Her Loveliness Revealed
Here’s an idea! Change your parents’ bad voting habits by refusing to breed.
In the pages of Slate, Christina Cauterucci, whose enthusiasms include “gender and feminism,” wishes to share her wisdom:
The prospect of harnessing one’s sexual and reproductive powers for social good is a tempting one. So, I’d like to present what I humbly consider a much better proposal: Instead of a sex strike, let’s try a grandkid strike.
It’s a “brilliant new weapon of progressivism,” says Ms Cauterucci, and “exactly the kind of radical response today’s radical threats to equity, justice, and humanity demand.” Specifically,
It’s time to demand that baby boomers and Gen Xers decide which they’d rather have: their vague attachments to policies that have poisoned the earth and will soon make it difficult for anyone but the obscenely wealthy to live healthy, happy lives, or a pack of adorable munchkins in itty-bitty suspenders ready for unlimited tickle fights and cookie-baking sessions.
This is followed almost immediately by,
I’ve already decided that I’m not having kids,
Which, for the purposes of Ms Cauterucci’s article, is somewhat convenient. This reproductive decision was, we’re told, arrived at because,
Child care is extravagantly expensive, and paid family leave is a rare luxury. Bringing a new set of chubby cheeks and wonderfully incomprehensible babblings into the world is the most destructive thing one couple can do to the planet. It seems certain that today’s babies will be tomorrow’s survivors of famine, water shortages, unprecedented natural disasters, and refugee crises.
And furthermore,
It’s unethical, what with climate change and all. And it’s too dangerous—you’ve seen the news reports on school shootings and know how easy it is for violent men to get their hands on guns.
Um, okay then. Apparently, the thought of becoming a parent immediately conjures mental images of famine, earthquakes, shootings and death. Proof, if more were needed, that the exquisitely woke are just like thee and me. Not unhinged in any way.
One person’s decision to have a child or not have a child won’t make the difference between cool breezes and boiling seas. But you know what could make that difference? Lots of people dangling their potential future snugglebugs in front of the noses of their right-wing, centrist, or politically complacent parents to cajole them into supporting policies and candidates that have a hope of redeeming this planet before it becomes one big overheated sandbox.
Those “right wing, centrist, or politically complacent parents” – the parents you love, presumably – must be purged of their “ill-informed allegiances,” and made to conform politically, with the threat of never seeing grandchildren. Which is how well-adjusted adult offspring behave, of course.
Just imagine: Your Republican parents are lukewarm on Donald Trump but will probably support his re-election, or maybe they’re Democrats who’ve sworn they’ll never elect a “socialist.” They’ve been bugging you and your partner to have kids for years; perhaps they’ve even kept your old sandbox and bedtime books in their basement in hopes of breaking them out again when you decide to breed. You sit them down and break the news: You’re not going to make any grandchildren anytime soon.
Yes, a world in which unhinged lefties don’t reproduce in order to spite their own parents. Imagine the horror.
Your parents pause to envision the lonely quarter-century ahead, a far cry from the years of trumpet recitals, slumber parties, and trips to Disney World they’d long imagined. They ask what they can do to ensure their own legacies in the form of a pudgy little sweetums in a romper. They plead with you, promising to do everything in their power to help ease your concerns. Lucky for them, you have an answer: radicalise.
At which point, it occurs to me that the words cult-like behaviour may not be entirely inappropriate. If Ms Cauterucci’s fantasy scenario isn’t sounding sufficiently like the rambling of someone in need of specialist help, it continues,
It’s up to you to set the parameters of your own grandkid strike. Maybe you’ll be satisfied if your parents prove to you, via voting booth selfie or supervised completion of an absentee ballot, that they voted for the sufficiently progressive candidate of your choice.
This goes on for some time.
Maybe you’ll give them a coupon for a weekend with your hypothetical child for every lobbying day they attend on Capitol Hill or the nearest statehouse.
And,
Maybe you’ll have an extra kid for every act of highly visible civil disobedience they perform, like chaining themselves to the Statue of Liberty or scaling a flagpole to remove a Confederate flag.
And,
Maybe you’ll promise them one FaceTime session with your spawn for every call they make to a legislator.
Ms Cauterucci’s parents are no doubt proud of their daughter and her charming, terribly enlightened fantasies of coercion, in which children are imagined primarily as a form of political leverage, a tool of rather sadistic emotional punishment. And all in the name of progressive piety.
Maybe you’ll promise them one FaceTime session with your spawn for every call they make to a legislator.
Someone needs medication.
You’re too late, poppet. Europe is already well below replacement levels and falling. Oh, and by the way, if you don’t have children you won’t have grandchildren either.
I blame the parents
Someone needs medication.
Well, when you’re publicly sharing lengthy, elaborate and openly sadistic fantasies of people coercing their own parents, using access to their grandchildren as leverage, to enforce political conformity, and with no thought for the preferences and wellbeing of the children, all supposedly in the name of piety, then… I think it’s fair to say something sounds awry.
As someone quipped in reply via Twitter, Ms Cauterucci’s article unwittingly confirms the image of self-righteous ‘progressives’ often having dysfunctional relationships, being bedevilled by urges to punish anyone who disagrees, especially the elderly, even their own parents, and happily indulging in grotesque emotional manipulation to enforce conformity and make themselves feel powerful.
Do ‘progressives’ ever grow up? Serious question.
A self selecting program of eugenic improvement.
Darwin smiles.
So does Margaret Sanger.
A self selecting program of eugenic improvement.
If only. Alas, they reproduce via indoctrination, so anyone who sends children to public “education” facilities is helping perpetuate the madness.
Give her a choice: either have kids or she forfeits her goddamned Social Security. Progs setup the SS ponzi scheme so that kids pay for their parents. No kids, no SS.
Do ‘progressives’ ever grow up?
I’ll just leave this here, I think.
And this.
It’s ‘too dangerous’ to have children because they might get shot?
Not a nutter then.
…radical threats to equity, justice, and humanity…
Nothing quite says, “equity, justice, and humanity”, like “You will have party approved thoughts and deeds, tovarich”.
Your parents pause to envision the lonely quarter-century ahead, a far cry from the years of trumpet recitals, slumber parties, and trips to Disney World they’d long imagined.
OTOH, they could be having the time of their lives hanging with their pals, travelling the world, indulging in hobbies, and generally spending your inheritance shut of you, your no doubt odious partner, and what would be equally odious and bratudinous crotch fruit.
On top of all that, did anyone notice she’s (supposedly) a lesbian? Once the right wingers ban turkey basters, it will all be a moot point for her anyway.
Nothing quite says, “equity, justice, and humanity”, like “You will have party approved thoughts and deeds, tovarich”.
That.
So she wants to avoid famine by supporting socialism? I wonder if she’s ever heard of the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, etc.
Just in case Mom and Dad were ever concerned that they’ve raised a silly little princess, here’s Christina removing all possible doubt.
Hopefully her parents had some children that lived./Full Metal Jacket.
She’s discovered the patriarchal plot. Having your grandchildren around you is the delayed reward for the hard and mostly thankless duty of being a parent. Your job as a parent isn’t to be liked by your children, it’s to prepare them to be good mothers and fathers themselves. It’s an oppressive system of man handing on misery to man, but nobody’s been able to come up with a sustainable alternative.
As for the child-free movement, since its underlying attitude, its perception of homo sapiens being an invasive species on the earth itself, is badthink when it’s applied to anyone except whites, all they’ll end up doing is replacing a white patriarchy with an imported patriarchy.
There is something going on with boomers and their slow-to-arrive grandchildren. Because boomers paid a historically low price for the transition from adolescence into adulthood – sexual freedom followed by respectable marriage, sticking it to the man followed by respectable middle class careers – many of them didn’t have the necessary mindset to guide their own children into adulthood. It’s all fun and self-flattering when your teenage children’s friends think you’re cool. It’s when your children are 30- or 40-year-old adolescents, and there’s no sign of grandchildren, that the price is finally paid.
She really can’t think two steps ahead, can she? She’s going to be sooooo shocked when the executor opens her parents’ wills, and finds all their money bequeathed to her own children – not to her – on the condition that they leave home at age 18, with the money otherwise defaulting to the Republican Party, or the NRA, etc.
I blame the parents
I bet she went to university.
Her parents should respond “No grandkids? Well, then, you have no need to inherit our estate so we are changing the will and everything goes to Sisters of Life“
Your job as a parent isn’t to be liked by your children,
I’ve said often that if your adolescent daughter screams “I HATE YOU!!! in your face and you do not dissolve into a puddle of quivering goo, you know you’re doing your parenting job right.
/Mom of 4 daughters, grandma of 5.
As so often, the author gives the impression that she’s oddly oblivious to what her own words imply about her.
Everyone I know who has grand kids has lost a large part of their brain. They become obsessed with this little rug rats with whom the share some DNA … they often work NOT in their own best interests, but rather want to be a constant part of the lives of their childrend’s families. Maybe not a great idea … maybe get a hobby and leave the kids alone.
A blue check mark, naturally.
The woman is basically a fascist. In Pol pot’s Cambodia she’d jump right into the killing. She is the reason for democracy, she has no respect for any opinion other than her own, not even the opinions of the people who raised her, put food on her table and a roof over her head. Always remember people like her are around us.
More evidence–if any was necessary–that prog-lefties lack the self-awareness gene.
A lesbian “decides” she’s not having children…and then dilates a thousands words-worth of a rationalization demonstrating an unfitness for parenthood due to her insanity.
It would be great if *every* leftist who would indoctrinate their children in their vile ideology of legitimised robbery, invasive tyranny and social division decided not to breed. Then we would just need to work out how to keep them out of the education system so they couldn’t poison the minds of decent peoples children.
I wonder if she’s ever heard of the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, etc
“That Wasn’t Real Socialism/Communism”©
I’ve already decided that I’m not having kids,
Bullet dodged.
Correcting an error a generation late is still correcting an error. I agree with Christina–don’t reproduce.
It might sound like I ain’t got a dog in this fight, since at the moment there is no cure for autism and if one were to be discovered it would be priced beyond our (and everyone’s) reach (though I suppose we could join the Insulin Caravan to Canada and buy our Fukitol* while our fellow bus-riders were buying their insulin), but I think everyone has a dog in this fight, or at least everyone who thinks they may get old has a dog in this fight. Our businesses have already decided they’d rather automate everything. A machine never calls in sick, and it works cheap. So there you sit in the nursing home, in 2049, and you’re getting pretty darn hungry because, due to a computer glitch, nobody’s been fed in 3 days, and no one can get into the kitchen because the Safety First! software won’t allow Valued Residents into the kitchen. And nobody can get out, for the same reason, or call 911. (Nursing homes have to have strict precautions in these areas because they house dementia patients.). You literally have nobody to call even if you could—your contemporaries are dead, that’s why you’re here, and your daughter and her husband are at a Vipassana retreat where they had to surrender their phones.
Sure would be nice if anybody had grandchildren in the area who might decide to pop in…
* The name of a fictional Big Pharma drug, coined by http://drgrumpyinthehouse.blogspot.com/ , whom you should add to your blogroll right now.
Instead of a sex strike, let’s try a grandkid strike.
I’d write that sadistic little Stalinist out of the will: It would leave her a copy of the Black Book of Communism, plus a brief explanation of why that was all she was getting.
“I think everyone has a dog in this fight…Sure would be nice if anybody had grandchildren…”
Yes indeed. But what can you do when your children long ago decided to treat you as a Class Enemy? As the gloomy aphorism goes, in war the enemy gets a vote too.
Ah the angry child, who, on not getting her way, cries herself to sleep, telling herself, “I’ll run away from home and never come back and that will teach them.” It’s all so melodramatic.
My favourite is Ralphie’s “blind fantasy” in A Christmas Story.
Has anybody noticed how many of the most vicious Maoists are female?
It’s a “brilliant new weapon of progressivism,” says Ms Cauterucci,
Honk! Honk!
“I’ve…I’m not having…” followed by apologia. So, not being selfish for alleged selfless reasons, then.
Okey dokey.
“That Wasn’t Real Socialism/Communism”©
The difference between Nazi and Communist is when you say how horrible Nazis have been, they don’t say, “Well, real Nazism has never been tried” Kate at Smallseadanimals.
We have a private ballot in this country. Unless you’re in the booth with them, how do you know for sure who or what they voted for?
…a “brilliant new weapon of progressivism,”…
To riff on the old saying, progressivism, ideas so good they have to be weaponized to
ram them down your throatsget people to accept them. What’s not to like ?But what can you do when your children long ago decided to treat you as a Class Enemy?
This is why parents, even if they are cool to religion themselves, absolutely should attend church or synagogue regularly when the children are little.
There’s nothing in the Bible about being obligated to love your parents; however, one of the Commandments is that you must honor them.
Find a pastor or rabbi that will stand up to Leftcult SJWs and be a part of that denomination.
Unless you’re in the booth with them, how do you know for sure who or what they voted for?
The goosestepper writing says she’d require proof …
Democrats already have practice of this with ballot harvesting drives. They especially enjoy trolling nursing homes to register and “help” the residents vote absentee.
odious and bratudinous crotch fruit.
I like Terrence Popp’s “vaginal turds” myself, but “crotch fruit” is good too:-).
Give her a choice: either have kids or she forfeits her goddamned Social Security. Progs setup the SS ponzi scheme so that kids pay for their parents. No kids, no SS.
So she pops out a bastard child, raises him to be a self-loathing parasite, and suddenly she’s entitled to other people’s money?
Better: abolish SS. Let people who are still working keep their own money. Tell people who’ve planned their retirements around a hypothetical future government of selfless bureaucrats keeping the promises of former generations of vote-buying politicians that they were suckered and are entitled to nothing (see Flemming vs. Nestor). They can go ask their kids for help (hah!).
Yeah, it sucks to be robbed in exchange for empty promises, but that which cannot go on forever, won’t. I’ve long since resigned myself to never getting one red cent of the next generations welfare taxes, despite having had my own paychecks garnished for the past 30 years to pay for the Boomers’ old age welfare.
…you know you’re doing your parenting job right.
My mother, an elementary school teacher, told me (and I assume my five siblings heard this too) “My job is not to look after you, it is to make you able to look after yourself.”
She died before any of her grandchildren were born.
So you won’t chunk out grandsprogs ? Problem sorted.
She sounds nice.
tomorrow’s survivors of famine, water shortages, unprecedented natural disasters, and refugee crises.
No, no, you silly shrew. That was my generation that inherited Beyond Thunderdome, just like we were told.
Has anybody noticed how many of the most vicious Maoists are female?
And the most eager enforcers in Islam are often the female relations. This is not coincidental.
Has anybody noticed how many of the most vicious Maoists are female?
“Social justice” posturing does seem to attract a high concentration of absurd, obnoxious women. More than chance would allow.
I think this article might have been intended as humor. Unfortunately SJWs are only funny when they are not trying to be.
”I’ve already decided that I’m not having kids,…”
What a wonderful choice. The fewer lefty-loonies breeding the better. Indeed there are too many unwanted children in the world, so not having children is both humanitarian and good for the environment.
As for ”… the most vicious Maoists are female?” That makes sense. I used to have three GSD bitches and their fights were a sight to behold. I suspect its a nature-nurture thing with the females being immediately responsible for their young so have to be prepared to fight. That’s my wife’s theory anyway, but she’s not a mother and states she has no maternal ”gene” in her. Hormones and emotional state may have something to do with it.
Jim
Other than the other points of stupid that have been covered beautifully by others here, what also struck me was the assumptiont that her parents, the baby boomers are so stupid, so spineless and have such empty lives that they will a) have nothing else in their lives if their unpleasant daughter does not have unpleasant children; b) will see no issue with forfeiting their legal rights to gain access to their daughter’s children, and; c) don’t instinctively know that any person who is (ostensibly) happy to forfeit raising a family if it means they can bully their parents to vote the way they choose is also likely to be the sort of parent who will dump those kids on their grandparents constantly because parenting is hard/messy/sexist/gets in the way of tinder/childcare is expensive coz trump.
Has the author come out yet and announced that they ‘can’t believe’ all the angry white men are so ‘angry’ at an article that was ‘clearly satire’ yet??
Well the first thing occurring to me is to counter by introducing the dear loving daughter to the Power of Will….specifically, the Power of the Last Will and Testament. Get me? Fido and Mittens get everything; You get nothing, but you can dine on your moral rectitude. Of course, there is the little matter of a provision being established that provides you with a stipend – as the parent of my grandchild, who will get a whopper of a trust – when he or she reaches majority.
In the broader subject of how unhinged the left has become, got this from my decades ago college roommate who inexplicably (at the time) dropped off of social media. Posting this because it’s an honest, real world example of how totally lost many elements of our society have become…
That’s a shame.
I wish the deranged lefties who are determined to remove themselves from the gene pool would show a little courage and do it right now.
Has anybody noticed how many of the most vicious Maoists are female?
Or girlie boys. Yes, we’ve noticed.
NTSOG:” I suspect its a nature-nurture thing with the females being immediately responsible for their young so have to be prepared to fight.”
Kipling knew this:
“But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.”
Ha. Kipling appears to be describing Woman here as a warship. OK then.
What was he thinking of in the poem? A commentary on Victoria and Empire?
No, more on biological reality. And the consequences of it.
@TimT
Obviously, Kipling was taken by divine inspiration, though he may not have realized it at the time 🙂
She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.
Unprovoked and awful charges — even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons — even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish — like the Jesuit with the squaw!
I must admit I’m not very familiar with the poem – I have read it, and I love Kipling.
I do know he was a poet of Empire, grew up on the outskirts of the Empire on which the Sun never Set, and worked his way up to becoming the Poet Laureate. He could be a master of the oblique statement (“did he really mean it….?”), seen in his hymn to empire set to music (‘Lest we forget’) – it’s so strikingly melancholy, so full of the acceptance of the death of empire, that it seems more like a funeral dirge for an already defeated Britain than a celebratory orison to the empire. And the hymn became a favourite in British empire churches all over the world! You’ve got to be a very good sort of poet laureate to get away with that.
So I wonder about the odd metaphors here. ‘Wedded to convictions’. Or ‘speech that drips, corrodes and poisons ‘ – is he talking about women here, or cobras, or, say, political ideology?
Well, time for me to reread the poem I guess!
I bet she went to university.
Ms Cauterucci has a Master’s degree in journalism from Georgetown University, which may help explain her hallucinatory politics. It may also explain the rumblings about the expense of having children, and the general air of bitterness. Given the ongoing decline of the print media, and given that the supply of would-be leftwing journalists – or rather, leftwing opinionators – exceeds demand by orders of magnitude, it’s not the most obviously lucrative field of expertise. Or an obvious means of repaying hefty student debts.
Choices having consequences and all.
Conspicuously make an appointment with a lawyer to check your will and watch the radical fervour deflate like a balloon.
Progessivism always comes down to coercion.
A related example of the type. If you have any questions, just look into her eyes:
Ms Cauterucci has a Master’s degree in journalism from Georgetown University
Tuition fees for this are $41,760. No wonder she’s angry.
just look into her eyes
NO! NEVER look directly into their eyes.
Ms Cauterucci has a Master’s degree in journalism from Georgetown University
Ah, the contemporary equivalent of a basket weaving degree. (Stares at B.A. JOUR degree from UNC)
contemporary equivalent of a basket weaving degree
That’s an “Bachelor of Arts in Osier Engineering” degree now, buddy! It’s WORTH that $150,000 down the academic oubliette!.
They plead with you, promising to do everything in their power to help ease your concerns. Lucky for them, you have an answer: radicalise.
– I bet it wouldn’t work-out the way she so fondly imagines it would. Narcissists always pre-soundboard their conversations ( – don’t ask me how I know – ), then act insulted when in the real-world, the conversation radically diverges from how they think it’ll go.
– Oh, like:
“You know what, dear? You’re right. You’re absolutely right, we SHOULD be putting more effort into supporting you. So here’s what we’ll do – you remember that date we made to house-sit your place this Summer, while you’re in Europe with your friends? Well, sorry – something’s just come-up, so we won’t be able to make it…”
” – WHAT??? WHAT’S just ‘come-up’???!”
“Oh – your mother and I are going on a world cruise!”
” – MY INHERITANCE!!!”
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
” – Well, can I come?”
“No.”
For some reason this reminds me of medieval wardship. Young scions, orphaned or not, spending years in someone else’s household as comfortable hostages.
Also, as decnine said near the start of the comments: I too blame the parents.
@ TimT
Haven’t quite finished my ‘Queering Kipling’ dissertation, but this is my understanding.
Wedded to convictions – she treats her beliefs like a husband, assuming she doesn’t have one (=’in default of grosser ties’). In 1905 this meant she honors him, cherishes, until death do you part, etc.
Her contentions – the disputes about which she is passionate
are her children – she is protective of her contentions as if they were her children.
Heaven help him who denies! – Suggesting that she may be mistaken about immigration is like saying that her brat is stupid and she’s not raising him right.
Speech that drips corrodes, and poisons – refers to speech patterns which Kipling regards as typically female in a dispute, and comparable to the bite of a cobra.
The comparisons in the second stanza are references to earlier parts of the poem, which I did not quote, and are much clearer when read in context.
Twenty years ago I wouldn’t have given this poem (or others like it, such as The Gods of the Copybook Headings) a second thought, dismissing them as pathetic leftovers of a chauvinist past. But now I think there is a kernel of truth to them – which is not to say they are always the right explanation, or applicable to every individual.
For example, some people argue that the dominance of emotive arguments in modern politics is a result of female suffrage, explaining that women are more emotional than men, and that therefore politicians find it easier to manipulate them than to convince men. It seems to me that the dominance of television as a medium is a much better explanation for this phenomenon, because television is much stronger when appealing to emotion than to reason, and has been the central medium for several generations. This is absolutely not because my wife is looking over my shoulder. And in any case, there have been quite a few successful demagogues well before women got the vote, so even if there is a difference, it may not be of a degree sufficient to transform the public sphere.
This is absolutely not because my wife is looking over my shoulder.
[ Slides medal for Bravery In The Face Of Terrible Danger along bar. ]
This is absolutely not because my wife is looking over my shoulder.
Dude, that’s a cry for help. Unfortunately we’re gonna need more info to work with here. A street address, a zip code, a continent. Something like that.
she treats her beliefs like a husband … is protective of her contentions as if they were her children
GKC
@ Zionist Overlord: ”… some people argue that the dominance of emotive arguments in modern politics is a result of female suffrage, explaining that women are more emotional than men, and that therefore politicians find it easier to manipulate them than to convince men.”
May I suggest that since the late 1960s open ”emotionalism” has become acceptable and the norm to the point that calm, reasoned and logical discourse is more the exception. This emotionalism amplified by the anonymity of private channels of communication which allows personal abuse without having to experience face-to-face return fire. Part of this ”emotionalism” is that personal feelings being hurt is now considered a crime, almost more so than being physically assaulted and the claim of personal hurt is used as a tactic to disrupt logical discussion and avoid natural consequences. Personal hurt is used as a shield and a tactic to disrupt and manipulate others.
For me, being autistic, the rise of extreme emotionalism has made living in open society much harder. The logical and consistent rules of behaviour of the 1950s and ’60s when I grew up have been replaced with a level of chaotic emotional illogicality I find very hard to manage and comprehend. I am frequently overwhelmed by this rampant emotionalism [which I find extremely distressing to see/experience; it over-whelms me] and, more and more, retreat to the safety of my small farm which I rarely leave nowadays.
Jim
More ‘woke’ from Gillette … here’s to them going ‘broke’ in the future.
For me, being autistic, the rise of extreme emotionalism has made living in open society much harder.
And also for those of us who aren’t – albeit, I’m sure, to a lesser extent. The fashionable prickliness tends to deter friendly debate and factual challenge, however measured and polite, and so even ludicrous claims and errors can spread with a kind of imperviousness. Certain subjects become radioactive, as it were, and any inclination to correct, or dispute, or even mildly qualify, is often outweighed by the level of hostility and aggravation that seems likely to result. One learns to bite one’s lip.
In my experience, this hostility is most pronounced among the severely educated, students and former students who incline to the left, and who seem to have been encouraged to identify emotionally with a set of propositions, and to react emotionally when those propositions are called into question. And so, if you approach a given topic, of which there are a growing number, in ways that aren’t expected – that aren’t authorised – this can be taken as if it were some personal affront, a scandal. By testing the premise, one becomes the enemy.
I just read an article on Breitbart about Gillette Mark II and the ”father” teaching his daughter to shave. What a fashionable perversion of reality by the far left gender-benders. So many youngsters being used and abused who will be seeking legal redress in years to come and who will require expensive and ongoing psychiatric care.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/05/27/gillette-touts-transgenderism-celebrates-daughter-shaving-face/
pst314 @ May 26, 2019 at 17:30 wrote:
Has anybody noticed how many of the most vicious Maoists are female?
Like The White-Boned Demon, perhaps the most vicious and certainly the most powerful of them all?
…and who will require expensive and ongoing psychiatric care.
Slatestarcodex’s description of the APA conference should disabuse us all of that notion, in a “please no more gasoline on the fire” sort of way.
Nice to chat poetry, thanks Zionist Overlord. (Cool title!)
“some people argue that the dominance of emotive arguments in modern politics is a result of female suffrage”
I put it down to a resurgence of cultural romanticism. Bertrand Russell defined romanticism well as the belief that any intense emotion was the highest good.
Only this morning I saw a web conversation where one guy made an eminently sensible contribution and was treated like an utter dirtbag for it. I know why – it was in a feminist forum (well, close enough) and was related to a big news story. I can read these cues more, and know when to avoid conversation. (Though sometimes wading in anyway.) I felt for this poor guy though.
this hostility is most pronounced among the severely educated, students and former students who incline to the left…
I like the phrase ”severely educated” and wonder if these severely educated students are people who have issues with strength of personality and a weak sense of Self? In a sense are they are empty human ”vessels” needing to be ”filled” via the indoctrination of the various schools of social studies? Perhaps such schools are a form of leftist ”boot camp” to drill them into conforming?
@ Hopp Singg: It looks like psychiatry as a Profession is all aboard the ”Woke Train” and is moving away from any scientific/empirical basis of operating.
Okay, that last comment was a little oblique. It seems pertinent to the general discussion here, so I’ll explain. The ‘big news story’ was the brutal murder of a young woman, Courtney Herron, in a Melbourne park. This comes in the context of three other recent murders or rapes and murders of women in Melbourne.
The response of the Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews – he’s Labor and lefty progressive to the core – has been simply to make a speech that “women should be allowed to walk alone in parks at night, this is a problem with male violence”. (This started last year following the dreadful murder of a young comedian in the same park.) I agree with both of those points, actually – you can’t seriously deny that most violent crimes are committed by men. But coming from the top politician in our state, it’s particularly disingenuous – I’d rather a commitment to making the state safer with pragmatic policies rather than the utterance of progressive pieties. At any rate, the comments – surely intended as a distraction from a Premier who *didn’t* have any real policies on this matter – worked; leftists (who are numerous in Melbourne) went absolutely *nuts*. Finally, here was a Premier saying what they’d been saying all along!
So, flash forward to a few days ago and the discovery of another body. And it seems the received political wisdom – “women should be able to walk alone in parks at night, this is a problem with male violence” – has gone from the Premier to the assistant police commissioner, who said pretty much exactly the same thing in a press conference about the crime. All well and good – but it doesn’t stop the murder from happening. And this assistant police commissioner made the comments before almost *any* of the particulars of the case were known! It emerged that the poor girl was a drug addict, she was homeless, she had mental health issues – all of which may have helped to explain what happened on the night of her murder.
The net result is now that lefties feel they own this issue. Any comments to complicate this matter, any comments to point out the political disingenuousness of the Premier, are shouted down. (The internet commenter I referred to in the comment above simply commented “What about male victims of violence?” and was met with a predictable “Just for once can’t we have a conversation about….” You know the script.
And of course is a serious topic, and you have to be sensitive. But if we’ve got to the point where any practical comments about the extent of violence, or how violence may be stopped, are sneered at as ‘victim blaming’ or ‘male fragility’, then we’ve got a problem.
Sorry for the rant. 🙂
I am increasingly prone to reject out of hand the term ‘educated’. There is nothing to indicate that a recipient of a college credential has received anything like an education. The only measurable activity that has taken place is a certain length of time spent in school, therefore I prefoer to use the latter term in place of the former. So I propose the Style Book requirethe use of ‘profoundly over-schooled’ or the slightly more prolix ‘schooled beyond one’s capacity to profit from it’ instead.
Thank you.
@fnord: ”I am increasingly prone to reject out of hand the term ‘educated’. There is nothing to indicate that a recipient of a college credential has received anything like an education.”
Absolutely correct. It’s often said to young graduates by experienced professionals that their undergraduate degree is simply a licence to begin learning. I have said it dozens of times to novices beginning their professional careers. Generally I made the comment when they explained that they did not learn certain essential skills at college. This usually occurred after there was some incident or crisis that caught them out.
“they did not learn certain essential skills at college”
Would it be fair to say that most of these essential skills should have been learned (at least the foundations) in grade school and at home, long before college?
It looks like psychiatry as a Profession is all aboard the ”Woke Train” and is moving away from any scientific/empirical basis of operating.
It’s been moved for quite some time now. And from whence do you suppose “woke” came?
And rereading that, I suppose my assertion needs some backup? What percentage of psychology and/or psychiatry experiments have been show to be repeatedly reproducible?
@ WTP: ”It’s been moved for quite some time now.”
I retired about three years ago after 40+ years working as a behaviour specialist during which time I had regular contact/consultation with psychologists and a number of psychiatrists as we endeavoured to bring under control and stabilise the disturbed behaviour of children and adults presenting with developmental impairments including a percentage also presenting with active psychiatric conditions. Perhaps I was fortunate that the members of those two professions I encountered were well grounded and understood the behavioural model. They worked close to the behavioural ”coal face” and had an accurate understanding of the problems I and my other specialist colleagues faced . However in the last 15 – 20 years I was working, often with very dangerous people, I increasingly ran into graduates of schools of social studies who abhorred Pavlov, Watson and Skinner and the behavioral model of intervention and believed that ”love [was] all you need”. Such people often caused problems and did not last long in the field as their fluffy sentimentality was quickly confronted by the [often extreme] behaviour of our clients who did not give a damn about leftist theory and sentiment.
[ Slides medal for Bravery In The Face Of Terrible Danger along bar. ]
Thanks! I’ll put that in the display case with the rest of my medals. You know, the one in the basement, behind the spare mattress…
@Sammy
Thanks for that reference. Biggest problem with Chesterton is knowing where to start reading, hahaha…
@NTSOG
I’ve seen it observed elsewhere that we are slowly moving from a guilt/innocence culture to an honor/shame culture. Soon we will be challenging each other to twitter jousts over a careless word.
@ TimT
Though sometimes wading in anyway.
Yeah, I know the feeling. The biggest trap is thinking about all the other people who roll their eyes and scroll onwards. That’s the most common reason for me to get sucked into such arguments – altruistic consideration of like-minded people. I’m not in the least disputatious, I swear.
Absolutely correct. It’s often said to young graduates by experienced professionals that their undergraduate degree is simply a licence to begin learning. I have said it dozens of times to novices beginning their professional careers.
At a company I worked at there was a lawyer who would regularly come in to do presentations. One of her comments, or a recurring comment mebbe even, is that yes she would hire people who had graduated law school and had passed the bar . . . and then at that point is when she would have to actually have them start to learn to actually be a practicing lawyer. This was considered a totally matter of fact occurrence, even with first rate graduates, and such a process would have to take at least a couple of years after getting hired before the new lawyer could actually be useful . . . .
Though sometimes wading in anyway.
Yeah, I know the feeling. The biggest trap is thinking about all the other people who roll their eyes and scroll onwards. That’s the most common reason for me to get sucked into such arguments – altruistic consideration of like-minded people. I’m not in the least disputatious, I swear.
What I’ve been noting is to present one’s observations and deductions, do cite supporting material and examples, and then see what questions or confirmations then turn up.
Particularly, what can serve as a rather strong confirmation of good quality is when the best some alleged opposition can manage is to hysterically shriek Nooooooo!!!!! while at the same time being totally unable to offer any form of refutation, correction, or countering reference. When one gets that reaction, one knows that one has gotten the details spot on.