I’m heading out of town for the weekend, a long one, for a wedding, so I’m afraid you’ll have to throw together your own pile of links in the comments. Oh, come on. How hard can it be? I’ll set the ball rolling with these: a good deed of note, why you can never tune a piano, and a close encounter with some trees.
Phone signal permitting, and festivities permitting, I may check in on you at some point. So play nicely. And don’t get any stains on the upholstery.
Sweat-shaming is when someone points out your sweatiness as a way to signal disapproval. Like its counterparts, slut-shaming and fat-shaming, sweat-shaming is aimed mainly at women, who are actually not supposed to sweat at all.
Well, it’s been a while since we’ve had a classic Guardian sentence, let alone a reminder of just how many brickbats and indignities our brave feminists must endure. The sentences above are courtesy of Ms Amy Roe, who, as you’ll see, has been terribly violated (and is therefore heroic and righteous in her ire).
Let the full horror of the episode wash over you:
I was ordering coffee when I noticed a well-dressed woman staring at me. “You look like you just did a class,” she said, giving me the once-over. I had no idea what she meant so I said nothing. “Or swimming?” she offered, with a tight smile.
Well-dressed. Tight smile. The bitch.
I’d just run 12 miles and the hair sticking out from under my hat was wet. It took me a moment to formulate an answer. “Um, running,” I mumbled finally… Rather than challenge sweat-shaming, I played right into it, conceding that I “sweat a lot.”
Tight-smiling woman is obviously a hired goon of The Patriarchy. Her mission, to stamp on the self-esteem of hitherto fearless Guardian columnists.
And so,
I took the paper cup of drip coffee and hustled past the condiment bar. Screw the half-and-half; I’d drink it black. Once safely inside my car, I threw off my damp running cap and flipped up the hood of my sweatshirt in embarrassment.
Harrowing stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. Ms Roe is what we must henceforth refer to as a sweat-shame survivor.
Happily, however - and despite the misogynist violence of having one’s copious perspiration acknowledged by someone standing next to you, possibly closer than they might wish – Ms Roe’s drama ends on a note of empowerment and feminist defiance:
I’ve got another long run this weekend and afterward, I’m going to sit down with my coffee, all sweaty and transgressive. The stigmas surrounding women’s bodies are powerful, but they’re no match for how powerful I feel after running.
Hear her roar. And fetch towels.
Thomas Sowell on affordable housing and its opponents:
Nowhere has there been so much hand-wringing over a lack of “affordable housing” as among politicians and others in coastal California. And nobody has done more to make housing unaffordable than those same politicians and their supporters… One of the first things taught in an introductory economics course is supply and demand. When a growing population creates a growing demand for housing, and the government blocks housing from being built, the price of existing housing goes up. This is not a breakthrough on the frontiers of knowledge… When more than half the land in San Mateo County is legally off-limits to building, how surprised should we be that housing prices in the city of San Mateo are now so high that politically appointed task forces have to be formed to solve the “complex” question of how things got to be the way they are and what to do about it?
Old Holborn steers ladies to the radical lover of their dreams. Seriously, brace those loins for impact.
And Mick Hartley quotes David Brown on the Shoreditch “anti-gentrification” protesters and their class war credentials:
Adam Barr, 23, the editor of Freedom News, a left-wing online newspaper, dismissed criticism of the protest as “reactionary bourgeois drivel” on a blog post on his website yesterday. “The Cereal Killer café is a legitimate target for protest as a symbol of the invading hordes that have taken over Shoreditch,” he added. Mr Barr, the son of a company director from East Yorkshire, could not be reached for comment.
In short, it seems the protesters are the usual clumping of middle-class academics and charmless misfits. The nearest thing to an actual member of the downtrodden proletariat seems to be the self-described “class warrior” and “rebel ethnographer” Dr Lisa McKenzie, currently blunting minds at the London School of Economics. Readers may recall Dr McKenzie from this video here, in which she explains that her academic role entails “not trying to find out something.” Instead, her purpose is to “challenge” the “negative stereotypes” of rough council housing neighbourhoods. Curiously, Dr McKenzie attempts this by proudly showing us graffiti – sorry, “muriels” – that actually confirm those stereotypes – of gangs, vandalism, car theft and, as she puts it, “young people who have died on the estate.” And Dr McKenzie does all this, quite earnestly, while a police helicopter rumbles overhead.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.
Behold the modern campus, home of deep thought and cool intellects:
The incident happened Tuesday night, when students thought they found several nooses hanging from a tree. Word quickly spread as campus officials swiftly released a statement condemning the foul hate crime. But come morning, police said a short investigation had led them to conclude the “nooses” were really just the remnants of paper lanterns from an event held all the way back in June.
Yes, I know. It’s almost funny. But then,
Unperturbed by the truth, students launched an assembly following the incident to speak as though the hate crime really did happen. According to the News Journal, a local paper, the assembly was held “to find ways to change the campus climate” in the wake of the bad atmosphere apparently exposed by a fictional hate crime… One administrator said the climate of hate at Delaware was exposed by the mere fact he could even believe the alleged hate crime occurred.
And so,
The University of Delaware’s vice provost for diversity Carol Henderson… said the college is planning to launch a new “diversity action plan” as soon as it’s approved by school officials.
With so many witch finders now in business, witches will be found.
Here’s a thing:
Meat should be treated like tobacco with a public campaign to stop people eating it, Jeremy Corbyn’s new vegan shadow farming minister has suggested. Kerry McCarthy… admitted she was a “militant” when it came to clamping down on meat consumption. She said: “I really believe that meat should be treated in exactly the same way as tobacco, with public campaigns to stop people eating it.”
Because using your own taxes to scold you from above and correct your preferences is what she thinks her job is.
Via Samizdata.
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