He’s a Fan of Laurie Penny, You Know
You could argue that New York City after the Occupy movement experienced a positive change in social atmosphere, a democratisation of artistic space, and a revival of its radical mojo.
So says Paul Mason, a fifty-something former Trotskyite and Workers’ Power enthusiast, who, despite his advancing years, is still aroused by mob thuggery and driven to high drama by the state of Twitter. Mr Mason is imagining his ideal city, his own urban utopia:
I will describe the city I would like to live in. First, it is near the sea, or another body of water warm enough to swim in. Second, it has entire neighbourhoods designed around hipster economics. Though currently maligned, hipsters are crucial signifiers of a successful city economy. Their presence shows it is possible to live on your wits even as neoliberalism stagnates. Such neighbourhoods… are home both to hipsters and ethnically diverse poor communities, who refrain from fighting each other.
I suspect a classic sentence may be lurking in there somewhere.
The bold envisioning continues,
It has to have theatres. Not just big ones.
And, naturally,
political unrest.
It being a “measure of aspiration,” something for our Guardianista to write about, gushingly, and practically fellate. And who wouldn’t want their neighbourhood enlivened by rioting and the odd burning car?
And also,
bicycle lanes and trams.
You see, “bike supremacy” is a thing all cities need.
Equally important to trams and bike supremacy is a heavily regulated taxi system, as efficient as Uber but under the control of old-style London working-class cabbies, who’ve been persuaded to give women and ethnic minorities equal access to the trade.
This heavily regulated taxi system, in which class and gender consciousness would be ascendant, would allow people to explore a “massive ecosystem of gay, lesbian, transgender, BDSM and plain old sleazy heterosexual hangouts.” And any slums, should they exist, would be “self-policing and non-chaotic.” As slums so often are.
Mr Mason’s urban utopia has other conditions too:
It must be ethnically mixed and tolerant and hospitable to women.
Sadly, our visionary thinker doesn’t linger on how such “mixing” would be enforced and made tolerant, or on any possible tensions between ethnic vivaciousness and the embrace of feminism. If the above criteria are somewhat boggling, our dreamer of sweet dreams provides a helpful thumbnail of his metropolitan paradise:
If you could cut and paste everything east of Bondi Junction on to London’s Soho and Barcelona’s Raval, giving the whole city a feminist government recruited in Scandinavia, you might come close.
When not imagining how millions of other people should live – and when not hoping to “overthrow capitalism” with communist computer games about collective farming – Mr Mason is the economics editor of Channel 4 News.
This guy needs to discover those video games where you get to play City Planner and/or God.
That or just stop being a complete fucking tool.
How would he write that drivel without passive voice?
Munich is impressive, but it’s relentlessly bourgeois…
Even its gay people are yuppies.
How dare those people live their lives in a way I don’t like! And don’t those gay people know they’re supposed to live much differently from the straight people?
What a bunch of vile collectivist bigotry.
Regarding Laurie and her journalistic standards, this may amuse.
How very egalitarian of her.
How very egalitarian of her.
Haha. So basically, “Know your place and don’t talk back”.
So basically, “Know your place and don’t talk back”.
Pretty much. And in that respect she’s behaving like many other self-described “radical” egalitarians. Given who she is, and who her peers are, it’s hardly a surprise; but it is interesting how someone who says she wants a “revolution” to “bring the whole thing crashing down” is so eager to use the credentials and social status she claims to despise whenever it suits her vanity. Or whenever she’s losing an argument.
Haha. So basically, “Know your place and don’t talk back”.
The ouroboros takes another suffocating bite.
How very egalitarian of her.
Now she’s demanding apologies from people who said (politely) she sounded a bit full of herself. 🙂
https://twitter.com/PennyRed/status/505336253534203904
Now she’s demanding apologies from people who said (politely) she sounded a bit full of herself.
Oh dear. It’s funny how her blunders are so often followed by a cascade of indignation and hole-digging. Laurie seems to regard her vanities as political, and therefore something to take pride in. And so if you snigger at her conceit and incoherence, this is waved aside as some nefarious attempt to silence female journalists or women in general. It’s practically megalomaniacal.
“Adam. I am a journalism fellow at Harvard. Please do not lecture me on the appeal to authority fallacy. I meant humility. No wait – press ethics.”
It’s a strange thing to watch unfold. However polite her male critics are, and whatever the issue of disagreement is, they can – and will – be construed as “mansplaining” and promptly dismissed. And if other people, including women she claims to admire, point out how disingenuous she’s being, this leads to further indignation, claims of harassment and being “punished,” demands that they apologise and, often, fits of depression. Hers is a head you really wouldn’t want to be trapped inside.
http://www.worldoftropico.com/en/
Paul Mason Island?
Paul Mason Island?
Does it have enough political unrest, though? That being the first thing you hope for when looking for somewhere new to live. Everyone wants a neighbourhood enlivened by rioting.
The piece Laurie is commenting on* is called “Video Games, Misogyny, And Terrorism: A Guide To Assholes”
I made my usual observation that you can’t accurately call it “misogyny” when one man says something nasty about – or does something nasty to – one woman. Furthermore the casual chucking about of the “m” word is part of the religion of the present-day feminist movement: “you must believe that there is misogyny all around”
I often say this online but I may as well be pissing into the wind for all the thinking I’ve caused inside anyone’s heads. Responses here included a cascade of F-words, denunciations of my idiocy, 3 or 4 separate definitions of ‘misogyny’, some of them circular, most of them constructed after the event to suit the poster’s initial gut prejudice, the usual hilarious non-sequiturs.
Anyway, the whole exchange was drowned in the nearly 10,000 comments. 10,000. Epic.
* predictably “it’s all about the misogyny, there are no other issues to see here”
Anyway, the whole exchange was drowned in the nearly 10,000 comments. 10,000. Epic.
Minnow showed up?
Also, I like Laurie’s assertion that she was lectured endlessly about press ethics. That is simply a lie, as anyone reading the exchange can see.
That is simply a lie, as anyone reading the exchange can see.
*shocked face*
But it’s hard to self-identify as “a gamer” when there’s also a large swathe of that community apparently committed to presenting us all as a bunch of hateful sociopaths. It’s like being a moderate Muslim in the middle of the continuing ISIS takeover and oppression of Iraq. A few weeks ago, I’d have said that was an extreme analogy, but given the events of the past week, it’s become clear that it’s actually really fucking appropriate.
No it is not. Any person who honestly believes this is a dick and has a poor grasp on reality.
For example I don’t remember the last time I attended a mass execution at the latest gamer expo, chanting “OWNED BITCH” as I fired my AK into the naked, prone body of another human being, lined up like cattle.
For god’s sake, I just want to punch this guy right in his fat mouth.
Want to know what’s worse? My wife posts on facebook regularly. She speaks farsi, and often receives threats from afghans and other middle-east denziens of the area to tune of “I hope ISIS rape you and kill you”. The difference is, if we were to shift back to Iran, this threat would have some sort of credibility as Iran borders a conflict area. The posters don’t know she isn’t in Iran. That’s REAL fear and intimidation. Not the back and forth on youtube and twitter these ‘gamer’ pukes think is important.
The piece Laurie is commenting on* is called “Video Games, Misogyny, And Terrorism: A Guide To Assholes”
Among Gamers, Adult Women Vastly Outnumber Teenage Boys
Also, I like Laurie’s assertion that she was lectured endlessly about press ethics
Siiiigggghhh. I’ve told y’all a hundred million times, never exaggerate!!!!
Here. Have a lovely video of 100,000 bricks dancing like water. It’s even got really nice music, without a single glottal stop.
I await the new COD with coin-collecting-farming-features and candy crush intermission.
This whole affair with ‘girls are gamers too’ has become quite disingenuous. I’ve watched a grown woman sink hours and hours in farmville and candy crush style games, while neglecting her children in the process. The father of the household did the same but played games like skyrim, fallout and magic the gathering. Which of those types of games are more likely to go under the social justice microscope?
“But it’s hard to self-identify as “a gamer” when there’s also a large swathe of that community apparently committed to presenting us all as a bunch of hateful sociopaths.”
It’s not “a large swathe of that community”. The people “presenting [gamers] as a bunch of hateful sociopaths” are a small cadre of entryist feminists, picking on a group of approval-seeking men.
Here’s how you do it. You find an activity that’s male-dominated because it’s historically been seen as nerdy and unfashionable and so hasn’t attracted many women. Atheism. Science fiction. Gaming. Comics. The men involved will have grown up with feminism and will feel that male-dominated groups are bad, so will hold endless convention panels on “women in x” and fret about what they can do to encourage more women to get involved.
You present yourself as the voice of women, tell them, and the world at large, that they’re all creepy misogynist bastards who drive women away with their constant misogyny and sexual harassment. One or two examples of bad male behaviour is sufficient to tar an entire community with the same brush.
The men involved will compete to self-flagellate, denounce each other and de-sexualise themselves in the hope of appeasing you. It will, of course, never work, because bullies don’t let up while their bullying is still working, and the most effective way to bully an approval seeker is to keep dangling your approval just out of reach.
Men in nerd culture need to realise the following things. One, feminists do not represent women, and doing what they want will not result in a greater appeal to women – quite the opposite in fact. Two, approval-seeking attracts abusers, so don’t be an approval-seeker. Three, it’s all right for an activity to be male-dominated. All sorts of activities, from choirs to book groups to soap operas to celebrity gossip to Fifty Shades of friggin’ Grey, are female-dominated and nobody seems to regard that as a problem or try and paint the women involved as man-haters who drive men away with their sheer, cackling, moustache-twirling evil. People like what they like, there’s no sense arguing with reality.
Three, it’s all right for an activity to be male-dominated.
Heresy!
All sorts of activities, from choirs to book groups to soap operas to celebrity gossip to Fifty Shades of friggin’ Grey, are female-dominated and nobody seems to regard that as a problem…
Female-dominated arenas are deemed “safe spaces” and are supposed to remain testosterone-free. At least according to the conventional feminist-approved media narrative.
when not hoping to “overthrow capitalism” with communist computer games about collective farming – Mr Mason is the economics editor of Channel 4 News.
Bravo sir.