Elsewhere (292)
David Solway on the feminist enthusiasm for fatness:
In a speech on the topic of “radical fat liberation” jointly sponsored by the Women and Gender Studies Department and the Centre for Equity and Inclusion at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, the prodigiously overweight Sonalee Rashatwar, a self-proclaimed Fat Sex Therapist, compared fitness trainers to Nazis, defined child dieting as sexual assault, attributed the Christchurch shooting to ‘thin” white supremacism, and condemned science as “fataphobic” for “promoting the idea that certain bodies are fit, able and desirable.” She wonders, rhetorically, “is it my fatness that causes my high blood pressure, or is it my experience of weight stigma?” She goes on to blame the Reagan administration for having refused to provide “social supports that also help me to subsidise my food costs.”
When not equating routine health advice with eugenics and “Nazi science,” Ms Rashatwar claims that “diet culture and fat phobia are forms of sexual violence.” Mr Solway is the husband of Janice Fiamengo, whose own probing of feminist pathology has been mentioned here before.
Heather Mac Donald on cooking the books for “diversity”:
The average white score on the SAT (1,123 out of a possible 1,600) is 177 points higher than the average black score (946), approximately a standard deviation of difference. This gap has persisted for decades. It is not explained by socioeconomic disparities. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported in 1998 that white students from households with incomes of $10,000 or less score better on the SAT than black students from households with incomes of $80,000 to $100,000. In 2015, students with family incomes of $20,000 or less (a category that includes all racial groups) scored higher on average on the math SAT than the average math score of black students from all income levels…
Those who rail against “white privilege” as a determinant of academic achievement have a nagging problem: Asians. Asian students outscore white students on the SAT by 100 points; they outscore blacks by 277 points. It is not Asian families’ economic capital that vaults them to the top of the academic totem pole; it is their emphasis on scholarly effort and self-discipline. Every year in New York City, Asian elementary school students vastly outperform every other racial and ethnic group on the admissions test for the city’s competitive public high schools, even though a disproportionate number of them come from poor immigrant families.
Somewhat related, on racism as an excuse. And related to that, on the absurd and rather sinister Implicit Association Test.
Christopher Rufo on Seattle’s progressive garbage policies:
Rather than take additional steps to remove illegal encampments, officials have chosen to accept, and even enable, them. The city council recently launched a pilot programme to offer weekly garbage-pickup services to ten of the more than 400 encampments, promoting the illusion that these illegal tent cities are just like any other neighbourhood. The programme has been a failure. According to a Seattle Times report, campers returned only 26 percent of the trash bags that the city distributed and “even some of the ones returned had been ripped apart by people looking for needles with a bit of heroin left.”
When the local seafood is testing positive for opioids, it’s probably fair to say that something is awry.
And because I’m only human, one from The Onion:
Saying their once-beloved viewers have lost much of their lustre in recent years, Game Of Thrones showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff acknowledged Friday they have been frustrated with the way fans of the HBO series have declined in quality over the past few seasons.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Liberty seem to have realised what their name means:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48315979
I’m sure it won’t last long, though.
condemned science as “fataphobic” for “promoting the idea that certain bodies are fit, able and desirable.”
Reality’s a bitch.
Reality’s a bitch.
Ms Rashatwar is a “community organiser” and self-described “donut queen.”
But remember, her high blood pressure and other health issues are nothing to do with her own prodigious eating habits. It’s all the fault of the fataphobic white supremacist patriarchy.
I’m guessing her relationship with reality is not an altogether happy one.
cooking the books for “diversity”
That.
The need for due process in the culture wars.
Target acquired and then missed by about, ooh, a million parsecs.
I mean, just imagine the faffing about that this would engender.
*And that’s a non-starter, too.
Giving it a bit more thought- the article should have ended with the phrase “Much better, surely, would be a rational approach…”
… a self-proclaimed Fat Sex Therapist, compared fitness trainers to Nazis…
To be fair, good fitness trainers are like Nazis because they, just like the Nazis*, proved beyond all doubt that anyone can be made to lose weight.
When the local seafood is testing positive for opioids…
The headline vs. buried at the end…
Homeopathic fish and shellfish. Not exactly TEOTWAWKI, though the ability to detect ever increasingly minute and insignificant trace molecules is to be applauded.
The tolerant left, Chapter 88726.
*(TBF to the Nazis, all dictators, for that matter)
Titania McGrath: https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1130571613353725952
The idea that the first to cross the finish line should be considered the “winner” is the reason why obese people are so underrepresented in competitive racing.
Me: merit is sooo overrated. Results should be proportional to identity, just like MLK said.
@Lancastrian Oik
“In my book “Whiteshift”*, I argue that we need a moral jurisprudence that mirrors our legal body of rulings to decide whether individuals are ‘guilty’ of ethical transgressions and what the severity of punishment should be….”
This is a case of ‘if it ain’t broke…’. Having a systematised way of judging whether individuals are guilty of ethical transgressions is better than the mob alternative (‘He who shrieks loudest and most piously carries the day’), but everyone getting together to decide that actually existing law is probably good enough and everything else should be left alone is probably the best of the routes to success available.
Reminded of this Steve Martin bit. Of course it seems the original SNL video is unavailable so the transcript will have to do.
AOC, doing the important work of decolonizing your vegetable garden.
Saying their once-beloved viewers have lost much of their lustre in recent years, Game Of Thrones showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff acknowledged Friday they have been frustrated with the way fans of the HBO series have declined in quality over the past few seasons.
The Onion is no longer parody. I can get you a real quote from a Marvel Comics vice president of sales that says worse about comic book buyers.
From 2017: “But speaking at the Marvel retailer summit about the studio’s falling comic sales since October, David Gabriel told ICv2 that retailers had told him that fans were sticking to old favourites. “What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity,” he said. “They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not.” He added: “I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales … Any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up.”
Because you can’t parody the Left. No matter how crazy and fucked up your example is, they will top you.
AOC, doing the important work of decolonizing your vegetable garden.
Today’s words are honk and honk.
Smash Antifas with bricks! Deplatform them! No space for Antifas! Shame them! Ostracize them! Make it so that they’ll never want to show their faces in public!
Wait … what?
Hold on. Lemme rethink that last bit.
speaking at the Marvel retailer summit about the studio’s falling comic sales since October, David Gabriel told ICv2 that retailers had told him that fans were sticking to old favourites.
Amazingly, readers don’t buy superhero comic books to endure badly-written, ill-informed, patronising lectures by ostentatiously woke characters who seem to exist primarily to deliver badly-written, ill-informed patronising lectures.
Insulting at least half of your own audience, directly or implicitly, isn’t an obvious winning strategy, commercially speaking.
[ Added: ]
I lost interest in the medium before the Great Enwokening, but I’ve seen plenty of evidence that, for many titles, storytelling and character have taken a back seat to indulging the writers’ tediously uniform political narcissism. Because everything must now be politicised, apparently, however ineptly or incongruously.
And so you end up with, say, Black Lives Matter cropping up, carefully sanitised and portrayed as self-evidently heroic, while mainstream views of which the left disapproves – a concern about illegal immigration, assimilation, free speech or whatever – are often shoehorned into the mouths of homicidal supervillains, whose views are used to signal dastardliness. Which is to say, a great chunk of the readership is being told, with varying degrees of directness, that their concerns, or the concerns of their friends or their parents, are reprehensible, something to be punished.
AOC, doing the important work of decolonizing your vegetable garden.
Plants familiar to people who live in the Bronx – some grass (both kinds), and an occasional tree ?
By the way, Ms Rashatwar, our doughnut-loving “fat activist,” equates routine health advice with eugenics and “Nazi science,” and claims that “diet culture and fat phobia are forms of sexual violence.”
Behold her wisdom here.
Which is to say, a great chunk of the readership is being told, with varying degrees of directness, that their concerns, or the concerns of their friends or their parents, are reprehensible, something to be punished.
Oh very much. I lost interest in about 1993, previous to which I have been an avid buyer of comics. I have the collection to prove it. ~:D I lost interest when two-page panels of blood-spatter became the “in” thing, along with anti-heros.
Of interest is the incestuous nature of the virtue signalling crowd in Hollywood, publishing and comics.
https://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2017/04/found-out-why-marvel-has-been-sucking.html
In 2017 two Marvel comics, Ms. Marvel and Black Panther, were nominated for the Hugo award. Ms. Marvel was not a raging sales success and still isn’t, while Black Panther was moving ~8000 copies per issue which is abysmal. It was cancelled, and a follow-on series was cancelled after two issues.
The net result of this circular arrangement is that publishers produce what wins awards, and the awards are given to the “right” books. Meaning crap no one reads keeps getting pushed out the door, and even imminent bankruptcy has no effect on the management OR the twerps in charge of the awards.
Elsewhere in academia.
New York City screwels.
Three generations of worthless “teachers” and administrators, desperately trying to protect their Iron Rice Bowls from the disaster they themselves created in NYC since the 1960s. Fifty years of fail.
Also, I saw somewhere else today, trying to explain/hide the fact that white students, even the ones from crappy homes with no money, score a full standard deviation higher on the SATs than the black kids. Even the ones from good homes with lots of money.
On average, of course. And lest we pallid people of pallor all be too cocky, Asians score higher than whites, on average.
I say, toxic culture! Because there’s enough half-black kids in the USA that the curve would move just from them if it was down to genetics.
And by culture, I mean the white kids shut up and at least listen in class. A lot more than the black kids. The Asian kids actually do homework.
And speaking of schools: Body armor.
https://ottawasun.com/news/local-news/ottawa-educators-offered-padded-shirts-arm-and-shin-guards-to-protect-themselves-from-violent-students/wcm/8fa028c9-ef1c-4121-8cd6-f2344d4599f6
“Educators at Ottawa’s English school boards can wear shin and forearm guards, foam-padded jackets and reinforced gloves to protect themselves from students who bite, kick, scratch and punch.
The “personal protective equipment” is employed as a last resort, say spokespeople for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and the Ottawa Catholic School Board.”
Educators… can wear shin and forearm guards, foam-padded jackets and reinforced gloves to protect themselves from students who bite, kick, scratch and punch.
Well, I suppose it’s better than being armed with the full weight of an emergency whistle.
Is there anything that is NOT sexual violence to feminists.? I can’t think of anything. I wonder how many funny uncles a biographer would find when delving into their pasts. If correct, we have 2 big problems here:
1). These women need treatment they aren’t getting. OK, granted, a lot of Americans can’t get treatment for conditions a lot more life-threatening than PTSD, but what about feminists in the First World? These countries need to reform their commitment laws so their feminists can get the help they need.
2.). Ruling-class men abdicated to mentally ill women who are incapable of ruling a nation. These men owe these women an apology and owe it to the rest of us to resume their rule. And we deserve an apology too.
I looked up 7 big-name feminists (all I had time for). There was surprisingly no mention of sexual abuse in childhood for 6 of them. I suppose it could have happened and they kept it quiet, but I think that unlikely—feminists aren’t exactly known for keeping quiet about their personal problems. What they all did have in common was being fatherless or having a very poor, but non-incestuous, relationship with Dad if they did know who he was.
There are plenty of fatherless women, and women who have lousy fathers, who don’t go crazy and become SJW feminists. More research is needed. But not by me. I have too much to do, sorry.
3 of the 7 big-name feminists were Jewish and one was the illegitimate daughter of a Jewish man who refused to have anything more to do with her or her mother after her birth. I only know a handful of Jews myself (all of whom have perfectly average family relationships) so I cannot offer an opinion on whether Jewish father-daughter relationships are unusually fraught compared to other faiths, or on whether when Jewish women crack up they do so in a particularly public manner. I just don’t have a big enough sample size. (9 people, 2 of whom are what is usually called “ethnically Jewish” but do not practice the Jewish faith.). More research is needed. But not by me.
David, stop wiping the bar! More research is needed!
Considering that group traits of everybody from fat folks to southpaws have been extensively studied, I was surprised I couldn’t pull up group info on feminists. I had to look each big name up individually. Maybe I worded the query wrong.
Sonalee Rashatwar blames the Reagan administration “for having refused to provide “social supports that also help me to subsidise my food costs.”
Given that she got her B.A. after entering college in 2006, assuming she was 18 when she did so, that means she was born in 1988, the last year of his administration. Even if she was a few years older, I find it hard to believe that her mother needed taxpayer money for more formula than what the government was already providing at the time through the WIC program.
I’ve seen plenty of evidence that, for many titles, storytelling and character have taken a back seat to indulging the writers’ tediously uniform political narcissism.
The YouTube Channel Diversity in Comics has been chronicling this for some time. No matter how bad you think it is, let me assure you: it is much, much worse.
even imminent bankruptcy has no effect on the management
Not relevant. Neither DC nor Marvel comics have been profitable in decades. They serve as idea factories for the TV and film divisions of their parent companies. They’re an R&D expense, and so the bottom line isn’t material to their decisions.
Unfortunately the same can’t be said of the larger ecosystem. Something like 50%+ of specialty comic shops in North America have gone under in the last ten years, and many of them directly blame Marvel producing books the customers don’t want.
More research is needed!
Not really. I hate you Daaaaad/Pay attention to meeeeeee adequately explains the behaviour of modern feminism without further analysis required.
As an aside, just because they haven’t yet mentioned childhood abuse doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It’s common for BPD/CPTSDs to downplay or dismiss their childhood abuse as irrelevant in order to avoid having to acknowledge the impact it had on their psyche. Much of Richard Dawkins’ work takes on a different tenor once you know that he was molested at a religious boarding school as a child. A fairly well-known Canadian conservative pundit who frequently criticizes the Catholic church only acknowledged a similar incident a couple of years ago (although, much like Dawkins, the signs were pretty obvious).
Which is to say, a great chunk of the readership is being told, with varying degrees of directness, that their concerns, or the concerns of their friends or their parents, are reprehensible, something to be punished.
I remember in the 1980s, apartheid was the social topic that caring people ™ wanted to be seen fretting about, in order to prove their bona fides. There were a number of comics that were either anvillicious or flat out political tracts, including one issue of Teen Titans that had almost two consecutive pages of characters discussing South African facts and figures, which came right out of ANC brochures.
And the sales of those issues absolutely tanked.
There’s nothing wrong with being socially aware, and some great comics have been done that raise awareness. I’m thinking of things like the Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams GA/GL books in the early 1970s. But there’s a huge disconnect between showing issues, and letting people decide for themselves, and lecturing like a finger-wagging scold.
A fairly well-known Canadian conservative pundit who frequently criticizes the Catholic church
Well don’t leave us hanging! The only two Canadian pundits with whom I’m familiar are Mark Steyn and Jordan Peterson, and I don’t recall either of them being particularly anti-Catholic (and Peterson’s “conservative” bona fides are questionable).
But there’s a huge disconnect between showing issues, and letting people decide for themselves, and lecturing like a finger-wagging scold.
One of the drawbacks of the printed word is that, pre-Internet, it was almost always a monologue. The author would preach to the world, and receive no immediate feedback, let alone push-back, so the temptation to push an agenda was always there. Marvel has been guilty of this from its earliest days, with the X-men being stand-ins for the marginalized group du jour (blacks, gays, whatevers).
One of the drawbacks of the printed word is that, pre-Internet, it was almost always a monologue. The author would preach to the world, and receive no immediate feedback, let alone push-back
Bingo. That and the fact that responding to media via post office was much more time consuming with the only chance of verification that you were heard would only come if they selected your letter for publishing op-ed so to speak. And the odds of that, both parties generally understood, was if either you played the media’s game and were rather obsequious in your counterpoint or were so nasty and/or stupid that they could use you as an example of the unreasonableness of other opinions.
Instalaunch!
Is there anything that is NOT sexual violence to feminists?
The frequency and incongruity with which the subject is invoked – in this case, the alleged molestation of routine health advice – does suggest an… odd preoccupation.
condemned science as “fataphobic” for “promoting the idea that certain bodies are fit, able and desirable.”
Reality’s a bitch.
See also Ms Stacie Huckeba, who told Guardian readers that obesity is “true beauty” and something to celebrate and encourage, while admitting that her own obesity resulted in breathing difficulties, back pain and continual discomfort, along with deranged screaming fits at polite strangers, and while admitting to great relief and a sense of “freedom” upon losing weight.
Well, I regret that I am not svelte in my old age, but nice people still open doors for me. Even when I don’t have a .45 on my hip.
Well, I regret that I am not svelte in my old age, but nice people still open doors for me.
As I’ve said before, I don’t generally care about a person’s size and wouldn’t usually pass comment; but fat activism does tend to involve a lot of psychodrama and self-contradiction.
the alleged molestation of routine health advice – does suggest an… odd preoccupation
Maybe, but I find that, when my mates point out in jovial fashion that I could stand to lose a few kilos round the midriff, shouting “Leave me alone you fucking rapists!” is a really good way to stave off the banter.
shouting “Leave me alone you fucking rapists!” is a really good way to stave off the banter.
Well, that works for pretty much anything. Like being asked for directions, or when handed the bill for the meal you’ve just eaten.
#LifestyleTips
Why bother with Mozart, when you’ve got Stormzy?
https://news.sky.com/story/stormzy-should-replace-mozart-in-uk-music-classrooms-study-says-11725859
Why bother with Mozart, when you’ve got Stormzy?
There was a time, not too long ago, when pupils from modest backgrounds would be introduced to the music of Mozart, Bach, etc., precisely because of the fact they might otherwise never encounter it. Apparently, this approach is now deemed terribly old hat.
“development of disillusioned youngsters”
Not sure if the goal is to create or correct this phenomenon.
Why bother with Mozart, when you’ve got Stormzy?
The trend among leftist educators towards shrinking the wider world and its possibilities in order to “reflect” the students’ own “identities,” and their adolescent preoccupations, and thereby spare them from feeling ignorant or parochial, has been noted before. See, for instance, the first item here. And the third and fourth items here.
[ Added: ]
At risk of sounding antiquated, you’d think that an education worth having might, by design, remind students of just how little they currently know and how much there is to find out. Whether about music or anything else.
…you’d think that an education worth having might, by design, remind students of just how little they currently know and how much there is to find out. Whether about music or anything else.
Somehow, I can’t see that going down well as a proposition at an NUT meeting.
Why bother with Mozart, when you’ve got Stormzy?
The Youth Music website is an excellent example of much that’s wrong with the ‘charity’ sector. Looking at their website, you’d think the ethnic make-up of Britain was much the same as that of Soweto. Until, of course, you come to the (lengthy) staff page, which is full of lily-white types who look like they wouldn’t survive a 3 week soy drought.
Funding comes, naturallement, from the Arts Council of Great Britain ie the poor bloody taxpayer. The Arts Council provides 94% of Youth Music’s funding. On the bright side, staff costs are less than 10% of the budget.
Meanwhile, in The Great White North, a vegan claims his human rights were violated.
No, you chose to go hungry.
Sent him home from being deployed to a giant forest fire where obviously the most important logistic thing was to make the food service for the other 999 firefighters comply with this one idiot’s whims. I’ll bet he wonders why normal people think he is a PITA.
Related to the above, those who do not study history, are doomed to be buffoons.
Also, I’m not seeing the downside.
Instalaunch!
I think you meant “Instalanch”, although “instalunch” would be appropriate for a “fat activist”.
who look like they wouldn’t survive a 3 week soy drought
Heh.
Marvel has been guilty of this from its earliest days
I read classic comics by getting pirate torrents of scans of original physical issues. It’s not a cost thing; there are subscription services that will get you access to the entire DC/Marvel back catalog for next to nothing.
What it gets me is the original letters pages, which thanks to evolving information laws they don’t have the rights to reprint. In the early days (1963-1979) both Marvel and DC printed letters across the gamut of opinion and they actively solicited feedback positive and negative. They had to; they were still independent and it was the only way to know what the customers wanted.
And DC was much more open about printing negative letters and responding to each one they printed. Stan Lee developed his “Stan The Man” persona early and didn’t deviate. His responses to letters were just canned stock phrases.
I’ll admit that I don’t know much about the history of Veganism, but I’m pretty sure it WAS invented by white people. Because only middle and upper class westerners are so goddamn privileged that they can afford to remove things like milk and eggs from their diet, and supplement themselves with vitamins.
No wonder these people constantly go on about white privilege, they secretly know they’re covered in it, and their entire lifestyle depends on it.