at length, on her own doorstep, by a female police officer - for not believing that “trans women are women.” And the police officer, this rambling fool, the one doing the patronising, is the one who claims to be offended. On behalf of dysmorphic and autogynephile men. “You’ve got in your head that a trans woman is not a woman. You need to educate yourself,” says she.

In another context, it could pass for black comedy.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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

Hush Now, Brown Person, I’ll Do The Talking.

Woke academic bemoans racism, while casually erasing agency from anyone brownish who happens to disagree with her.

For Ms Beltrán, then, those who tire of racial tribalism and identitarian drama, and who prefer to be engaged with as individuals, are merely surrendering to “whiteness” and “white supremacy,” and are therefore the enemy, traitorous, or at best, dupes. And for Ms Beltrán, the extremist is not the person who fixates on race as the overriding characteristic and sole basis for “recognition” - as the ideological mass around which all else must revolve - but the person who doesn’t.

Your Guilt Has Been Determined Via Pantone Colour Chart.

A mandatory course for dentists is announced. Confessions of pallor are expected.

If you plan to be a dentist and attend the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, it seems you must first submit to condescension and insults, and accusations of being either a bigot or an enabler of bigotry, based solely on unchangeable aspects of your appearance. Because apparently you can’t do dentistry without the weird political woo of dogmatic parasites who’ve managed to insert themselves into yet another sphere of life.

Her Unspeakable Woes (2). 

Haughty bitches claim to be oppressed, while disdaining the little people who serve them drinks.

Incongruous Men

Further to the eye-widening incident mentioned in the later paragraphs here, another taste of trans ideology in Canadian women’s shelters:

At first, Jane says she’d just tried to avoid Max [a pseudonym], who she described as being over 6’ tall and obviously male. But just weeks after arriving, Jane says she caught him in the hall outside of her room, completely nude but for a bra he was holding to his chest as he modelled his body in the full-length mirror near Jane’s door. He was fully intact and was not covering his genitalia in any way…

Jane attempted to complain to staff over what had happened, but says her concerns were given a low priority and dismissed… “They just said ‘some people don’t respect boundaries.’ Nothing was done.”  

Other incidents, including the bullying of a severely disabled resident and the repeated theft of kitchen knives, along with threats to use them on other residents, prompted further complaints.

But the staff member quickly expressed that they were more concerned about Jane having perceived Max as male.

The man in question was, belatedly, moved elsewhere. However, a second dysmorphic man, also unstable, appeared in the shelter, resulting in additional questioning of the shelter’s effectively unisex policy. Which in turn had consequences for the complainant:

“We are a trans-friendly house. We will be having more trans women coming in. So, the decision has been made that this is not the right place for you,” the manager says, before accusing Jane of being “dishonest” about her position on trans rights during her intake… “The fact is, you’re transphobic. We are a non-transphobic agency, and it is not appropriate for you to be living here,” the manager is heard saying, “I asked you when you moved in, and you lied — you said you weren’t transphobic.”

Given the subject matter, it’s not a happy read. But it does, I think, convey where modish pretensions can lead. 

Update:

In the comments, sH2 juxtaposes the shelter’s annoyance that Jane should perceive Max as male with Max’s evident delight in displaying his penis. “Hard not to,” he adds. Well, in the case above, and in the case of Tyler Porter, mentioned previously, and doubtless in many others, I suspect that’s rather the point.

Womenfolk, Know Your Place

And in sports news:

An adult biological male who identifies as a woman edged out a 13-year-old girl to take first place in a women’s skateboarding contest held in New York Saturday.

Sometimes reality is a little too on-the-nose.

Update, via the comments, where Melofon adds,

Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire takes a brave stand in favour of ... the tradition and competitive integrity of the sport of women’s skateboarding. Opening itself up to the (correct) rebuttal that it has no interest in skateboarding or women in skateboarding, and is only covering it to pick on the tranny.

Well, I doubt that ladies’ skateboarding is a regular topic of conversation at the Daily Wire, or among its readers, but the particulars of the sport are not the thing that’s most interesting. There is a wider context, of which the above is very much part. I would guess that readers are more likely to be interested in the pretence that unwell men can become women, seemingly by dint of wishing, and are therefore to be admitted, unopposed, into women’s sports and women’s intimate spaces. The Daily Wire’s readers may even regard this trend, correctly, as pretentious, unrealistic, and unhappy in its implications.

To register this phenomenon - and its wide and rapid spread - as noteworthy is rather more than, as Melofon puts it, picking on the tranny.

More details of the skateboarding saga can be found here.

Readers will note that several wins by dysmorphic men have occurred in women’s skateboarding, and that female players who aren’t entirely happy with this arrangement find themselves assailed by trans activists for daring to complain. Again, the issue isn’t ladies’ skateboarding as such, but rather the ongoing and widespread efforts to normalise something that’s quite odd, one might say surreal, and often unjust.

If another example is required, one that shows, quite vividly, just how awry things can get…

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.