Elsewhere (184)
Janice Fiamengo continues her series on feminism and its fictions, this time on women in the military:
Why are women so poorly represented on the front lines? Because most women can’t do the job, don’t want to do the job, and in cases where they can do it, can’t do it as well as men… A recent study has demonstrated a big disparity in women’s and men’s battlefield ability. The US Marine Corps examined over a year the impact of female integration on combat readiness and found conclusively that women cannot match male performance. Male units were faster, more effective and able to evacuate casualties in less time. Overall, the study concluded, all-male squads performed better than mixed groups in 69% of the tasks evaluated. Women performed notably less well in their use of every individual weapons system, and in addition women had higher injury rates than men. So in terms of women’s own well-being as well as the overall effectiveness of the fighting force, its ability to kill enemies and save wounded comrades, the study showed that the presence of women in combat units has a negative impact.
See also the last item here, on “progressive” priorities and attracting female fire-fighters by dramatically lowering standards of competence.
And Roger Kimball on the Idiot Weeping Fever™ currently sweeping academia:
[The protesting student] had put up about ten signs before a security guard asked him to leave. Nothing doing. The guard asked again. Nada. So he grabbed the student and dragged him, kicking and screaming, from the room. What was he screaming? The chief burden of his plaint revolved around that Indian village. Greg Lukianoff had said that the response to Erika Christakis’s email was so violent that you would have thought someone had destroyed an Indian Village. He didn’t advocate destroying an Indian Village. No villages of any sort were despoiled in the conduct of his remarks. He merely suggested that the response to an email treating students as responsible adults (first mistake!) was wildly disproportionate.
That bit of hermeneutical reasoning was beyond the distraught, poster-wielding student. And not only him. Soon there was a crowd of twenty students demanding to get into the attendance-by-reservation only event. Then there were fifty or more. Soon they were chanting loudly outside the hall. “Genocide is not a joke” was one of the little ditties with which they entertained us. By the time the last session began, word came that they intended to bar the exits. More security was marshalled and when the proceedings came to an end the speakers and the audience were escorted out of the room. A cordon of enraged students holding signs and yelling “Genocide is not a joke” greeted us. Another fifty or so lined the sidewalk outside.
Kimball refers to the fevered protestors as “snowflakes,” which sounds much too innocuous and misleading. Given the students’ dogmatism, hair-trigger intolerance and eagerness to shut down and punish any speech with which they disagree, the term Mao-lings seems more apt.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.
Idiot Weeping Fever™
I’m stealing that one. 🙂
Social justice isn’t just an ideology; it’s a religion, and quite a vicious one. Heretics and apostates must be made to suffer. Nonbelievers must pay homage and acknowledge the superiority of social justice.
If you point out how they don’t make sense, that’s harassment and justifies them trying to ruin you by any means necessary. If you fight back, you’ve just proved how evil you are.
Listen and believe, or face the consequences.
Idiot Weeping Fever™
I’m also stealing that. But as I’ve just hit your tip jar is it *really* stealing?
Student feminist feels too ‘unsafe’ to handle interview about ‘safe spaces’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OKTKaSh0pY
Student feminist feels too ‘unsafe’ to handle interview about ‘safe spaces’.
Oh dear. Ms Collins’ performance as the media officer of the University of Bristol’s Feminist Society leaves something to be desired. If she walks out of even such a soft and civil interview, one cleared and vetted weeks in advance, how does she plan to convince anyone else that she and her colleagues are right about anything?
Entirely unrelated:
Mao-lings indeed, but I’m leaning toward “Pol Potties” in the Yale case.
I’ve often wondered how anyone could “progress” from holding certain ideological beliefs to actually carrying out the cold-blooded mass murder needed to impose them, and that Yale video shows at least one lunatic who is already well along the path from point A to point B.
Had that screaming woman headed the local tribunal—and she’s the type who aspires to that kind of power—does anyone doubt she would’ve happily signed the execution order right then and there? How dare that administrator not submit to the revolution!
Student feminist feels too ‘unsafe’ to handle interview about ‘safe spaces’.
Incidentally, it’s perhaps worth noting that I think Milo’s position on transgenderism, at least as quoted above, is much too glib. As I understand it, transgenderism is a developmental anomaly that’s often accompanied by variations in neuroreceptor function and other brain structure. These anomalies often give rise to psychological issues, but to think of the phenomenon as a purely psychological one doesn’t seem adequate. It seems, quite often, to have a physical cause.
Though how one might discuss this at Bristol University isn’t clear.
“Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tartar” is and old saying. Updated version: Scratch a lefty and you’ll find a Robespierre MORE than eager to emerge given HALF a chance… Pol Pot and his wannabe clones are EASY to explain..
Heathens*do you not see? Those that oppose social justice *deserve* to be cast down, so that decency and humanity make no objection to social justice using any means to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for infinite punishment of their problematic behavior Social justice says of the tree that brings forth such transgressed behavior “Cut it dowm. Why suffer it to have a platform.”
Stop coddling these idiots. Yale costs what, 65K per annum, minimum? So feel free to ladle out some discipline – suspend Ms. potty mouth for one thing. One week, banned from campus. Notify Mom and Dad.
Continued idiocy should lead to expulsion, without a refund.
The intersection of sport and Kimball
Note, the “systemic problem” consists of three (3) incidents at a university with over 35,000 students, one of which incidents (the swastika) has ambiguous racialist implications. Nonetheless, a virgin–in this case, the university president–must be sacrificed in the volcano. It’s unclear what the university president is supposed to do to police the deportment of 35,000 people, assuming it was in fact other students who were responsible.
One week, banned from campus. Notify Mom and Dad.
When the shrieking young woman shook off her bag to fling her arms about, I did wonder if she was planning to hit the poor sap. Any half-competent parent should know that if you indulge such tantrums, indeed encourage and reward them, you’ll get more of the same, only worse, and more often. But apparently this rudimentary insight escapes many faculty and administrators.
[ Added: ]
For some reason, this footage sprang to mind. Something about the dynamic.
The list of jobs dont want is extensive. (The list is from the US Dept of Labor of those jobs 75% or more male.)
Who is going to fight the battle against the cis-jimmied patriarchoactive hugemeny* that is ruling small engine mechanics (more than 99.5% male)?
* It has been awhile since my last reeducation session, so some of my terminology may not be exact.
—-
Back in the last fin de siècle day, I commanded a Navy primary flying training squadron. During that time, I was finally able to fly with women pilots (my previous flying had been in tactical aviation, which hadn’t been open to women).
Women student pilots had about the same attrition rate as their male counterparts. However, they significantly under represented in the top half of their classes: their scores lagged considerably in formation and aerobatics.
Why? Because, as a group, and almost without exception were significantly more risk averse than the men.
Almost — and shield your eyes if dissonant information makes you want to cuddle 100 kittens — as if evolution hadn’t stopped at the neckline.
They don’t want, or can’t do, is extensive …
(Whingeing alert: Preview, which is where most of my glaring mistakes become really obvious, wasn’t working for me.)
On the subject of being offended, or pretending to be offended, this seems somewhat relevant.
It’s unclear what the university president is supposed to do to police the deportment of 35,000 people, assuming it was in fact other students who were responsible.
Given that most, if not all, of the “striking” players who will not participate in football activities are on “scholarships” the president should announce that they cannot participate in classes, dorms, student recreational activities, or mess halls until they cough up the same tuition as real students.
the study showed that the presence of women in combat units has a negative impact.
And that lowered standards and political correctness will get men and women killed.
David Hirsh on the Corbyn Left…
“The contemporary version of ‘false consciousness’ is still more presumptuous than the Marxist one. Now, the metropolitan intellectuals award themselves the role of speaking for the oppressed. They have given up hope that the oppressed will become conscious and embrace the truth as elucidated by the metropolitan intellectuals. They think that because the oppressed are so excluded from the power discourses of rationality, they are only able to feel; thinking is too much to ask for from the oppressed. Excluded from reason, they are left with only passion. The job of the intellectuals is to interpret the passion of the oppressed into the language of reason. For example, some Palestinians may embrace Jew-hatred; they may participate in suicide bombing; they may perpetrate random knife attacks on Jews. Their role, according to their western supporters, is not to be rational, to become conscious, and to develop universal socialist political forms; their role is to act through passion. The intellectuals co-opt the orientalist image of the passionate native and they interpret this passion into whatever language and ideas is convenient to them.”
http://fathomjournal.org/the-corbyn-left-the-politics-of-position-and-the-politics-of-reason/
* It has been awhile since my last reeducation session, so some of my terminology may not be exact.
Time for a booster shot. Bend over and say, “ahhh.”
Someone needs to write the book God and Fascists at Yale
Then there’s the musical tribute to safe spaces …
I do wonder if anyone at a University ever says to these truculent young people: “You are here to learn.”
But perhaps they don’t know how to teach, so the answer is obvious.
Stop coddling these idiots.
Alas, too late, Yale’s president caves to these morons, “We failed you…”
Yeah, that will make Yale regain its former glory, a bunch of punks who get weepy over Halloween costumes and e-mail helping hire and train faculty.
These people need to be in an institution, just not one of alleged higher learning.
It’s worth bearing in mind that academia’s Clown Quarter is the left’s fiefdom. It’s where leftist psychology is most concentrated, where it flourishes largely unopposed, and where it’s made normative and institutional. And so you could regard these absurd little Brownshirt wannabes as the end product, the ideal citizens, as conceived by our self-imagined betters.
It’s where leftist psychology is most concentrated, where it flourishes largely unopposed, and where it’s made normative and institutional.
Indeed, and you can imagine my surprise to find the president of Yale is a psychologist…
There is a danger, in highlighting the more absurd Guardian articles, that the more mundane, yet classically Guardian ones slip past unnoticed.
From the comments on an article on Christiano Ronaldo, and in response to a comment on Ronaldo’s debut match for Man Utd:
krissb1977 MysteryMachines 3d ago
I was sat in a working men’s club in Salford with my brothers watching it on a hooky satellite feed. You knew from the moment that he walked on to the pitch in that game that he had something special.
It is simply exquisite.
#japan http://www.newnownext.com/all-boys-school-in-japan-holds-annual-prettiest-girl-pageant/11/2015/
It is simply exquisite
Why do we even bother doing things when writing or talking about things does so much more to validate our feelz?
those trying to understand the (in)actions of university administrators might find this useful:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Invertebrate_Pathology
It is a matter of some puzzlement that without brains, spines, or guts a university president can maintain the outward shape of a human being. The interior scaffolding is surely a wonder.
Fnord: My belief is that there is no “interior scaffolding” so to speak — the apparent suit/tie look is actually a cleverly-adapted chitinous exoskeleton which supports and protects whatever the contents might in fact be…
It’s unclear what the university president is supposed to do to police the deportment of 35,000 people, assuming it was in fact other students who were responsible.
I would bet a hundred bucks that the now infamous poop swastika was done by a student activist who wanted to “raise awareness” of racism in society. As if we could be any more aware of it than we already are.
I will not take credit for the insight, but someone genuinely wedded to a particular viewpoint doesn’t often paint his chosen icon in excrement. Someone else’s sacred or important symbol, certainly, for the denigration effect — but not his own. So, yes, unless it was actually meant as a rather negative comment on National Socialism that missed its target audience, I suspect the heavy (and malodorous) hand of the self-righteous activist striving for effect.
One week, banned from campus. Notify Mom and Dad.
Note that the students gripped by Idiot Weeping Fever™ not only refuse to tolerate anything they deem offensive, however neurotically, including hypothetical Hallowe’en costumes; they also won’t tolerate administrators who don’t feel a need to be neurotic themselves. In fact, they demand that non-neurotic staff be scolded, punished, even fired.
The so-called protestors aren’t so much political as vindictive and unhinged. Perhaps they should be treated accordingly.
…. academia’s Clown Quarter is the left’s fiefdom. It’s where leftist psychology is most concentrated, where it flourishes largely unopposed, and where it’s made normative and institutional.
It does seem to be the case that the longer Clown Quarter’s ideas and pet projects are left almost completely unopposed, the more weird, wonderful – and of course useless – they become.
When their only natural predators are on the periphery in the form of budget cuts and exhortations to make their departments more attractive to
consumersstudents, it seems to have had the unexpected effect of driving them to evolve plumage of ever more absurd forms.I can think of few better examples of this than the 28 year-old Oxford University philosophy lecturer, William MacAskill and his ‘Effective Altruism’ project.
For anyone not yet familiar with MacAskill, he has proposed a plan to calculate mathematically the precise consequences of one act of charity over another.
The system he’s come up with – one that seems to inherit as much or more from Swift as it does from Stalin – has already brought about several comic reversals and paradoxes and it’s barely a few years old. As Amia Srinivasan in the London Review of Books explained recently:
MacAskill seems to think there is no moral calculation that can’t be made to fit on the back of his envelope; any uncertainty we might have about precise values or probabilities can be priced into the model.
The absurdity of this kind of Swiftian-Soviet bean-counting becomes obvious in the idea of the “x-risk” – an event with extremely low probability of ever occurring (such as an asteroid hitting the Earth) but whose results would be catastrophic to billions of people if not all life on the planet. Of this, Srinivasan says (my italics):
… the expected value of preventing an x-risk dwarfs the value of, say, curing cancer or preventing genocide. This is so even if the probability of being able to do anything about an x-risk is vanishingly small. Even if [the chance of a catastrophe happening] has only a 1 per cent chance of being correct, the expected value of reducing an x-risk by one billionth of one billionth of a percentage point (that’s 0.0000000000000000001 per cent) is still a hundred billion times greater than the value of saving the lives of a billion people living now. So it turns out to be better to try to prevent some hypothetical x-risk, even with an extremely remote chance of being able to do so, than to help actual living people.
If even reviewers in the LRB are showing more than a little skepticism to MacAskill’s project, it is slightly surprising that he has achieved wunderkind status at a university such as Oxford.
Or then again perhaps not …
Via Ace,
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/359986.php
I am more worried [about] the effect this generation of students will have on the real world.
When I started writing about this kind of thing, almost nine years ago, I used to get quite a few commenters telling me I was exaggerating, that there was nothing to worry about, that it wasn’t an issue worth noting or responding to. I don’t seem to get those kind of comments any more.
“the future of university debates.”
https://twitter.com/emma_c_williams/status/663420210146369536
A petition to sign:
https://www.change.org/p/dear-yale-if-your-students-cannot-handle-rigorous-debate-and-ideas-enroll-us-instead/c
When I started writing about this kind of thing, almost nine years ago, I used to get quite a few commenters telling me I was exaggerating
Similarly, some 20 years ago after being kept after a diversity training class that, while not quite as extreme as the Jane Eliott variety, was rather close, I mentioned to my doctor that I was worried that Political Correctness was getting out of hand. I got a similar reaction, that there was nothing to worry about, laugh it off, it’s not worthy of concern, perhaps I needed to see a shrink to keep things in perspective. Fast forward 15 years, post 9/11 and such, and during another conversation my doctor expresses concern that this Political Correctness was getting out of hand. I was tempted to suggest he was losing perspective and might need to see a psychiatrist. Of course he would have not had the recollection of the previous conversation as I had.
Milo Yiannopoulos on the rise of Mao-lings:
And I do like the term “strangely aggressive emotional fragility.”
On snowflakes, a minor sign of opposition to the left in academia, shared with the nagging fear I first saw the link hereabouts:
http://www.ijreview.com/2015/11/462474-prof-greets-incoming-class-of-precious-snowflakes-with-speech-crushing-every-one-of-their-pc-beliefs
In other surreal news… For reasons that aren’t clear, Salon and Daily Kos hack Chauncey DeVega described National Review columnist Kevin Williamson as black. When politely corrected by Williamson, who isn’t in fact black, DeVega doubled down and promptly claimed Williamson is therefore racist. Obviously.
Meanwhile, the president of Yale having caved to these clowns, the president of Missouri in a show of unmatched courage has followed his lead and announced his resignation.
Admin 0: Dickweeds 2
‘Why are women so poorly represented on the front lines? Because most women can’t do the job, don’t want to do the job, and in cases where they can do it, can’t do it as well as men’.
Join the infantry. Smash your joints to bits. Carry bergens, rifles and crew-served weapons. Go on exercises. Get wet. Get cold. Get tired. Deal with sleep deprivation. Eat shit rations. Dig a hole and shit in it.
The vast majority of men don’t want to do anything like this, so it’s not surprising you don’t get many women involved, let alone women fit enough to hack it.
DeVega doubled down and promptly claimed Williamson is therefore racist. Obviously.
As our host once said, Lefties project.
As our host once said, Lefties project.
From what I can make out, Mr DeVega, our self-styled “educator and cultural critic,” made his name by fixating on race, shoehorning it into every conceivable topic regardless of logic, and making wild assumptions based on a person’s pigmentation. He seems to have taken to heart the urging of idiots such as Caprice Hollins – “to see the world through a racial lens.” And behold the results. Dogma, incompetence, dishonesty.
In the ongoing saga in Missouri, students appear to have formed a safe space to keep press away which, to me anyway, seems rather to defeat the purpose of a protest.
“Free bleeding” as protest is no longer a parody.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/11/woman-free-bleeds-outside-parliament-in-protest.html
Incidentally, it’s perhaps worth noting that I think Milo’s position on transgenderism, at least as quoted above, is much too glib.
Not seeing the “as quoted above” quote.
to think of the phenomenon as a purely psychological one doesn’t seem adequate. It seems, quite often, to have a physical cause.
There are probably multiple causes with the same effect. This man went the full monty with transgenderism and later realized that he was suffering from a dissociative disorder resulting from sexual and emotional abuse.
One man’s story. YMMV, as usual.
You know in the core of your being that you loathe community. Such that you will enslave the Other. You evil commoditizers.
(Probably one of the more interesting deployments of the excluded middle I’ve seen. But I’m sure it’s just nuanced beyond my understanding.)
In the ongoing saga in Missouri, students appear to have formed a safe space to keep press away which, to me anyway, seems rather to defeat the purpose of a protest.
In parallel news;
Not seeing the “as quoted above” quote.
As “a psychiatric disorder” and quoted in the comically abbreviated “safe space” interview.
There are probably multiple causes with the same effect.
Yes, I think so.
Male body shaming He makes great sense to me.
Robert Tracinski on the rise of Idiot Weeping Fever™:
And for some people, power can only ever mean power over others.
Obviously, this isn’t about safety and comfort at all. It’s about raw power.
That.
That.
It helps to bear in mind that when faced with such behaviour, what you’re expected to believe may be, and often is, a near-total inversion of what’s actually going on. And so ostentatious claims of altruism and caring, and howls of victimhood, may in fact be little more than an exercise in vanity and a thrill in exerting power over others – intimidating people, preventing them from getting home, disrupting traffic, jeopardising someone’s job, smashing their belongings, etc. It’s usually irrational, often anti-rational, and impervious to shame. It’s where politics becomes a fig-leaf for something else entirely.
Of course it’s about power. The most striking thing in the video of the student abusing the master at Yale is when he tries to speak and she yells “BE QUIET!” This isn’t a terribly fragile flower who can’t cope with the slightest adversity. This is someone who expects to be obeyed and not spoken back to.
All the grandstanding about pain and safety is just emotional blackmail. They use their willingness to cause a scene, and most people’s desire to avoid one, plus the fear of being ostracised as a racist or a sexist, as leverage. These people are not pathetic babies. They are totalitarian bullies.
All the grandstanding about pain and safety is just emotional blackmail.
The passive-aggressive dynamic is very in right now. Feel my pain, do as I say. The ‘Occupy’ phenomenon was ripe with examples. As a political movement it was incoherent and absurd, and nakedly dishonest. But it did inadvertently show us who these people are.
It’s also worth noting that when you’re faced with psychodrama and passive-aggressive dishonesty, as in the examples linked above, there’s no point in attempting negotiation. You can’t negotiate with this kind of delusion and practised bad faith. The only practical response for those on the receiving end is to use whatever legal force is available. Only when these opportunist tantrums and sadistic power fantasies begin to cost the people concerned, and cost them quite dearly, is their behaviour likely to change.
[ Added: ]
But what’s extraordinary, and dismaying, is the extent to which this kind of pantomime is indulged by administrators and faculty. In December 2013, similar fits of leftist psychodrama were kicking off on several campuses, including the local university, where one of my relatives works. She, like 200 others, was unable to get to work for several days, countless projects were interrupted at considerable expense, deadlines were missed, and dozens of classes had to be cancelled.
Meanwhile, members of the Socialist Students group and Revolutionary Socialists Society – a gang of delusional wannabe communists and would-be anarchist ninjas – “occupied” an entire building, claimed ownership of whatever they pleased, imposed on whomever they pleased and made the usual threats and pompous demands. Chief among which being that they didn’t want to pay for anything, including their own tuition, as agreed, or the bill for clearing up after them. They wanted a world without consequence.
And in many ways, this is exactly what they were given. So far as I can find out, none of the masked wankers causing the disruption faced any serious sanction, or any sanction at all. None of those who’d delighted in thwarting and intimidating staff and other students faced any consequence for their actions. No-one was expelled. No-one was given a bill. No-one had to explain to their parents why they were no longer welcome at a fairly respectable university.
And so these thuggish little tossers are being taught that they can act with impunity. Their Marxoid power fantasies have no consequence for them, only for others. The general attitude among staff and administrators was one of resignation. As if it were something one just had to put up with every few months.
And so it happens. Every few months.
Only when these opportunist tantrums and sadistic power fantasies begin to cost the people concerned, and cost them quite dearly, is their behaviour likely to change.
One down.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/11/11/meet-melissa-click-the-media-professor-who-hates-journalists/
“Mizzou Hunger Striker Claims He’s Oppressed, Rips ‘White Privilege’ – Comes From Family Worth $20 Million.”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/11/mizzou-hunger-striker-claims-hes-oppressed-rips-white-privilege-comes-from-family-worth-20-million/
“Mizzou Students Hallucinate KKK On Campus.”
http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/11/mizzou-students-hallucinate-kkk-on-campus/
Like our host says, “psychodrama”.
And, in a delightful footnote to the whole Mizzou fiasco, note that as far as anyone has been able to determine/discover, there is absolutely NO proof whatsoever that the Soul-Scarring sh*t swastika episode ever took place at all.
Nice couple of tweets that seem relevant to the above.
Yes, Mageara, there is a Poop Swastika…
http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/12/mizzou-releases-photos-of-poop-swastika-discloses-details-of-previously-unreported-racial-slurs/
Oddly, I feel let down. It’s really not the bold statement I was expecting. Nothing seems to match my sweet imagination anymore.
Sweet imagination is one thing, definitional truth is another. Having looked at the (apparently) only photo of the desecration, I’m at a loss to determine how anyone concluded it was a swastika at all. Granted, it is clear that Mizzou students lack even the most rudimentary toileting skills, and someone tried his/her hand at rubbing the results in a grouted tile wall, but while my vision is admittedly diminished with age I still see neither the righthand nor lefthand design that demonstrates any thought process at all, let alone a deliberate effort to render a specific politically-freighted pattern. This was mere diaper-delving and the results are what you would get from a tall incontinent two-year-old with a short attention span.