Elsewhere (240)
Janice Fiamengo on ‘poor me’ feminism:
Yes, [the party invitation] is crude, in a Happy Days sort of way, but the fact that such a tame and entirely non-threatening bit of verse doggerel would inspire such Olympic-sized hyperventilating outrage shows us that American college campuses are the exact opposite of “rape cultures.” They are places where even the slightest hint of male sexual bravado is thunderously denounced by everybody breathing.
And wait for the tearful account of being oppressed and imperilled by toilet facilities in the Arctic. It’s what’s keeping women out of STEM, apparently.
Toni Airaksinen on the priorities of academic feminists:
In a recent academic journal article, two feminist professors claim that citing sources in scholarly articles contributes to “white heteromasculinity.” Rutgers University professor Carrie Mott and University of Waterloo professor Daniel Cockayne advance the claim in an article published last month in the Feminist Journal of Geography, but also suggest that citation can serve as “a feminist and anti-racist technology of resistance” if references are chosen with the explicit intent of promoting “those authors and voices we want to carry forward.” The authors say that “white men tend to be cited in much higher numbers than people from other backgrounds,” but dismiss the idea that this is due to the relative preponderance of white male geographers.
And Andrea Vacchiano on the cost of all that racial scolding and denunciation of privilege:
A sheet compiling the salaries of the top diversity administrators at 43 of America’s top public universities finds that virtually all are paid at least $100,000, with some going well beyond $300,000. The average of $175,088 per year is more than three times the average American’s salary of $44,980. The lowest salary identified by Campus Reform is $83,237, still almost twice as much as the average American salary. A 2016 report by American Association of University Professors found that the average professor salary across ranks was $79,424. In one example, an administrator at Rutgers University named Jorge Schement, vice chancellor of the office of diversity and inclusion, made $253,262 in 2016, while most faculty at Rutgers in 2015 made less than $50,000 a year.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
The lone season with Chris Eccleston I quite enjoyed, as he portrayed the Doctor as the sort of person you could actually believe would choose to cold-bloodedly genocide an entire species for the greater good, as opposed to a mincing, twee fop.
Heh. Yes, when I saw the Eccleston episodes, I thought the series might even develop into something half-decent. But no.
Re the outrage, or alleged outrage, over a gender-bending Doctor, I wonder if, as a character, the Doctor’s apparent age may ultimately be more important than his maleness. Having a young(ish) actor playing the part never quite convinced me. The dynamic with the companions suggests an intergenerational aspect. As I read somewhere, “no teenager should fancy the Doctor.”
Inevitably, Laurie Penny has written an article about the new, female Doctor. Also inevitably, it turns into an article about herself and how much more enlightened she is than those awful people who think that a long-established male character should probably remain male.
Chester,
Hmm. As it happens, a sort-of-niece of mine just got a Stats degree at UC Berkeley. I’ll have to ask her if she felt pressured to do something more Science / Engineering.
In fact I’m seeing her next week. Do you suppose she’ll be interested in having that discussion with me during her wedding reception?
Inevitably, Laurie Penny has written an article about the new, female Doctor. Also inevitably, it turns into an article about herself
🙂
And another thing.
What’s strange to me is that the more the writers make the Doctor mouth earnest and clumsy speeches about helping and caring, the more dissonant and unconvincing the series becomes. In the last couple of episodes, which I watched with morbid curiosity, the Doctor basically abandons and dooms his two companions – the friends that he’s responsible for – in order to briefly delay the extinction of some random people he’s just met and will presumably never see again, and who are apparently destined to be Cyberman fodder regardless of what he does, or who he sacrifices. And this is something that we, the audience, are supposed to applaud.
Call it the Janeway Error.
The dynamic with the companions suggests an intergenerational aspect. As I read somewhere, “no teenager should fancy the Doctor.”
The original premise was educational; it was supposed to be a show about British history, with the Doctor as a sort of osteoporosis-ridden professorial type holding forth to a couple of moppets. One can’t help but think it’s gone off the rails a bit. Even Eccleston’s Doctor, the first one to both express open amour for a companion and be the first one young enough for it to be not entirely squicky – it’s still terribly awkward and seems forced, as if the Doctor is either being mind controlled or having Rose on in some elaborate gambit to genocide the Daleks again or something.
Call it the Janeway Error.
I can’t find it in five minutes of Googling, but post-Roddenberry Exodus Kate Mulgrew indicated in an interview that the only way she could reconcile Janeway’s erratic and occasionally horrifying behaviour was to assume she was suffering from massive PTSD as a result of losing much of her crew on their first mission. And so she intentionally started playing her that way. It may be apocryphal, but you can definitely see Janeway ratcheting up the crazy in the later seasons.
I suspect some of the problem with Doctor Who’s wildly spinning moral compass is that the writers really have no idea who the Doctor is or what the show is about, beyond “being weird”.
Doctor Who’s wildly spinning moral compass
There were, in fairness, a few nicely monstrous touches – for instance, the scene in the hospital with the pain relief that turned out to be just a volume control, so we couldn’t hear the screams. And I quite liked the Master’s two incarnations betraying each other, seemingly fatally. But what struck me most about those episodes was, as you say, the bizarrely inconsistent, and perverse, morality. Yes, Bill is eventually saved by a third party, but this is after the fact and unknown to our supposed hero, who has chosen to abandon and doom the people he’s supposed to care for, while lecturing everyone about the imperative to be compassionate.
It’s like an attempt at a moral fable written by someone with sociopathic leanings, and who doesn’t comprehend why anyone should find this behaviour an odd definition of virtue, let alone heroism.
My wife was calling around trying to find summer programs to occupy our 16 year-old son and discovered a STEM summer school at Trinity (the one in Dublin with the Harry Potter library). She emailed an application and received a “Sorry, we’re full” response.
She mentioned her disappointment to a work colleague, who, not jokingly, indicated that they’d probably reached their quota for boys. So my wife then reapplied using her gmail account with a very feminine name. She received information exhorting her to come almost instantaneously.
I ain’t no perfessionul or nufin’… but it seems to me that you never need to exhort people to do things they want to do. Is it perhaps true that young women are just not interested in STEM to the degree young boys are? Probably, but only in our preening, virtue signalling culture would we make it double-plus ungood to think so.
The problem with Doctor Who.
https://www.samizdata.net/2013/06/the-problem-with-doctor-who/
Just noticed the Samizdata link links back here. 🙂
Heh. Tentacles everywhere.
“Recent findings show that the proportion of high school seniors graduating with an A average…has grown sharply over the past generation, even as average SAT scores have fallen. In 1998, it was 38.9%. By last year, it had grown to 47%. That’s right: Nearly half of America’s Class of 2016 are A students. Meanwhile, their average SAT score fell from 1,026 to 1,002 on a 1,600-point scale — suggesting that those A’s on report cards might be fool’s gold.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/07/17/easy-a-nearly-half-hs-seniors-graduate-average/485787001/
What grade inflation?
A-grade students getting 1002 on the SAT? What the hell? I graduated HS with a B grade average and scored a 1460*. SMDH.
(*My first attempt was a 1390 and I felt I hadn’t done as well as a I should, so I took it again.)
A-grade students getting 1002 on the SAT?
The last item here is an interview with Dr Duke Pesta, in which he details the shocking ignorance of his students and the fact that it’s all but impossible, career-wise, for a professor to fail 40% of his students, even though 40% of his students really shouldn’t be there.
…the shocking ignorance of his students…
Which is why we get tweets or even op-eds in major national publications bemoaning the lack of POC in the movie Dunkirk.
Here’s the thing about the other 60%, a good number of them survived by taking in what they were told, remembering it for a few hours/days, and spitting it back out on a sheet of paper only to be forgotten later. I’m quite certain Andrea Mitchell was one of them. Most of the MSM were good little students, I am quite certain of that. And look what they have given us. Then there are those who are experts in a very, very thin slice of knowledge but lack the common sense that God gave a turnip, thus create havock when endowed with responsibilities beyond their ken.
As for that 40% who supposedly shouldn’t have been there, I would guess that more than a handful were of the type that objected, vocally or internally, to being taught a certain amount of bollocks.
OT
I own a hoodie that reads, “Police Murder People.” I don’t wear it ironically; I wear it because (spoiler alert) police have a habit of murdering people.
So says Black Lives Matter (Cambridge, US) organiser, spoken word poet, mother, freelance journalist and activist DiDi Delgado in her article/T-shirt and hoodie sales drive ‘In Defense of Punching Cops: Why the original slave catchers can catch these hands’.
… I’m frequently referred to as a fanatic and an extremist in the comment sections of my articles and social media posts. I’ve even internalized this, and (like many queer Black organizers) have started referring to myself as a radical.
[ … ]
From where I’m sitting, there are only two possible solutions … We can continue to slowly build grassroots movements and increase pressure on the powers that be to abandon their regressive and oppressive regimes[,] or we can punch cops.
I think both of these solutions have merit, but cop punching might solve our problem faster [ … ] It ALWAYS comes down to the people rebelling and punching cops. It’s only a question of when.
I’ve even internalized this, and (like many queer Black organizers) have started referring to myself as a radical.
Yes, of course. She was forced to flatter herself.
With effortless presumption, Laurie Penny speaks on behalf of most interesting women:
How she knows this, and why it should be a good thing, remains unclear.
Most of the interesting women you know are far, far angrier than you’d imagine.
People who are always angry are usually dull and boring.
People who are always angry are usually dull and boring.
Well, yes. Chronic rage and congeniality aren’t obvious bedfellows. To say nothing of how a default bad mood might impair rational thought or a sense of proportion. But Laurie has said, many times, that what “terrifies” her is being unable to “stay angry.” As if being angry were a credential.
It reminds me of the unlovely Bidisha, a self-described “non-white angry political female,” who, writing in the Guardian, insisted that those who don’t share her chronic ill-temper are “lazy and complacent,” and worse, “they have no politics.” Because only leftist politics count, apparently.
“what ‘terrifies’ her is being unable to ‘stay angry.’”
Once again, people “outraged” on others’ behalf – outrage that just happens to provide them with an income, status and attention.
Meh.
I think both of these solutions have merit, but cop punching might solve our problem faster…
Somehow I don’t think that is really going to work they way she thinks it will, though being locked up does remove worries about housing, food, and health care from the equation.
It reminds me of the unlovely Bidisha…
The link is for 2010, and I’ve heard nothing of her in a long time – is that unlovely lass still writing for the Graun (etc), or has she faded from the scene?
has she faded from the scene?
Hard to care, really.
Godfrey’s been suspended; his sister Jodie steps in: https://twitter.com/JodieElfwick/status/887681064998711297
One of Jodie’s adoring fans used the term WYPIPO, which I googled and found out is apparently a slang term meaning white people. But what’s (slightly) amusing is the website I found that explained that to me.
It’s called Negus Who Read (“Smart. Bold. Brilliant. Black.”), “negus” apparently being a weird phoneticisation (is that a word?) of “niggers”; the idea being that nothing scares white people so much as “niggers who read”. (I think that’s an old Paul Mooney joke.)
What’s funny about that? I hear you ask. Just that they tend to slam those words together like so: NEGUSWHOREAD – which makes their website appear to be called Negus Whore Ad. Which is considerably less woke and empowering.
I did say “slightly”.
“Negus”?
Wut? Negus is wine cut with water, drunk by such ladies of fashion as Fannie Price, at the Mansfield ball.
How dare you whitesplain
I see Jodie Elfwick is now suspended, as is lisagravesart. Of course Twitter isn’t run by SJW snowflakes. Why would you think that.
“A sheet compiling the salaries of the top diversity administrators at 43 of America’s top public universities finds that virtually all are paid at least $100,000, with some going well beyond $300,000.”
When Barack Obama was elected State Senator, Michelle Obama was hired by the University of Chicago as “Director of Diversity Outreach” at a salary of over $100,000/yr. When Barack was elected U.S. Senator, Michelle got a raise to over $300,000/yr. This reflected the immense importance of her position, which was left vacant when she became First Lady.
Fred the Fourth | July 20, 2017 at 20:24: Negus is wine cut with water…
“Negus” is a traditional Abyssinian imperial title, last held by Haile Selassie. I don’t know, but suspect the name for the drink may be derived from the title.