Elsewhere (238)
Kyle Smith on what happens when you question the accuracy of a race-activist theatre production:
Steppenwolf Theatre Company charged [critic Hedy Weiss] with “deep-seated bigotry.” An actor named Bear Bellinger announced that he would not perform if Weiss showed up at a workshop production he was appearing in. An ad hoc coalition that might as well have dubbed itself the Blackball Hedy Movement (but is actually called the Chicago Theatre Accountability Coalition) launched a petition via change.org to organise the theatre world of Chicago against Weiss by denying her invitations to its plays. Several theatre organisations have publicly agreed to join the blackballing effort, and dozens have offered noncommittal statements of support. The group’s broadside against Weiss reads, “Over the last few years especially, we have joined together to make it clear that inappropriate language or behaviour does not have a place within our community, and that prejudice of any kind will not stand.”
I’ll let you find out for yourselves what was deemed to constitute “bigotry” and “inappropriate language.”
Tim Newman spots a pattern:
I suppose Nigeria and the UK are not the only countries where the wealthy and privileged get together and pretend they’re on the side of the downtrodden masses, but I am nevertheless surprised at how universal such delusions are.
Jim Goad catalogues more examples of leftist high-mindedness:
It happened amid an insane cultural climate where the day before James Hodgkinson’s rampage, a black male shooter in Indianapolis fired at a truck that was flying a “Make America Great Again” flag. Where on June 11, the Huffington Post ran an article that openly called for Donald Trump and “everyone assisting in his agenda” to be tried for treason and publicly executed. Where a successful TV producer can encourage Trump-haters to “pick up a goddamn brick,” and he doesn’t get fired. Where a college professor says that Republicans “should be lined up and shot,” and he doesn’t get fired, either… A climate where the left is so egregiously insane and bloodthirsty — all in the name of compassion, of course — that the incomparably wormy Jesse Benn, who has previously called for “white wounding” and for violence against Trump supporters, saw no problem with a fellow traveller “shooting a racist lawmaker in the hip” last Wednesday. It’s a climate where, after the shooting, an obese New Jersey Democrat openly calls for the murder of Republicans with the hashtags #HuntRepublicans and #HuntRepublicanCongressmen.
Oh, and trans activist and self-declared “insatiable researcher” Zinnia Jones struggles to apprehend certain aspects of reality:
Pretty sure they were trying to keep them from jumping.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
“cosplaying male”
*chuckle*
“otry and Esperanto, respectively.”
*sniggger*
David’s comment threads always cheer me up.
“I see it as a function of a society capable of generating such enormous wealth that there exist sufficient resources to indulge counterproductive, resource sucking stupidity. Which is the underpinning of the above explanations of social media, bandwagoning, etc. I fear that this idoicy will continue until we reach some market clearing point of Darwinian truth and a hard rain falls.”
Or Jeremy Corbyn makes it to No. 10 and the capacity to indulge vanishes as we lug our wheelbarrows of £10,000 notes down to the Co-Op to queue for six hours in the hope of some bogroll. Or bread. Or anything.
H.L. Mencken’s definition of democracy springs to mind.
“Even-handedness and honesty pale in comparison with the thrill of malice.”
Yep.
“Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”
And you certainly shouldn’t force people who vehemently disagree to pay for it. That, regardless of what “it” might happen to be, is just – and I don’t use the word lightly – downright evil.
Aw, dammit. Now I’m depressed again.
Lancastrian Oik… I’m with Markus “Notch” Persson of Minecraft fame: Facebook creeps me out. But I’m tempted to open an account just to set the cat among the pigeons of my acquaintances. Hayek quotes, pictures of Corbyn looking gormless (shouldn’t be too hard; he always looks like that), Reason and Spiked articles, Thomas Sowell videos… could be fun. ‘Course, I’d probably end up with even fewer real-life friends than I have now, but it’d be a laugh.
David’s comment threads always cheer me up.
[ Slides bowl of suspiciously grey trail mix along bar. ]
DFG.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40480386
“Parent Kori Doty – a non-binary transgender person who identifies as neither male nor female – aims to allow the child to discover their own gender…..
…….The family’s lawyer, barbara findlay, who chooses to spell her name without capital letters, told Global News….”
The family’s lawyer, barbara findlay, who chooses to spell her name without capital letters,
And that’s never a warning sign.
The parent says that a visual inspection at birth is not capable of determining a person’s gender.
Except, of course, that it almost always is.
I can’t help feeling it’s a rather selfish way of seeking validation via one’s child.
See also this.
DFG
As I said in the thread linked above, I don’t think I’d have been thrilled to grow up being continually referred to as androgynous, or hearing pointed intimations that being thought male was a bad thing, or generally being used as a political project. And yet here we have a transgender person, who presumably wouldn’t appreciate being misgendered, making a point of misgendering their own child – by erasing his maleness – and congratulating themselves while doing it.
I’d dread to see a contract drawn up by a lawyer that can’t use capitalisation correctly.
“………⅃ɘonɒɿbo ᗡɒ Vinɔi, ƚʜɘ ʇɒmiliɘƨ ɒɿƚiƨƚ, wʜo ɔʜooƨɘƨ ƚo wɿiƚɘ ʜiƨ nɒmɘ in miɿɿoɿ wɿiƚinǫ.”
The best way to deal with questions of gender is to refuse to have any truck with them. French nouns have gender, humans have sex. Any claim that gender can be applied to people is nonsense.
Anyone who claims to have a qualification in gender studies or similar should be derided, ignored or pitied.
Anyone claiming their gender is not the same as their sex may also be derided, ignored or pitied. Or perhaps referred, But not to a doctor who will fill them full of hormones and cut their cock off…
Typing this out, I’m guessing what…C-sections all around?
Of necessity, yes. Aside from pelvic dimensions, if some gentleman had a vagina created in the usual surgical manner of today and attached to the uterus, which would seem to be a necessity as a functioning uterus would undergo menses, said artificial vagina could not expand as a real one does to allow passage of a child during birth.
Except, of course, that it almost always is.
Incidence of ambiguous genitalia is about 1/5000 at birth, but the actual incidence declines with age as the ambiguity declines with further development and growth. Fun facts for barroom bets.
Facebook creeps me out. But I’m tempted to open an account…
Do not do it. I avoided it like the plague till I was persuaded to join an ostensibly private group that shares knowledge about a mutual interest. Although using a completely fake name, because of the insidious way the “friends” thing works, and though I had not “made any friends”, a friend of a friend of a friend unto the 27th iteration of someone in the group, saw a photo I didn’t know had been taken, and I was recognized and tracked down by my real name by an ex. Fortunately sufficient time had passed that there was no way I could be implicated if she was trying to claim paternity.
Needless to say I nuked the account immediately thereafter which is not an instantaneous thing as the Farcebook clowns keep trying to change your mind for several months. Farcebook is one of the most evil data and privacy sucking things ever devised.
The parent gave birth
That person is a WOMAN called THE MOTHER.
I’m sorry but this crap has jumped a bay full of sharks… the .01 of people with mental issues and their eager enablers will not, to use their own Newspeak, appropriate my lived experience as a woman.
I’ve recently begun to verbalize some of what irks me about the overall trans movement and makes me feel I’m being taken for a ride, so to speak: the multitudinous factions with the conflicting assertions and demands.
On the one hand, statements of deep-seated biological transness in brain structure and “brain sex” not matching “body sex”, on the other, statements of transness as a choice and social-construct deconstruction of the notions of sex and gender.
On the one hand, “accept us alongside, we’re just like you”, on the other hand, “accept us for who we are, stop erasing our identity”.
On the one hand, transness as mostly irrelevant incidental characteristic you should learn to stop obsessing about you obsessive transphobe, on the other, transness as core characteristic listed as the first thing in a bio.
On too many hands, to count the various interpretations of the word “queer”.
The ones who see transition as a process to be done with to achieve the proper sex, and the ones who see trans as a state and/or quasi-sex in its own right (along with nonbinary and genderfluid and so forth).
Etc.
I recognize that these opinions are held by different people, so I’m not intending to charge any individual with self-contradiction, but from my end this looks rather skeezy. And when I look for commonalities, I experience observing more common demands on me than agreements on doctrine, which looks skeezy as hell. In particular I’m reminded of Dalrymple’s words on propaganda and political correctness: (briefly paraphrased) ‘the purpose is not to inform or convince or persuade, but to humiliate by demanding acquiescence to nonsense, to control by destroying integrity’.
the multitudinous factions with the conflicting assertions and demands.
Well, there’s a big difference between, say, Deirdre McCloskey and self-styled ‘activists’ like Zinnia Jones. I get the impression that Deirdre would be much easier to get along with.
Microbillionaire, just remember it’s all a (very) long-winded way of yelling “LOOK AT MEEEEEE!” And you’ll never be puzzled again.
I sneeze in threes,
Mike Judge was far too optimistic thinking Idiocracy would take centuries; it’s here now.
David’s comment threads always cheer me up.
No refunds; credit note only.
No refunds; credit note only.
[ Slides bowl of suspiciously grey trail mix along bar. Picks out the more obvious foreign objects. ]
It has occurred to me, regarding this whole uterine transplant farrago, that the question has not been addressed as to where the ova are coming from. Are the ovaries and fallopian tubes to be transplanted as well ? If not, someone will have to donate them.
Clearly it wold be feasible for the gentleman in question to have made a trip to a sperm bank prior to his mutilation, but then with a donated ovum, or one from a transplanted ovary, and his sperm, that still makes him the father, and whoever the ovum came from the mother, despite his lend-lease uterus.
If they are transplanting uteri and ovaries, does the gentleman in question get to chose from whom they come ? If the chap is Swedish, and the only histocompatible uterus and ovaries from a Somali woman (or vice versa) can the guy refuse the bits knowing it would produce a mixed race baby ? Does he get no vote and merely take pot luck ?
I don’t think they have thought this through.
I think it more of an imbroglio rather than farrago. This is of course both because that is more in line with the intent (an undisentagleable gaslighting mess), and because Uterine Imbroglio is the better band name.
For some reason, I’m reminded of An Anecdote Illustrating Something of the Australian Character.
“Uterine Imbroglio”
Isn’t she Natalie‘s sister?
Isn’t she Natalie’s sister?
Ho ho ho, though interestingly in real life Natalia Imbruglia’s sister is also a musician. Here.
because I get a guilty pleasure poking at the hivemind on twitter (don’t worry, I wash my hands thoroughly after a session) re: women have penises, too and rejecting them for sex is bigotry – things I’ve been lectured about:
*sexual orientation is ok, but straight men or lesbians not considering tran women as possible sex partners is because one suffers from a gynophilia fetish
*that straights and gays “owe” trans people “thinking these things through instead of using culturally”
*A response to my “And a man telling a lesbian “if you’ve never tried straight sex, how do you know you won’t like it” is just as benign a statement right?” is this headscratcher:
“corrective rape”?
You can’t make this **** up!
We just got home from The Fireworks! A good time was had by all.
(Many communities hold fireworks a day after or a day before the nearest large town does, not, as you might suspect, because we Americans have become too dumb to read calendars, but in order that those so inclined can see fireworks twice.)
I just read about a town in Japan populated entirely by the “disappeared,” people who’ve shed their old identity and assumed a new one.
If everyone knows about this town, how can they be disappeared? Wouldn’t it be the first place a skip tracer would look?
In other news, little Cthulhu has grown into a proper monster. Yesterday he ate 6 guys and an indeterminate number of fish.
Evergreen – Mao’s Cultural Revolution among the pines…
The left rarely misses an opportunity to flaunt its hypocrisy, which is its modus operandi.
corrective rape
Unfortunately, this is a real thing but normally directed at lesbians in our more benighted (or is that diverse?) communities. I’ve not heard about it with respect to trans people and, as you are well aware, if it was a thing, however rare, they wouldn’t shut the f up about it.
[ Slides bowl of suspiciously grey trail mix along bar. Picks out the more obvious foreign objects. ]
. . . And he was eating a thick slab of bread plastered with pork dripping. A mug of beer was not far from his other hand.
. . . “Pork drippin’ with salt and pepper, and a mug of beer,” . . . Sure you won’t have any dripping? It’s got crunchy bits. That’s what I call style, in dripping.”
—Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
I just read about a town in Japan populated entirely by the “disappeared,” people who’ve shed their old identity and assumed a new one.
Oh, no, no. There is no such occurrence, absolutely, utterly, such disappearance just doesn’t happen.
If everyone knows about this town, how can they be disappeared? Wouldn’t it be the first place a skip tracer would look?
If there was an expression of interest, Mr. Yamaguchi could become concerned. If Mr. Yamaguchi became concerned, that could be really, really, bad. You really don’t want Mr. Yamaguchi to become concerned.
Whatever you do, however many contortions you perform, they will slander you anyway, repeatedly and unfairly, because they wish to do you psychological harm.
Even-handedness and honesty pale in comparison with the thrill of malice.
Then I guess one should only try once and if you get a response like that professor got, might as well tell them to go to hell.
The best way to deal with questions of gender is to refuse to have any truck with them. French nouns have gender, humans have sex.
I’m with you all the way, MC. I try to fight this when an opportunity arises (crossing out ‘gender’ and writing in ‘sex’ on forms, etc.) but do recognise that my efforts are in vain. But then I’m someone who still bristles at the mention of ‘mobile’ phones. (They’re portable, not mobile FFS.)
They’re portable, not mobile FFS
Yeah, but if you really want to get picky, calling them ‘phones’ is akin to calling an automobile a bearing collection.
But then I’m someone who still bristles at the mention of ‘mobile’ phones.
Given their ubiquity, and given the disappearance of many domestic landlines, it seems almost quaint to refer to them as mobile phones. As opposed to, well, phones.
We have our landline but, since I have trained everyone we know to text or e-mail, no one calls it except computers. They end up talking to the computerized answering machine.
(Many communities hold fireworks a day after or a day before the nearest large town does, not, as you might suspect, because we Americans have become too dumb to read calendars, but in order that those so inclined can see fireworks twice.)
Last night I started hearing the opening salvos of the local warfare, the majority should be starting in a few hours. I tend to stay in during instances of amateurs’ night, unless I’m actually working some event, but then I find myself to be far more entertaining than whordes of hipsters . . .
Given this location, I’m reminded of the old question of whether or not the British celebrate July the 4th.
The answer being that certainly yes they do, it’s the day after July the 3rd, and before July the 5th . . .
Further developments in the strange mental landscape of Zinnia Jones:
This of course is the same Zinnia Jones who insists, repeatedly and emphatically, that men should just bite the bullet and learn to enjoy sex with trans women, including trans women with penises, because she “doesn’t believe” that “straight men don’t want to be with someone who has a dick.”
Her own preferences, however, are somehow exempt from any such corrections.
https://twitter.com/GarethSoye/status/882732087765323779
re: Secret Teacher at Graun…
I was recently asked how I grew up on left, but became a conservative. It’s a struggle to define any particular moment as a turning point, there are many… so I alluded to the fact my parents allowed us to think for ourselves. We weren’t full-on cult.
Comments like this are normal:
I was told as a child the tories were probably a bit evil.
I must say though, after 40 years of giving it plenty of critical thinking, they have done very little to dispel the notion.
The reply got me:
My family background was firmly Tory and anti-Labour. Not because they were particularly well off, but it appeared to come from taking what the Daily Mail etc, wrote a bit too literally. In other words I was brought up to believe that it was socialists, trade unionists etc, that were evil. But my life experience taught me this was nonsense, and I have struggled to understand what was good about the Tories. The older I get, the more evil the Tories seem. I see Conservativism as a complete sham, a body of contrived values and arguments to sell the agenda of the wealthy few to the many. This viewpoint is certain not because of my upbringing or a penchant for left wing ideology, because I cannot stand ideology of any ilk. It’s just from decades of life experience, where I’ve found those who express so called conservative values to be unempathetic to others, to be selfish, and basically disingenuous. When I’ve found those who lean more to the left to be more genuine, more empathetic, less bigoted etc.
Again, this is nothing to do with a love of the left and socialism, because politically I think it is based on mistaken analysis, just not as bad as the Tories.
That’s so much opposite to my experience, I am left thinking: didn’t happen.
But hey, “more genuine, more empathetic, less bigoted etc”:
https://twitter.com/DailyMirror/status/881994227022004225
oh, and:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/sweden-music-festival-men-female-only-bravalla-rape-sexual-assault-emma-knyckare-a7824366.html