Not Like Us

The best line comes at 2:10:
“Why do you need to warn people?”
“It’s so you don’t…”
I wonder what the rest of that sentence was going to be.

“oh…ooooooooh…”
Yes, oh dearie me, it’s one of the bad people. Here to cause trouble. People need to be warned
Just like “equality”, “diversity” is such a cool word, and so is “inclusivity” – they need mindless repetition every 2 minutes. Almost as if for display… It’s the strangest thing.
And if using and understanding those words leads someone to any unfortunate consequenses, then we can just add a subclause at any time to make sure the correct opinions are included and the wrong opinions are sort of …excluded
And no one in the room sees a problem with that.

“oh…ooooooooh…”
That. That there.

David – my sympathies lie with the feminists. This was meant to be a leadership conference and a safe space. How are they supposed to learn about leadership unless they feel safe that nobody in the room will disagree with them?
I used to defend Her Majesty and her hairs and accessories when I was in the British Army (you’re welcome). Unfortunately I was misled by the adverts that suggested Army life was about skiing and scuba diving and being served delicious chocolate served in little foil parcels at swanky Ambassadors receptions (although I may have gotten confused with a different advert on that one, my attention span is quite ).
In actual fact, Army life is mainly about ironing, making your bed, getting up early to exercise in your pants, being shouted at, and trying to avoid eye contact while you poo in a toilet cubicle with no door. So basically it’s school but with better food and you can’t bunk off or bring your Mum in when they shout at you (they wouldn’t let her past the gate).
Our officers and NCO’s thought they knew a thing or two about leadership, but they failed miserably at creating a safe space for me and rejected all my great suggestions for improving morale, like not making us carry heavy rucksacks, putting doors on the toilet cubicles, and hammocks. The final straw was when I was told that UNIT was not a real thing, and instead of fighting Daleks and Cybermen we mainly fought townies who had acquired temporary super strength thanks to vodka and Red Bull.
I say “we”, but I’m a lover and not a fighter, so I mainly fought ennui due to the lack of girls in the Army who look like Cammy from Street Fighter 2. At that point it became clear to me that the British Army is irredeemably doomed and I couldn’t see much point in hanging around and sharing the blame for its inevitable lack-of-hammocks-based downfall.
Imagine turning up at a Scientology fair generously offering people free personality tests and credit checks, and saying loudly “I’m not too sure about this whole Xenu thing…” It would be rude, and that’s exactly how that conservative woman behaved when she knowingly entered a feminist safe space with nefarious intentions in her grinchy, shriveled, conservative heart.

“oh…ooooooooh…”
Hey, I didn’t know McLovin was a feminist. He must be there trying to pick up chicks.

The university responded by banning students from recording any lecturers . . .
Oh, yes, we can’t have students actually paying attention and having references on hand so allow the learning of the topic, can we . . . .

present & correct,
Well, if you take something like campus newspapers as a yardstick, it’s interesting to note which parts of the political spectrum are typically deemed in need of some physical censorship by activist students and educators. I’ve lost count of the reports in which the entire print runs of non-leftwing papers were either stolen or destroyed by leftwing faculty and students. I’ve yet to find comparable stories of conservatives, libertarians and classical liberals devoting their afternoons to vandalism and burglary and making sure no-one gets to hear contrary points of view in a campus newspaper.

The final straw was when I was told that UNIT was not a real thing, and instead of fighting Daleks and Cybermen we mainly fought townies who had acquired temporary super strength thanks to vodka and Red Bull.
O_o
Bill Clinton admitted yesterday that he checked to see if there were an alien kept captive deep below Area 51 and there wasn’t, and if there were alien encounters being kept secret by the gubmint he’d say so.
o_O
This day just keeps getting worse and worse.

Did anybody else notice that the Campus Reform chick was quite cute, but the feminists were all a bunch of swamp-donkeys. I think this the real reason she wasn’t wanted…

David,
That’s because the Left is as a whole in thrall to the cult of “I’m as good as you!” The primary and overriding objective for them is to make sure that nobody ever feels worse or less talented than somebody else. Such a position, of course, leads to various absurdities and illogicalities, and leftists at some level know this. As often happens when people try and suppress unpleasant information, they become extremely and irrationally angry when something comes along to remind them of their cognitive dissonance. Hence their hatred of conservatives — after all, if people can get along fine without cocooning themselves in leftist dogma and “safe spaces”, that calls their entire political and ethical structure into question, and they react much as any fundamentalist does when confronted with contradictory information. Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to be much more comfortable with the idea that some people are more intelligent, hard-working, fortunate, etc. than others, and so don’t have the motivation to try and keep reality at bay.
(Incidentally, I suppose that this is why students and [pseudo-]intellectuals are generally more likely to be left-wing: if you were near the top of the class, you’re not really used to being wrong or to coming behind other people, so the idea that everybody more successful than you is either undeservedly fortunate or cheating somehow has a certain emotional pull to it. If you try running or working in a business, on the other hand, you have to get used to telling people when they aren’t doing very well — if you don’t you’ll go bankrupt — so there’s less reason to fall into the cult of equal esteem.)

Incidentally, Dicentra, your bringing up of the topic of same-sex marriage debates reminded me of a conversation I had elsewhere on the net a few weeks back, which was notable for the sheer brazenness of the bad faith displayed. It was almost literally like:
OTHER PERSON: This proposed Arizona law is disgusting! It’s a complete violation of people’s human rights!
ME: Erm, freedom of religion is a human right as well.
OP: Oh, so I suppose you think a white supremacist baker should have the right to refuse service to black people too.
ME: I reject that analogy, because “black people” is a class of people, whereas “a same-sex wedding” is a particular event. Refusing to serve black people would be more like refusing to serve gay people tout court, even when they’re just buying a loaf of bread or something that has nothing to do with homosexuality. Refusing to serve at a same-sex wedding is more like, say, refusing to serve at a fundraiser for a political party you disagree with.
OP: Wait, did you just claim that people choose to be gay?!
ME: …Erm, no. What on earth gave you that idea?
OP: I’m shocked by your bigoted ideas, Mr. X. Not only do you insinuate that people choose to be gay, but you think that people should have the right to refuse service to LGBTQ* people!
ME: I’ve already said that I think neither of those things.
OP: Don’t try and slip out of it, we all know that only bigots could support giving people the right to discriminate. Really, you bigots are all the same. Sometimes it’s persecuting homosexuals, sometimes it’s people like Hitler persecuting the Jews.
ME: Now you’re just being silly.
OP: Pfft, you call that a rebuttal? Clearly I’ve struck a nerve, or you wouldn’t be so lost for a decent response! Your entire argument here has been disgusting, Mr. X. You’ve never even bothered to deny the worrying human rights implications of this law, but you’ve stuck to your guns and repeatedly claimed that people should have the right to refuse service to gay people simply because they’re gay. Well, I’m glad you’ve made your views known on such a public forum, X, since now we all know what sort of person you really are!
Of course, being misrepresented by leftists is nothing new, but this example really stuck out for me, both because of the brazenness of my interlocutor (I mean, telling somebody that they’ve repeatedly argued for X, when anybody can see that they’ve actually repeatedly rejected X higher up on the very same thread, must take an enormous amount of cheek) and because nobody called him out on it. Not one. And really, when we’ve got to a stage where you can blatantly and obviously misrepresent your opponent without anybody caring, and where any compromise is seen as morally equivalent to appeasing the Nazis, any chance of discussion or reaching an acceptable modus vivendi is impossible, since both these things require a certain modicum of mutual respect which is clearly lacking in one of the parties. I only wish that more people had realised this sooner, before leftist idiocy became quite so pervasive, because I fear now that it’s too late to stop them taking over.

Just finished a colloquium with @crimethink3r (yes, that’s the handle) and others about whether they’d like the tables turned on them, whether it would be OK to pressure them to resign because they had an unpopular opinion.
They said yes, believing that if popular opinion turned against them it would be because popular opinion was promoting racism and sexism and h8red, and they’d be honored to be in that position.
Because popular opinion won’t go after you for something you think is perfectly acceptable or innocuous today, right? What if witchhunts start up against Obama voters, because 1000s die on account of Obamacare or his monetary policy or whatever?
Crickets.
They’re sure that opposition to SSM is solely and wholly motivated by hatred of gays and that’s all it could ever be. And so if they never hate anyone, they either won’t get targeted unfairly or if they are, it’s heroic.
Oy. So I uninstalled Firefox and there went all my bookmarks and cookies and such. Not because Firefox is OK with SSM but because they folded to political pressure. I don’t care that a company donates to causes I disagree with, but I do care when they let the screamers get to them.
*sigh*

Apparently, Ms Park bought her funhouse mirror politics wholesale, just like thousands of her peers.
It’s a sweet gig: holiness without repentance, righteousness without self-reflection, Moral Authority without having morals.
It won’t stop until there’s a price to be paid for that kind of pretension, but I can’t see what that would be. By the time ridicule comes into style, she and her ilk will have sidled off to the Next Big Thing and they’ll all die without knowing what fools they’d been.
Which, from their perspective, there’s no downside to that.

Uh, late.
I stayed at work on the computer because Someone Was Wrong On The Internet and duty called.
Now I’m just too tired to haul my carcass into bed so I’m refreshing all my sites until there’s nothing to respond to.

You do realise, though, that it’s a path to madness?
Path?
Dewd, I arrived at that destination LONG ago.
I keep myself sane by distinguishing between mint, two kinds of aqua (bonus philology joke), teal, aquamarine, emerald, and leaf green.
Though come to think of it, if making such fine distinctions constitutes “keeping myself sane,” a medication adjustment might be in order.

Did anybody else notice that the Campus Reform chick was quite cute, but the feminists were all a bunch of swamp-donkeys.
Got that ladies? If you are feminist Mr Newman might not fancy you. Are you willing to take the risk?

Hi Minnow
That feminists tend to look like extras from Star Wars or Lord of the Rings does seem to be a real thing though. Obviously there are exceptions but it’s a pretty reliable rule of thumb.
Just like a lot of male My Little Pony fans are fedora-wearing neckbeards with Aspergers. Sure, not all of them – some of them are just perverts – but the stereotype exists for a reason.
I find stereotypes are a handy time saver. It’s a well known fact that Orientals are inscrutable and know karate, some of those kids are fast as lightning. The older ones are wise and mysterious and reluctantly sell small furry creatures that you should never feed after midnight.
Everybody knows French babies are born with tails, that’s just common sense.
And it’s true that black people love Murder, She Wrote. The long-running story of geriatric word-slinger Jessica Fletcher and her uncanny proximity to grisly homicides inspired black artists as diverse as Bootsy Collins and Scary Spice from the Spice Girls. Shaggy ft. Rik Rok’s “It Wasn’t Me” was a tribute to the standard excuse trotted out by Angela Lansbury’s antagonists on the show. Unfortunately, Shaggy suffered a debilitating stroke before recording that single, so his vocals are somewhat muffled and not everybody gets the Murder She Wrote references on casual listening.
And it’s not racist to say this, my wife is 1/64 Cherokee and I once bought a Craig David CD. It was rubbish, but that’s not my fault, I don’t write his songs.
So recognising that most feminists look like they’d probably send a bounty hunter named Greedo after you – if only they could tear themselves away from eating for long enough – isn’t a hateful hatethought, it’s just science. And it explains why those poor rejects from Jim Henson’s Creature Workshop are so bitter.

Hi Minnow
They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but they are wrong. Jokes about jobbies are the lowest form of wit!
Believe me, the feminists know they can’t have a bit of Steve, and it drives them WILD.
I face the same discrimination Robin Thicke does – the wildebeests just can’t handle knowing there are sexy dads out there who only go for lovely, feminine women who know how to do my tie.
And it’s not as if I don’t do my bit to advance the cause of women. I bought my wife a treadmill for Christmas.
Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.

Steve, I think it is a terrible tragedy for feminism that you find so few feminists pleasing to the eye.
One rejection is a tragedy; a million rejections is a feminist movement.

Minnow – “I suppose that it is just possible that some women don’t want male attention but in that case, what on earth do they want? What’s left for them?”
Cats. Lots of cats.

“I think the fems come over rather well in that clip.”
If appearing to be paranoid, intolerant and terrified of even speaking to someone who doesn’t share you beliefs is ‘coming over well’, then yes, they did. All they were asked was to say what Feminism means and they couldn’t: that’s because nobody can. It means whatever they want it to mean at any time, and the meaning can be changed according to circumstances or the audience – like so much leftist ideology.

Katherine Timpf was interviewed (on Fox – unclean!) and she said it wasn’t just they were afraid of being asked simple questions. Nobody even challenged her about what she thought feminism means. They weren’t curious. To them, she was just “conservative” and couldn’t have a view worth hearing or arguing with. Because they’re so open minded.

Minnow – I don’t know about that. Cats are wonderful companions.
My cat, Pussy Galore, was an RSPCA rescue case who was horribly mistreated by her former owner, but is the sweetest, funniest little fluffy person I’ve ever met.
Last Halloween we wore matching pirate costumes, although she didn’t like the eyepatch.
Just last night I was minding the baby and kitty came through her catflap dragging her fishing rod with her teeth. She dropped it at my feet and said “Miaow! Miaow! Miaow!”, which is cat talk for “play with me!”. I usually only feel the standard emotions – annoyance, hunger, tiredness – but I giggled with glee as we chased each other through the house and then watched Animal Planet together.
Kitties are angels made of fur. If the Hindus are right, in the next life I want to be a cat.

Easy for you to sat Steve, but you have not had and lost the lustful looks of a Tim Newman. After that it is hard to find joy even in the frolicks of god’s cutest creations.

But Christ it is a small compensation when you have foregone the leers of a Tim Newman.
Not just me though. Hence the cats.

I mean, here is the formula for getting laid, or not:
1) Nice person / attractive = laid
2) Nice person / unattractive = laid
3) Unpleasant person / unattractive = laid
4) Unpleasant person / unattractive = not laid
So I’m not sure whether feminists don’t get laid because they are (usually) unpleasant and (usually) unattractive; or they are unpleasant and unattractive and hence not getting laid and end up as feminists in the same way that useless people in an office end up in HR.

3) Unpleasant person / unattractive = laid
4) Unpleasant person / unattractive = not laid
Yes, that about covers it.

Tim Newman – “If it’s sex we’e talking about, I’m not sure how things could get any bleaker for women who, lacking a warm personality and good looks, choose to shun men at an age where even for ordinary women this is often the only time they’ll be getting any.”
Bum cancer.

WTP – “Yet what is irony but God being sarcastic?”
10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife.

WTP – Beers sounds great! But I’ve been on the wagon for a while.
I used to have a glorious career as a high functioning alcoholic before my wife told me she was pregnant. It was quite a surprise but I always knew I didn’t want to be like my Dad so after a celebratory half bottle of 21 year old single malt I decided it was time to retire my Oliver Reed hat and store it in my discarded hat drawer along with my deerstalker and the one with fake plastic bird poo that says “DAMN SEAGULLS”.
The first couple of weeks of sobriety were terrible, like being locked in a vegan feminist convention with guest appearances by a swarm of africanised killer bees. I was an advanced enough drinker that I hadn’t suffered a hangover in years so naturally they all came along at once like the ghosts of drunken revels past. And they were not happy, funtimes ghosts who just wanted to see Whoopi Goldberg feel up the wife like Patrick Swayze in ‘Ghost’.
I was bundled up in my pyjamas taking cold and flu remedies for the aches and pains and watching a Harry Potter marathon. Getting sober made me emotional like a teenage girl invited on to the stage and given a pony during a One Direction concert and I lost it and blubbed when poor little Draco’s schemes were foiled by those upstart mudbloods.
I tried Alcoholics Anonymous for a while but they were a bit cliquey and did not appreciate my attempts at lightening the mood by suggesting we do shots. They’ve heard that one before apparently. Also the 12 steps thing was a problem – I have trouble remembering 10 commandments (something about honouring your neighbour’s oxen?) so 12 is at least two steps too many. And they want you to read a big book. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any zombies or spaceships in it, so I didn’t.
In the end I decided that hanging around a bunch of alcoholics was probably going to drive me back to drink so I settled on a 1 step plan of my own devising – don’t drink.
It’s worked out well so far but, by God, being sober is tedious.

Suey Park continues to astonish with the depth of thought only a 23yr-old activist could muster:

A lot of white America and so-called liberal people of color, along with conservatives, ask, “Do I understand context?” And that’s part of wanting to completely humanize the oppressor. To see the white man as always reasonable, always pure, always deliberate, always complex and always innocent. And to see the woman of color as literal. Both my intent behind the [#CancelColbert] hashtag and in my [unintelligible] distance, is always about forcing an apology on me for not understanding their context when, in reality, they misunderstood us when they made us a punch line again. So it’s always this logic of how can we understand whiteness better, and that’s never been my politics. I’ve always been about occupying the margins and strengthening the margins and what that means is that, for a long time, whiteness has also occupied the margins. Like, people of color get in circles with no white people in the room and we see that whiteness still operates. So I think it’s kind of a shock for America that whiteness has dominant society already, it also seeps into the margins. What happens the one time when the margins seep into the whiteness and we encroach on their space? It’s like the sky is falling.

It always sounds like she’s going to make a coherent point but then the non-sequitur festival kicks in. I heard lectures like that in college. Lecture-like lectures, they were.
Oh, here’s a phrase that makes some sense: “no one is ready to flip the switch to make the white person the subject of the archetype.” Meaning that there are no Typical White People in American comedy the way there is a Typical Asian, Typical Latino, etc.
Fair enough. Now let’s go to China, Japan, Korea and look at their comedy. Do they use “typical Americans” while Asians play the everyman roles? Why yes, I believe they do. Do “typical Americans” figure in Latino comedy, African jokes? Yup and yup. Or if they don’t, they should.
And yet

I don’t play by appeasement politics, it is not about getting my oppressors to humanize me. And in that sense I reject the respectability politics, I reject being tone-policed, I think we need to do away with this idea that these structures are … that the prisons can undergo reform and somehow do less violence as a structure. But any example like that.… I don’t want any ally who is going to use my emotional labor with no guarantee of aiding my liberation.

Yeah. Everyone who lives in America is one of the most privileged people in human history, even after factoring in “microaggressions,” so instead of helping the less-fortunate get to our level of prosperity and liberty, let’s fret over typology in our entertainment, on account of it being tantamount to prison violence.
Well done. World’s a MUCH better place now that you’re here.

. . . . kitty came through her catflap dragging her fishing rod with her teeth. She dropped it at my feet and said “Miaow! Miaow! Miaow!”, which is cat talk for “play with me!”.
Well, sometimes.
(Both the box with the fleece and under the dresser are totally unsuitable locations for my kittens, and they must go to a new location I like that they cannot escape from!!!): “Meau!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEStsLJZhzo

Along the same lines, here is what happened when a Dr. Janice Fiamengo was invited to talk on “Rape Culture” at the University of Ottawa.
Note the jeering, blowing of horns and shouting at various stages, ie: whenever Dr Fiamengo or the chap introducing her try to say anything. Incredibly childish behaviour – to such an extent that it is in itself is a bit depressing, quite apart from the controlling behaviour
The talk had to be called off.

Of what use is the campus security? Skipped ahead to around the 27 minute mark and it’s embarrassing how wimpy the appeal was to pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease let the lady speak. Why bother calling security in the first place if they have no authority to remove disruptive individuals from the room? It made the situation worse by undermining even any implied legitimacy of the planned presentation.
Found this presentation by Dr. Fiamengo amusing however
http://doctoronlinechat.com/dr-janice-fiamengo-at-u-of-t-whats-wrong-with-womens-studies-57/

Henry, Geoff & WTP,
Same thing for disrupted lectures and intimidation.
I suppose you have to bear in mind that this kind of behaviour is regarded as a credential by many students on the left, as something to be proud of, as practically self-validating. As something that elevates them within their own immediate peer group. They’re achieving their own in-group status, their imagined radical chic, by imposing on others – people about whom they simply don’t care or for whom they show outright contempt. The disruption, repairs and clearing up are always at someone else’s expense. One might call it parasitic. And the scope for, and pretext for, intimidation, thuggery and exerting power over others is hardly coincidental.
To list every recent and vivid example of this phenomenon would take forever, but a couple should illustrate the mindset. In March 2009, the writer Don Feder tried to engage students at the University of Massachusetts in a discussion of free speech versus so-called “hate speech.” Within 20 seconds, Feder had been shouted down, called a racist and assailed with epithets about his daughter. Despite his repeated calls for civility, Feder wasn’t allowed to speak for longer than three minutes without deafening interruption or further personal abuse – from people who want to show the world just how much they care.
The following month at UNC Chapel Hill, retired congressman Tom Tancredo tried to begin a discussion on the subject of illegal immigration. Students refused to let him speak for more than a few seconds. Collective hissing gave way to banging on the walls and windows, and chants of “No hate speech!” The university’s geography professor Altha Cravey – whose interests include “critical thinking,” “gender, race and class,” and “progressive social change” – saw fit to add her own voice to the chanting, thus signalling her approval of the students’ escalating vehemence.
Suitably encouraged and determined to express their disapproval of what might at some point be said, protesting students began to physically harass Tancredo, holding a banner up against his face, preventing him from speaking at all, while others chanted, “Yes, racists, we will fight, we know where you sleep at night!” (The grounds for calling Tancredo racist were not made clear, though the term was chanted continually, as if repeating the accusation were morally sufficient. One student filmed the growing disruption with a phone camera, only to be obstructed by an indignant young woman who warned him, “You don’t take pictures of racists.”)
Tancredo tried to calm the situation by offering to address the protestors’ complaints at the end of his lecture and asking them to respect other students who’d come to listen and debate. At which point protestors shattered a window, spraying shards of glass into the classroom and onto two nearby students. Fearing further escalation, campus police escorted Tancredo from the room, then, hastily, from campus. He was in effect chased away, like someone who’d blundered into a street gang’s territory.
Interviewed by the Raleigh News and Observer, graduate student Tyler Oakley, the protest organiser, said he was pleased with the disruption and its outcome: “He was not able to practice his hate speech.” This was immediately followed by a defence of the protestors’ censorious thuggery: “You have to respect the right of people to assemble and collectively speak.” You see, the “collective speech” of dogmatic and arrogant leftists, our would-be overlords, trumps that of anyone else.
The historical and psychological precedents for such behaviour somehow escaped our fearless warriors for “social justice.” Like so much else, these details were obscured by a cloud of self-congratulation. And this isn’t anomalous; it’s the standard pattern.

Dicentra – there’s more than one turquoise?
Hal – only French cats say ‘Meau’.

Dicentra – there’s more than one turquoise?
I’m a girl person. We recognize at LEAST two dozen shades ‘twixt green and blue. I just didn’t want to add too many boards because it makes the drop-down menu unwieldy.