Robert Stacy McCain on the myth of the beauty myth: 

One notices, of course, that feminists never criticise gay men for adoring male beauty, nor are lesbian preferences subject to feminist critique. No, in feminist discourse, it is only the heterosexual male’s attitudes and behaviour that are the target of this kind of “fuck your beauty standards” rhetoric.

A visual aid

Mark Bauerlein on the ideological desiccation of the humanities: 

When English turned into a practice of reading literature for signs of racism, sexism, and ideology, it lost touch with why youths pick up books in the first place, said University of Virginia Professor Rita Felski. And Duke professor Toril Moi told the Chronicle of Higher Education, “If you challenge the idea of suspicion as the only mode of reading, you are then immediately accused of being conservative in relation to those politics.

Heather Mac Donald on progressive discipline policies and subsequent delinquency: 

The idea that such street behaviour does not have a classroom counterpart is ludicrous. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic males of the same age. The lack of socialisation that produces such a vast disparity in murder rates, as well as less lethal street violence, inevitably will show up in classroom behaviour. Teens who react to a perceived insult on social media by trying to shoot the offender are not likely to restrain themselves in the classroom if they feel “disrespected” by a teacher or fellow students. 

Somewhat related

Joe Concha spies an asymmetry: 

Democratic voters are almost three times as likely to have “blocked, unfriended, or stopped following someone on social media” after Donald Trump’s victory, according to a study… The survey shows considerable splits along gender lines as well. Women were “twice as likely as men to report removing people from their online social circle because of the political views they expressed online,” 18 percent to 9 percent, according to the study conducted by Daniel Cox and Robert P. Jones… Meanwhile, 5 percent of those polled said they will alter plans to spend less time with select members of their family because of their political views. This, too, showed a partisan divide: 10 percent of Democrats said they planned to avoid certain family members, and 2 percent of Republicans said they would do likewise.

Franklin Einspruch on fake fretting about fake news: 

On Christmas Day, Jeremy Peters penned an article for the New York Times that ran under the headline “Wielding Claims of ‘Fake News,’ Conservatives Take Aim at Mainstream Media.” Its upshot is that a term once reserved for confabulated clickbait has been “appropriated” by conservatives for the sake of discrediting legitimate news that threatens their interests. “In defining ‘fake news’ so broadly and seeking to dilute its meaning, they are capitalising on the declining credibility of all purveyors of information, one product of the country’s increasing political polarisation,” Peters writes. “And conservatives, seeing an opening to undermine the mainstream media, a long-time foe, are more than happy to dig the hole deeper.” Was it on purpose that Peters identified the mainstream media —namely, himself— as a long-time foe of conservatives? Are conservatives incorrect about that assumption?

And Helena Cronin on equality, gender, and a zombie misconception: 

Bear in mind that equality is not sameness. Equality is about fair treatment, not about people or outcomes being identical; so fairness does not and should not require sameness. […] Here’s some intriguing evidence. “Gender [theory]” predicts that, as discrimination diminishes, males and females will increasingly converge. But a study of 55 nations found that it was in the most liberal, democratic, equality-driven countries that divergence was greatest. The less the sexism, the greater the sex differences. Difference, this suggests, is evidence not of oppression but of choice; not socialisation, not patriarchy, not false consciousness, not even pink t-shirts or personal pronouns… but female choice.

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