Humblebrag

june (shoe) can write my rants anytime. and she ends it
so here’s my message:
people, don’t stop complimenting people. compliments brighten people’s days, even LIVES. who knows how shit that persons day or life is. who knows if they’re going to go home and put a gun in their mouth that night. jesus christ. DO NOT STOP BEING NICE.
Pretty awesome.

Remember, Laurie tells us, quite emphatically, that she “fights constantly” for her “looks not to matter.” And she does this while taking and sharing endless selfies and publicity shots, which, apparently, are terribly political. In Laurie’s mind, your attempts to look pleasing merely signal your “submission” to capitalism and a “slavish adherence” to patriarchal control. But Laurie’s own grooming, with co-ordinated nails and hair colouring, piercings, tattoos, jaunty hat collection, etc., – all of that signals her liberation from such things.
But this is someone who rails against how some ladies choose to adorn their bodies – on grounds that pubic glitter betrays all womanhood – while also insisting that not judging other women’s genital decoration is a radical feminist statement.

How, I wonder, do you become “accidentally” more attractive?
I think she’s letting us know that she isn’t trying to look more attractive. Because that would be bad. What with the Patriarchy and all.

. . . and not make the money for costumes, fares, coffee, and . . . . .
. . . and there’s a reason the more correct term is . . . narcisstick.

Because I’m so fragile that in my world all positive attention from a guy is an attack, my world being about stridently not seeing the vagaries of sex and gender.
Just imagine living a life where every utterance, glance, image, sign, sound and/or film are all forms of encoded power that structure all of society in terms of dominance and submission. That’s what it’s like to live in penny’s head (assuming she’s sincere about even half of what she says). Or perhaps she’s just a quintessentially shallow, narcissistic, dishonest, money grubbing “btw buy my book” poseur.

I’m a man. A woman once said something nice to me. It was about 30 years ago.
Get over yourselves feminists.

Does anyone else here have past life experience living or schooling among the extremely religious? The virtue signaling, the holier-than-thou, the Puritanism. Whenever these virtue signaling events occur among SJW’s and such I’m reminded of the people I used to know who prided themselves on the ability to quote scripture chapter and verse for any occasion that presented itself, making much of their own piety and purity. And then even more so when they themselves fell to the level of the unwashed, like this guy and similar.
I also see a similar pattern in the True Conservative/#NEVERTRUMPers and True Libertarian types in the US political scene. A favorite HL Mencken quote of mine is “Puritanism is that nagging fear that someone, somewhere might be happy.”

“I think she’s letting us know that she isn’t trying to look more attractive. Because that would be bad.”
Quite so. And she doesn’t understand the difference between ‘accidentally’ and ‘unintentionally’.

I think you are all unfair to PennyRed. Not that she doesn’t richly deserve it. But I see her as an insecure young woman (Note to David: there is insecure and insecure; PennyRed’s case is the bad kind), deeply starved for attention, resentful of her perceived lack of attractiveness and determined to reinforce it through such things as self-mutilation in an utterly conventional teenage protest at the demands that she thinks are being placed on her. She probably had (or still has) an overbearing mother whom she deems to be more attractive than she is and a father who she feels neglected her as a child, and now she tries to compensate by denigrating everything that she would like to have and cannot attain because of her own perceived shortcomings. Hence the polyamory, the ostentatious rejection of bourgeois values such as marriage and stability, the professed hatred of everything and everybody outside of her small circle of like-minded “rebels” against society. And now she somehow is subjected to a compliment or maybe just an appreciative gaze from a normal-looking man and she feels at the same time flattered and unsure how to deal with the pleasure that she feels since it goes against everything she has tried so hard to tell herself that she is immune to.
I just think that she is stuck in adolescence, unfortunately way past the sell-by date for this type of behavior.
On second thought, you’re not unfair to her.

But this is someone who rails against how some ladies choose to adorn their bodies – on grounds that pubic glitter betrays all womanhood – while also insisting that not judging other women’s genital decoration is a radical feminist statement.
You’re going to sprain something parsing LP’s contradictions.

You’re going to sprain something parsing LP’s contradictions.
But Laurie has so much to teach us.

WTP: “Does anyone else here have past life experience living or schooling among the extremely religious? The virtue signaling, the holier-than-thou, the Puritanism. Whenever these virtue signaling events occur among SJW’s and such I’m reminded of the people I used to know who prided themselves on the ability to quote scripture chapter and verse for any occasion that presented itself, making much of their own piety and purity.”
The phrase “whited sepulchres” keeps coming irresistably to mind.
The Guardian’s problem page yesterday was from a 22 year old girl who’s just finished university and finds her family “casually sexist” and keeps scolding them, but her mother tells her to give over because she preaches too much. She sounds exactly like a born-again Christian who can’t understand why everybody she knows isn’t as excited by Jesus as she is, and thinks they’re all going to hell.

Meanwhile in the land of the perpetually aggrieved, the hashtag, firstsevenjobs is a way to disguise your privilege.

But what really bothers me about #firstsevenjobs is the ideology it reflects. #Firstsevenjobs promotes the ideal, as old as America, of the self-made man who creates his own destiny through hard work.

Those bastards. Ah, I remember fondly those halcyon days of my privilege tarring driveways and being a valet parking attendant.

Allow me to illustrate by listing my first seven jobs: babysitter, tutor, prep cook, library assistant, print syndication assistant, cookbook author assistant, and editorial assistant (at Slate)…But this list doesn’t tell you that I went to an Ivy League school [that rather explains a lot about her main malfunction] and graduated without debt, since my parents were able and willing to pay for my tuition.

OK, got it, white girl feel guilty for an easy ride, wants you to feel guilty too, regardless of your circumstances. The politics of envy and spite.

Oh dear. What are all those things all over that boy’s head, including the blackish furry stuff??

“Attractive?” That’s what that is?
I really should get out more. Oh wait, on second thought, perhaps not.

What’s the betting this didn’t happen?
If we were to take Laurie’s statements at face value, as true, you’d have to assume that she associates with an uncommon concentration of inexplicably rude and obnoxious men, to a degree that’s rather implausible. But as we’ve seen many times, when someone says to Laurie, “You’ve said something stupid,” she generally – almost always – construes this as that person actually meaning, “All woman are stupid.” Which isn’t the same thing at all.
Though the latter offers more scope for further arch pronouncements and, not incidentally, is a little more flattering. And so Laurie would have us believe that she’s treated dismissively simply because she’s a woman, or an outspoken woman, rather than because she’s someone who says an extraordinary number of stupid things.

Dear Ms Penny’s, I should say.
>_<

It’s those who Have Faith who launch into demanding that All Must Be Ideologically Pure . . . and thus the assorted branches of Xtianity that started entire wars
All war is waged to settle one question and one question only. Who is in charge of this land: Us or Them?
The US/THEM dividing line can be religious belief, but it can also be language, ethnicity, geography, loyalty to a claimant to the throne, theory of governance, or any issue over which Who’s in charge? can be fought.
The European wars between Catholic and Protestant were NOT over doctrinal points but over who should rule: the Pope or the local Protestant monarch? People were motivated to wage war because a Catholic monarch made sure Protestants were excluded, persecuted, and powerless, and the reverse was also true.
How many religious sects are in the United States? Hundreds? And yet we have NEVER had a religious war, for the simple reason that political power is not tied up with churches or religions: a Methodist in the White House cannot dictate how Catholics or Mormons perform baptisms nor, do non-Methodists find themselves ineligible for elected office, discriminated against in hiring or housing, or at risk of imprisonment for heresy (read: being a political enemy of the ruler).
That silly little tale about people fighting over which end of the egg to crack first is absolutely fallacious: people may argue—heatedly—over such things but war never starts until one side attempts to exercise power over the other. Missing from the story is the moment the narrow-enders attempt to ban cracking the egg at the broad end.
Saying that religious fervor causes war is as nonsensical as asserting that language or geography or skin color causes it.
The desire of one group to rule over another is what causes war: not differences of opinion over deity.

How many religious sects are in the United States? Hundreds? And yet we have NEVER had a religious war,

Well, the Mormons ended up in Utah because they were persecuted out of every place else, sometimes violently. And then they turned around and massacred non-Mormons.

What I’ve been noticing is the absolute gulf between faith and religion. […] It’s those who Have Faith who launch into demanding that All Must Be Ideologically Pure . . . and thus the assorted branches of Xtianity that started entire wars…
Ah, faith. Aside from what it really is and what it may constitute or mean, capital F Faith is also a religious construct, as in, by faith shall ye be saved, etc. It’s become the most important noun in the canon and catechism but somehow nobody knows what it is.
FWIW, I doubt one person on earth can say what value faith has in the sense of Christian salvation – of God’s ultimate rule – or how faith can avoid being a work if it’s consciously wielded as the key to heaven, which it largely is. Nobody I know can answer that, and I know I can’t.
This is a matter for theology, and theology is a battlefield, one of sects and splinters and schisms so that’s got to be a clue and not a very positive one. We don’t war for religion but we fight for theology and still there’s no clarity.

David wrote,

But as we’ve seen many times, when someone says to Laurie, “You’ve said something stupid,” she generally – almost always – construes this as that person actually meaning, “All woman are stupid.”

Maybe that’s because all the women she personally knows agree with what she said. I’m not sure what to think of that.

If we were to take Laurie’s statements at face value, as true, you’d have to assume that she associates with an uncommon concentration of inexplicably rude and obnoxious men, to a degree that’s rather implausible.
I dunno. I can imagine the circles in which she mixes contains just that: a concentration of rude and obnoxious people.

Laurie tells us that she’s quit smoking (because) and has apparently taken up exercise. As a result of this, she is, she says, “accidentally becoming more conventionally attractive.”
I have a hard time believing this, too. Okay, if exercise has given her a better body than before this would be true, and she might find more men approaching her. But if you’re meeting people in person, attractiveness becomes a combination of various factors, not least of which are personality and friendliness and not being batshit crazy or simply damned annoying. I am struggling to believe that Laurie has become noticeably more attractive for those interacting with her simply because she’s shed a couple of kgs and firmed her ass up a bit.

Nose-picking may be a universal right, but doing it with the thumb is White Privilege personified.

And no, I did not image search Google for “Laurie Penny’s bum” for purposes of this thread.

Am I to understand this the “before” photo then?
“Speaking earlier on BBC Breakfast” – that was shown during breakfast – those BBC programmers are some cruel, cruel people.

Well, the Mormons ended up in Utah because they were persecuted out of every place else, sometimes violently. And then they turned around and massacred non-Mormons.
(a) You’re talking about my ancestors; (b) Your observation doesn’t refute my point in the least.
The mobs chased the Mormons out of the country at gunpoint because my ancestors kept gathering in one place—Kirtland OH, Jackson County MO, Nauvoo, IL—and tended to all vote the same. The locals felt that their votes were being snuffed out by a bunch of heretical weirdos, and so the Mormons were harassed out of their homes over the question of who was to be in charge of the place.
As far as the Mountain Meadows massacre, that was ONE horrific incident, not a trend nor a practice nor a doctrine. The folks passing through had engaged in fighting words in Cedar City, threatening the local Mormons with official violence from the U.S. army (not an idle threat, given that they’d come after us before), and so the locals went off to the camp in Mountain Meadows a few days later to “settle things.”
In other words, that incident isn’t an example of a war over religious doctrine but Yet Another Attempt to settle the question of “who’s in charge of this place,” with the US and THEM breaking along religious lines.
Most of U.S. history in the West consists of wars over jurisdiction between Europeans and Natives. Does being a “redskin” or “paleface” cause war? Or does the desire to rule over THEM cause it?

I don’t understand how anyone can spend so much time out of their day obsessing about how they feel, how they feel men think they feel, how they think capitalists think they feel, how they feel the patriarchy think they feel. FFS, get a job. A real one. So much navel gazing…oy vey.
Could she be any more insignificant or boring.

Parsing error _ Penny, Laurie – line *