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.
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.