Marking Their Territory
And in totally-radical-toilet news:
Female students at one of Latin America’s top Universities say trans activists staged a coup of a single-sex washroom on their campus,
It started, you see, with feminist students painting a lesbian pride symbol on a wall near a campus library. As one does. This act of fearless self-involvement apparently inflicted nerve-shredding trauma on the trans activist contingent, who promptly denounced the lesbians as “TERFs, colonial fascists, and transphobes,” before announcing that lesbians are only permitted to use symbols of lesbianism that they, the trans activists, find congenial.
Shortly after, as a result of the lesbian symbol that had been painted, the trans students reportedly declared that they “did not feel safe” on the campus and went to administrators to demand a gender-neutral washroom be established in that area. While administrators agreed to create one, the students did not wait for it to be designated. Less than 24 hours later, the activists took over the largest female restroom, which was on the second floor of the Faculty of Philosophy.
Ah, the life of the mind.
Naturally, the first task was to give the toilets a makeover via the uplifting medium of graffiti, thereby communicating the life-enhancing qualities of prostitution:
“Less abolitionism, more whoring,” and “less TERFs, more sex” were among the slogans painted outside of the washroom. The “female” bathroom designation was also erased and replaced with “gender neutral.”
Needless to say, the conflict has escalated.
In response to the bathroom putsch, some feminist students on campus attempted to mark the washroom with their own graffiti.
With the facilities now being used by rival tribes, all gorged on intersectional compassion – and with so much graffiti to be written and responded to indignantly – students are reporting queues and “lengthy wait times.” The situation is particularly fraught due to the space’s history of radicalism and, naturally, sexual assaults:
Sexual assaults at UNAM are so common that the University recently had to install emergency buttons inside of the cubicles of women’s washrooms.
The emergency buttons have, it seems, inspired ever-loftier politics:
Photos snapped inside show violent threats have now emerged, directed at the women. One, which was menacingly placed near an assault crisis button, reads: “rape and death for TERFs.”
Because nothing says ‘We only want to pee’ quite like threats of rape and murder.
The author of the quoted piece, Ms Nuria Muíña Garcia, has more on the saga.
Oh, and if the National Autonomous University of Mexico sounds familiar, you may be thinking of this odyssey of radicalism.
I read the draft version of this:
Jordan Peterson talks with Helen Joyce about trans ideology.
Thanks for that, David.
Thanks for that, David.
If you’re interested in the subject matter, there’s plenty to mull. For some reason, the reference to stamp collecting made me laugh.
D&D role players: I would bet that an awful lot of those people also want guns taken away and criminals released…
Very likely true. Most of the fanboys and fangirls I’ve known have been liberal to far-left.
…while fantasy playing in a world dominated by brute violence.
“The mighty Sheldor, level 85 blood elf, hero of the Eastern kingdoms”
but as I recall it postulated radical surgery being used to allow humans to breathe underwater with the clear implication that their children would thus also be underwater breathers.
Heh. So that’s where that came from. When I was in elementary school someone gave us, either the whole school or just the fifth graders, a presentation on “in the foooooture” technology where surgery could be done to give humans gills. Even at the time I thought it was absurd/stupid. Like, why would anyone do that or have that done to them? It did get us out of class for an hour or so. But then again, our fifth grade teacher was such a lazy POS we weren’t really missing anything anyway. Except maybe watching him drink coffee, smoke a cigarette, and read the newspaper. Either that or we didn’t get second recess that day. That time definitely would have been better spent on the playground.
Jordan Peterson talks with Helen Joyce about trans ideology.
Just starting into this but HOLY MOLY I’m just finished with the segment about women and biological reality (bless Peterson for the indexing of the segments) and I want to jump and shout YES YES YES!
There were two huge biological events I experienced as a woman that are foremost in memory — puberty and my first pregnancy/birth/care of infant.
1 – puberty heightened my awareness of my body and it actually felt alien to me at the time – I went from 5’0″ on my 11th birthday to 5’7″ on my 12th, menses started 3 days after my 12th birthday and 7th grade (junior high school) was fraught with anxiety because – well, I don’t come from a line of flat-chested women – it seemed most of the boys were shorter, right at eye level of my breasts. I spent a lot of time carrying my books in my arms. And being the tomboy I was for most of pre-pubescence was now awkward and embarrassing.
2 – pregnancy was amazing and terrifying — once I could feel my daughter kick I seemed to become hyper-vigilante on just about everything – diet, house in order and clean, driving/riding in the car. And after she was born I had NO idea of how that deep bonding emotion where my whole being seemed dedicated to keeping her safe and healthy would be so overwhelming.
I can see why some girls with even mild mental issues might find these experiences so fraught they’d do anything to avoid them, including rejecting their sex and mutilating their bodies. AND this is why I find the whole “if you feel like a woman, you are one” insulting and dangerous. NO, male will ever know what it is to be female (and vice versa). We can listen, empathize, find common ground but biological reality is the bright separation of the sexes. We.Are.Not.Fungible.
Darleen: thanks for that. I obviously can’t recount that with any authority, being male, but so true. I have daughters and grand-daughters and no overlap with boy reality.
I don’t come from a line of flat-chested women – it seemed most of the boys were shorter, right at eye level of my breasts.
I laughed and I’m not sorry. 🙂
When did this D&D stuff start picking up steam? I do not remember it as a teenager in the late 70’s. When I got to college I remember SfCA, which when I at first saw it going on as I crossed campus one day, I thought it was tied to medieval history majors. Then I was informed that this was some sort of a thing people did. I do recall rumors of D&D type meetings/games going on at some remote dorm but seemed like an irrelevant cultish fad/offshoot of SfCA. Never thought/heard about it again until shortly before the Big Band Theory show started.
Darleen: not fungible indeed. I think this goes for mental too. In any given situation, I can be pretty sure how guys will react, what they are thinking, and what they will do. Women can be baffling. There are thousands of memes and jokes about how guys do not understand women and I don’t think they are wrong. This is not a gap that can be bridged by getting a few shots of T.
When did this D&D stuff start picking up steam?
I first encountered it in 1977,played by sf fans. Never got into it, so my observations are all from the point of view of an outsider.
Speaking of which, what makes Catan so wonderful that someone would put a bumper sticker on his car?
Heh. So that’s where that came from.
Don’t assume that the novel is where it came from. It seems unlikely to me that a fairly obscure Japanese novel was the source, especially since there is plenty of scientific ignorance here in America.
Also: Don’t assume that my memory of the novel is correct: I’d love to hear from commenters who know more than me, especially if I am wrong.
Speaking of which, what makes Catan so wonderful that someone would put a bumper sticker on his car?
Would not know. About eight years ago I was at a light behind a younger person whose bumper sticker, amongst others, read “Don’t listen to Drake”. I entered some kind of a negative-Zen state that still has me…nonplussed?
“Don’t listen to Drake”
Even odder than the cryptic messages are the long messages in small type that cannot be read by passing drivers–or even by pedestrians unless they stop and walk up next to the car.
Some of the geek stickers and t-shirts do make me laugh, though: “Wood for Sheep” is a Catan in-joke, and then there’s the Hello Kitty in Halo style body armor (Halo Kitty). And I did once see a generic “Hello My Name Is” name badge filled in with “Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” But even most of the ones that strike me as funny are not things I would ever want to wear.
When did this D&D stuff start picking up steam?
Ahem, lemme tie a few onions to my belt first.
I first encountered D&D at the Origins wargaming convention in 1977. I had been a fan of board wargames for a number of years, subscribing to “Strategy & Tactics” magazine, which delivered a wargame a month, and bought more (I ended up with about 300 at one time, now mostly sold off).
In the magazine, I read a review of D&D and another role-playing game called “Empires of the Petal Throne,” so when I saw that E. Gary Gygax was doing a demo, I had to attend.
It kinda blew my mind. A game that combined storytelling, worldbuilding, and imagination with fairly simple rules? I bought the box set, the expansion books, and a copy of EPT as well, and devoured them on the road trip home.
After that, the game entered the mainstream in fits and starts, mostly as an amusing “kids these day” segment on TV news. Then in 1982 came a movie “Mazes and Monsters” (starring Tom Hanks in his first role) that was inspired by Rona Jaffe’s novel, who exploited the misunderstandings over the disappearance of a D&D playing student (with the too-perfect name of Egbert) at the University of Michigan.
The popularity of D&D helped kill the wargaming hobby (since it was more socially engaging and easier to learn), and computer games helped dampen enthusiasm for tabletop gaming (although it seems to be coming back).
Wargaming goes back at least to 1972. My neighbor, a player of chess-by-mail, showed me some sort of galactic empire/conquest/trading game, also by-mail.
I laughed and I’m not sorry. 🙂
Good. I’m decades past that awkwardness and I laugh at the memory, too.
Too bad so many never get over it.
I first encountered D&D at the Origins wargaming convention in 1977. I had been a fan of board wargames for a number of years, subscribing to “Strategy & Tactics” magazine…
I subscribed to both Strategy & Tactics and the Avalon Hill General, and played tabletop wargames until that was sidetracked by the demands of university and then a career. Sold all my back issues and games in a big housecleaning after they’d sat unused for many years. Most of my wargaming friends also abandoned the hobby but one friend who went Army never stopped.
“Nerd” bumper sticker humor!
I was chatting with one of my colleagues at Adobe in the 90’s. Very smart guy, all kinds of hobbies. He was then working on learning the phrase “My brain is made of cheese” in as many languages as he could. I mentioned to him that I’d been noticing a car in the lot with two bumper stickers on the back: left corner “Jesus is Lord”, right corner “Question Authority”, and I wondered if the owner was just confused or was pulling our legs. My friend hesitated a moment before admitting it was his car (thus answering my question).
I laugh at the memory, too.
As I think I said before, puberty is a time when you’re not entirely sure how long your legs are going to be from one week to another.
[ lights pipe. Eyes hobbits cryptically ]
All right, here’s how it is. Yes, that’s a Firefly reference.
D&D is a medieval skirmish miniatures wargame with some hack on rules to cover things like wizards casting magic spells and fantastic critters that aren’t easily modeled in the rules by a 6′ dude in chain mail.
D&D was largely unknown outside of nerds on college campuses until the confluence of three things: the release of the red box Basic D&D set through traditional booksellers in 1983, which meant widespread exposure and availability; the depiction of D&D on screen in the movie E.T. in 1982, and the aforementioned D&D flange of the 1980’s Satanic Panic. All of these things got the game out of college dorm rooms and into middle/high schools.
Contrary to popular belief, D&D has never been about “storytelling, worldbuilding, and imagination”. Not only are there no mechanics for any of that, much of the game actively works against those play styles. The creator of the game said, repeatedly, that D&D was not a storytelling game and that trying to make it one was fundamentally missing the point.
So why is D&D such a honeypot for the neurotic? It turns out there’s a really weird and obscure reason for that. One of the creators was a fan of a type of wargaming that operated at the strategic/operational scale, where a commander had so many options (attack the baggage train, poison the food supplies, light pigs on fire and drive them at the elephants) that it wasn’t possible to have rules for all of them. So a referee was required, and the referee’s job when presented with a novel operational tactic was to guesstimate how likely it was to succeed, and then roll a die to see whether the stratagem worked. (Military veterans may recognize this as “matrix games”). The mechanic found its way into D&D and the referee eventually became known as the Dungeon Master.
See, with a real miniatures wargame there are set rules and often set scenarios. You’re contending directly against an opponent in a predefined conflict in what amounts to a more complex version of chess. Your win/loss record is based entirely on your tactical acumen; you are competing against an objective standard[1].
D&D affords the illusion that one is mastering…something…after all, there’s all these books of rules and all these fiddly exception cases; but in fact the game allows you to create an adolescent power fantasy avatar whose success is determined by the player’s ability to manipulate the Dungeon Master. Since the Dungeon Master is the ultimate arbiter of absolutely everything in the fictional space and the rules, and more often than not the Dungeon Master is just another insecure thirteen-year-old grappling inexpertly with a game that creates some truly toxic social power dynamics…you can see where this is going.
Ultimately D&D is the same really messed up culture that SF cons (and as pst314 mentioned above, SCA) is: a safe space for toxic and neurotic people to hide from a real world they can’t handle. D&D makes it worse by presenting these people with the ability to project themselves into an unbeatable power fantasy avatar.
The violence thing is a red herring, by the way. D&D’s combat rules are sufficiently abstracted that any combat is entirely bloodless and without detail. “I hit it with my axe.” “Roll to hit.” “17 – success! I rolled an 8 damage.” “It has two hit points left. Roll for initiative for next round.”
So where does the sex-is-socially-constructed angle come in to play? First of all, D&D is nothing like Game of Thrones or any similar “brutish, Darwinian, biologically determined, sexually differentiated world”. In early versions of the game there were mechanical differences based on character sex; those were howled out of the game by 1980 as being terribly sexist. From the original half-dozen or so Tolkien-inspired races the game has exploded to allow players to play any bizarre-ass thing they can imagine, including lizard people, cat people, ambulatory slimes, etc. “My avatar’s physical body is whatever I say it is” is the rule of the day. The game is not Darwinian or brutish; both the social dynamics and the last several versions of the game intentionally create a power imbalance such that not only is it virtually impossible for a player’s avatar to be killed, it’s virtually impossible for them to be inconvenienced in any way.
You can see how all this adds up to a hobby that is going to attract deeply damaged people looking to replace their real-world bodies, personalities and position in the social hierarchy with one more to their liking – even if that replacement only exists in their little fanfic world.
[1] Players of games like Warhammer/40K might point out that one’s ability to throw tantrums in favour of one’s particular interpretation of an ambiguous rule is a more important skill than tactical maneuvering. Such players would not be wrong.
ccscientist: This is not a gap that can be bridged by getting a few shots of T.
That reminds me of an episode of This American Life: Testosterone.
Particularly interesting is the segment with a trans man. Its relating of how its view of the world completely changed after getting testosterone injections holes below the waterline the whole “gender is a social construct” malarkey.
Darleen: We.Are.Not.Fungible.
✅
As for Settlers of Catan, it’s a fun four-player game aimed at four players (i.e. two adult couples) that can be played in about the same time it would take to watch a movie and avoids all of the really dumb game design tropes of the Milton Bradley/Parker Brothers/Waddingtons era.
For two couples who might otherwise spend an evening playing cards for entertainment, it’s a worthy alternative. The adult board gaming hobby isn’t quite as riddled with the dysfunctional neurotics – although they’re trying – and it’s still something of a niche. A Settlers of Catan bumper sticker or similar serves as a way to identify oneself as someone who plays such games to other prospective players.
…affords the illusion that one is mastering…something…after all, there’s all these books of rules and all these fiddly…
So it’s like Clown/Grievance Studies in college?
When did this D&D stuff start picking up steam?
I never played it nor did any of my friends.
The few people I knew who played it in university (mid-80s) were (i) male, and (ii) doing engineering or business.
I remember noticing that they never read anything that was not on their university course.
I thought then that D&D was filling a hole that other people filled by reading fiction, be that Literature (with a big L) or not.
My wife’s teenage acquaintances included a few lads who played D&D. They were also into LOTR and whatever similar fantasy-world fiction was around at the time but were not otherwise into other fiction (Big or little L).
Darleen @18.53
10/10
Why is it that feminists are not proclaiming testimony such as yours? Is it fear of celebrating motherhood?
Testosterone: you can reduce it in a male and not create a female. For example, most men have reduced T as they age. It can be very low, which can make one feel fatigue and reduced libido. None of that makes a male feminine. That isn’t how it works. Likewise, giving a woman T can be a weird experience for her but T isn’t all it takes to make a male. It is all so stupid.
“Catan” is too mechanical for my taste, though I concede that it has the virtue of ending in a reasonable time. I prefer “Carcasonne”, which has more flexibility and complexity without being too much for relative novices.
Daniel,
Probably because my old winetasting group included Don Woods of Colossal Cave fame, I was exposed to a bunch of Con-attending types and Gamer types from way back. That generation seemed to regard it all as a harmless fun lark. Years later came the people who I can best characterize as the “You’re having fun WRONG” crowd. Now, though I’m totally detached (except a tiny bit via my offspring) it looks like there’s another schism, adding a faction in the “You’re oppressing me with your rules” mentality. I think this new faction will 1) win, and 2) completely destroy that culture. I.e. Kill it, gut it, wear its skin like a suit, demand respect, fail. (adding a hopeful note to the well-known euphemism.)
Daniel, you are entitled to your opinions. You are not entitled to your facts:
“D&D is a medieval skirmish miniatures wargame with some hack on rules to cover things like wizards casting magic spells and fantastic critters that aren’t easily modeled in the rules by a 6′ dude in chain mail.”
You’re thinking of Chainmail, the precursor to D&D. There were no rules for miniatures in the original three-book D&D.
“Contrary to popular belief, D&D has never been about “storytelling, worldbuilding, and imagination”. Not only are there no mechanics for any of that, much of the game actively works against those play styles. The creator of the game said, repeatedly, that D&D was not a storytelling game and that trying to make it one was fundamentally missing the point.”
Yeah, so? True, Gygax’s demonstration was a dungeon crawl. No worldbuilding at all. That was left to Judge’s Guild, which published a line of products based on their world, including “The City-State of the Invincible Overlord,” which was a complete walled city on two large maps and a booklet describing each stores, temples, government buildings, etc.
When I said “storytelling, worldbuilding, and imagination,” I meant that personally. I was a fantasy reader, and I set out to create adventure modules for it (none published, alas). Remember I also bought “Empire of the Petal Throne” at the same time, which (IIRR) used a lot of non-European cultures in its design. For someone used to indifferently drawn paper maps, seeing the Petal Throne maps fired my imagination.
As for the rest of your post, I have no comment. I stopped playing after the release of subsequent sets, which imposed a complicated set of rules that (to me anyway) took all the fun out of playing. We were freestyling players, with the same group of characters whose stories grew over time and as the result of their adventures. College, work, marriage and children intervened, and I moved on.*
* One more note: After starting what I thought was my dream job, I had gotten a call from TSR. They had recently acquired SPI and Strategy and Tactics, and offered me a job if I moved to Lake Geneva, Wis. Since I had just started work, I felt uncomfortable about moving further, and declined. Trousers of time moment, that is.
David, I apologize for that opening line. Quoting Dr. Johnson came out a lot harsher than I intended. I’m Sorry.
David, I apologize for that opening line. Quoting Dr. Johnson came out a lot harsher than I intended. I’m Sorry.
Another reminder that this is not Facebook. David, a drink for WEP, please.
WEP, when you feel “poorly” after downing that drink, don’t panic. You’ve not been poisoned. Uhm, well, you have been poisoned, but not by… Oh hell. Roll the dice, take your chances! We’ve all been there!
Why is it that feminists are not proclaiming testimony such as yours?
Interestingly, Jordan and Helen touch on this in the segment Age Solidarity Among Women at the 19:50 mark.
Helen states that so many young women really despise older women (post menopausal) … they hate the idea of becoming their mothers. Jordon brings up that he thinks it is mostly because those young women have been lied to, i.e. that the be-all, end-all of their identity is their career. Plus, that our culture has turned against motherhood #1 if one is the proper moral and aware person you don’t bring another “rapacious human” into a this world #2 succumbing to motherhood is becoming a second class citizen who has set aside the most important thing (career) to engage in primitive reproduction.
There are really people who use the term “breeder” seriously … most of them are young, single, left-feminist women.
they hate the idea of becoming their mothers.
They also hate the idea of becoming mothers…until they reach a “certain” age when desperation sets in. We all know women who thought they could have children any time they wanted. It don’t work that way!
What my wife had to through to have our second son (our first was adopted from Guatemala) should give pause to anyone who thinks having a child is guaranteed…and she was 25 when we got married–seven years later and 10’s of thousands of dollars spent on “fertility” treatments should be a cautionary tale.
Plus, that our culture has turned against motherhood
Except many of these same women haven’t really turned against motherhood. They end up bitter, lonely and alone when they realize motherhood has passed them by. Some live with regret, others double down against the “patriarchy.”
David, a drink for WEP, please.
Cheers! It may feel a little fuzzy going down, just swallow and clear your conscience.
Fizzy is good. France invented expensive fizzy drinks.
Fizzy is good.
Ya, fizzy, uh fizzy is good. Did I say fuzzy?
You said fuzzy. Didn’t ring any alarm bells in this patron’s noggin. SOP, donchano.
Helps scrape the remains of that last Hump Fat sandwich down into the tum tum.
“Clear your conscience”?
It’ll clear SOMETHING, that’s certain.
On a totally unrelated note, anyone seen the mop? No, not the good mop, the …other mop.
(Can you tell I’m diligently working on tax documents? You can tell, right?)
Because any acknowledgment of reality is a dastardly plot.
turned against motherhood
This message came to mind. They’re “pro-choice,” of course. But you must “stop having kids.” Which sounds like an order.
You see, instead of wasting all that time with a family, you should do something meaningful and deeply rewarding, like standing in the road and holding a stupid placard.
You see, instead of wasting all that time with a family,
I’ve said to numerous people, men & women alike … take time to walk through a cemetery and read the headstones. You’ll never see “made the corner office at age 27” on any of them.
take time to walk through a cemetery and read the headstones. You’ll never see “made the corner office at age 27” on any of them.
I’m guessing the idea is to free up more time for all that lovely activism. Like standing in the road with a stupid placard. I suppose that will happen if you’re foolish enough to pin your sense of worth, and your sense of self, on activist roleplay.
“Why is having kids still celebrated?” they ask. Apparently, being born, i.e., being alive, is a “cycle of needless suffering and death.” For which, “birth serves as the catalyst.”
Oh, and they’re vegans, obviously.
I’ll wear a frock if it helps.
A frock, a mullet and an attitude and you too can have a career recording the doings of the Mother of Parliaments.
Ya, fizzy, uh fizzy is good. Did I say fuzzy?
[ Examines glasses. Cleans glasses. ]
Hey, you can’t have sex on a bus!
“But we’re homeless! But we’re autistic!”
They should have said they’re “neurodivergent” or whatever that jargon is. 😉
Motherhood: this attitude that only a career is worthy, not motherhood, arises from the premise that women are victims and that motherhood is imposed by the patriarchy, that motherhood makes one a servant. It is a juvenile view that thinks only of freedom. When a couple has children, it is true that the mother will often stay at home with them for a time, but this is because of love –she does not want to send them to daycare. The husband quite often starts working overtime, taking hazard jobs, commuting farther to get a better job. That is, he sacrifices. In most families I know, the wife is the boss, the mother is more honored than the father, and mothers have a special role in the family. Helping little ones learn and grow is so fantastic. Discounting that experience in favor of a career is selfish and narcissistic. It reflects someone who cannot give.
Motherhood: this attitude that only a career is worthy, not motherhood, arises from the premise that women are victims and that motherhood is imposed by the patriarchy, that motherhood makes one a servant.
You can also trace this back to Marxism, which from the start saw the family as a barrier to the achievement of total State power: As long as children were reared by mothers and fathers, they would learn ideas and values which were at odds with socialism. Persuading women that they could only be happy if they had careers turned out to be effective propaganda.