You Will Practise Not Noticing
Further to recent rumblings in the comments, the Globe and Mail’s Phoebe Maltz Bovy offers what I believe is called a hot take:
Most will be familiar with the following scenario: a young girl, a teen or tween, gets in trouble with her school’s administration for a dress-code violation. Her supposed crime against decency: looking provocative. It will turn out that the girl was wearing some normal teenager outfit, jeans and a T-shirt or something equally boring, but had the audacity to attend school in a body with breasts, hips and a post-pubescent-looking behind… She is not choosing to draw attention to herself simply by existing. It’s the fault of the adults around her for sexualising her.
Given what follows, do keep that last line in mind.
But in a twist to the typical narrative, this time around, a high-school teacher in Oakville, Ont., made headlines for her curvaceous classroom presence.
That would be this chap’s curvaceous classroom presence.
“The conservative press and right-wing social media” are then mentioned, complete with implied hissing, on grounds that those irredeemable right-wingers have noticed something untoward:
Conflating LGBT identity with inappropriateness or, as in conservative parlance, “grooming,” is bigoted and cruel, as well as simply a category error… Is it fair to say that a transgender teacher really chose to have large breasts, any more than that a young cisgender girl chose her own physique? Are those who balk at the Oakville teacher engaged in body shaming?
At which point, one might suppose that a male teacher arriving for work in a fire-sale wig, Lycra cycling shorts, and enormous rubber fetish breasts, complete with prominent rubber nipples, and doing it every day, is just like a pubescent girl wearing “jeans and a T-shirt.” Perhaps we’re supposed to pretend that a middle-aged man’s farcical transvestism and autogynephile fetish – and his decision to impose these things on the children in his class, day after day – is in no way sexual or deliberately distracting. Presumably, any sexual connotations or air of inaptness are entirely the fault of the children and their body-shaming tendencies.
Perhaps sensing that this might be straining credulity a little too much, Ms Bovy suddenly alters her rhetorical trajectory:
Gender identity is not a choice. However, showing up to teach in cartoonish fake breasts is one. It’s a choice to wear what is effectively a fetish outfit while teaching, in a way that is visible to all.
This flickering of realism is, however, unfashionable, and therefore short-lived.
Now, is it traumatising to high school students to have a teacher who looks the way she does? I suspect not.
Two thoughts occur. Firstly, he is not a she. The teacher in question is a forty-something man with a mental health problem, and children should not be coerced to pretend otherwise. Secondly, using the word traumatising to mock or dismiss the children’s feelings on the subject is a sly evasion, a deflection by hyperbole. It seems more likely that some pupils will find the educator’s behaviour distracting, uncomfortable or obnoxiously gratuitous. A piss-take or shit-test at their expense.
Female students, for instance, may not feel entirely affirmed by a grotesque parody of their sex being enacted daily by a supposedly grown man, to whom they are expected to defer. Some may see such behaviour as an imposition, a provocation, a wilful overstepping of boundaries. Which of course it is. Whether the motive is lawsuit-trolling – “I’m an oppressed sexual minority, I dare you to fire me” – or just an unhinged narcissistic compulsion. Neither of which bode well for any involuntary participants.
But it turns out that the schoolchildren – the minors on whom this sexual pantomime is being inflicted – aren’t the ones deserving of our concern:
No, the people this story will harm most – as it already has, after being picked up by the right and used to attack communities more broadly – are the many LGBT teachers who are trying to go about their lives
You see, by daring to register this man’s absurd self-indulgence and pondering his motives, by questioning his fitness to teach children, you’re actually “bigoted” and “cruel,” and “attacking… LGBT teachers.” What, you didn’t know? How unsophisticated you must be. And hey, no conflating there. Oddly, Ms Bovy has nothing to say regarding the numerous gay people who have also questioned the liberties being extended to our cosplay educator.
But it seems that no lines must ever be drawn, no judgements made.
It feels like the progressive thing to do is to support this teacher’s right to self-present in the classroom as she does, or at least to honour her side in the matter
The progressive thing to do.
And so, children who aren’t overjoyed about their forced proximity to a mentally ill man in a position of authority over them will just have to learn their place in the new, progressive pecking order. And ditto any parents who aren’t thrilled by their child having to participate in a bedlamite’s psychodrama, and who find themselves faced with the school district’s my-fetish-in-your-face policy. But as we’ve noted before, if you mouth the first lie – that he is somehow she – then other lies and mental tangles will rapidly accumulate. Best, I think, not to give away the store in the first place.
101 Syndrome: http://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2022/09/101-syndrome.html?m=1
I’m literally fainting over here…
Luckily you’re seated in the right section near the fainting couches.
Enjoy a “tonic” to help recover and put it on my tab. Don’t accept anything fuzzy.
Today’s my birthday ?.
Thank you, bartender, for the free…hm. What is this stuff? Water? I’ve never seen water glow like that. Well, anyway, thanks for observing the occasion.
Today’s my birthday
[ Passes paper hat, novelty boobs. ]
“The kids here most definitely don’t think it’s normal… but realistically we can’t say anything,” one student said on Twitter, “Last year, the teacher was a man. I don’t think the school can fire him.”
A perverse power game, then, in which the captive audience – of other people’s children – aren’t entirely happy, but find their options limited, indeed seemingly non-existent. At which point, you have to wonder what kind of person might enjoy such a thing and search it out.
Oddly, Ms Bovy has nothing to say regarding the numerous gay people who have also questioned the liberties being extended to our cosplay educator.
*Those* gay people don’t count. 🙂
*Those* gay people don’t count.
Well, it’s a common pattern. Self-styled ‘progressives’ tend to be equate their pet victim groups with the more deranged outliers, the psychologically marginal, to whom they generally give priority. Their interest in, say, gay people who aren’t enthusiastic about peddling strap-on fantasies to middle-school children, or pitching the awesomeness of whoring to eleven-year-olds, and who may actually find such behaviour creepy and obnoxious, seems somewhat limited.
“*Those* gay people don’t count.”
The shunning of heretics proceeds apace.
paypal: there are still many who claim that this censorship stuff is all right wing whining and isn’t real.
Well, it’s a common pattern.
That. Everything at that link.
That. Everything at that link.
Once you’ve noticed the dynamic, the basic moral contrivance, it does seem to crop up an awful lot.
You wrote that in 2014, but it strikes me that with a change of players, it could have been from any time in the last 150 years or so. Orwell wrote about the same phenomenon, as did Chesterton. W.S. Gilbert lampooned it in verse.
They call themselves “progressive”.
You wrote that in 2014,
[ Applies moisturiser. ]
Browsing that link back to the dangerous silliness of George Monbiot, I ran across this from David:
“it’s rather like Laurie’s [Penny, of course] ostentatious fretting over how to mention a rude lesbian waitress without leading us to believe that all lesbian waitresses are surly and obnoxious.”
and I was reminded of the current teapot-tempest in San Francisco regarding the SF Bike Coalition’s admonition to NOT report bicycle thefts to the PoPo. They explicitly say this advice is because the PoPo might be mean to some POC. Which would be bad.
The Coalition probably believes that they are being clever by omitting the middle of their argument, namely: Since most such thefts are committed by POC, then …
Oh, who am I kidding. I’m positive their self-indoctrination is so thorough that they can skip over that line, come to their preferred conclusion, and NEVER REALIZE what they are implying.
Fred: like the person who compared sending illegals to Martha’s Vineyard to dumping your trash in someone else’s yard. And then offended when people noticed the analogy.
“Fake tranny privilege.”
that link back to the dangerous silliness of George Monbiot
The theory that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged has been tested and found not to be true. Being mugged isn’t a a wake-up call, it’s a woke-up call. The Amy Biehl Medal of Honor – many are called, and quite a few are chosen.
The script is familiar by now: a shocking reminder that we have a long way to go to create a safe and just society for everyone … both the mugger and I enmeshed in a system of oppression … as a privileged white my losses are easier to recover from … had to confront my own feelings of vulnerability, my gut reaction to flinch when a minoritized man passes me on the street … the real danger is that such fear turns into Fear, which then turns into Hate.
They preach utopian delusions but they also believe they have the copyright on complexity. So when their simple-minded delusion is inevitably broken, they accuse conservatives of simple-mindedness, of seizing and exploiting a complex issue.
The theory that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged has been tested and found not to be true
One of the biggest problems modern society has is the inability of everyday people to understand basic reasoning.
(A => B) =/> (B => A)
The real absurdity of the SF Bike coalition’s stance is that they seem to think the SFPD is going to respond in a substantive way to a bike theft report. That they will Saddle Up, Roll Out, and Take Down some hapless POC. Over a Missing Bike. Uh-huh. Pull the other one.
This is the same PD that, when confronted by reports like this:
[paraphrasing from memory] “Yeah, sure, I commute from Oakland to SF to break into cars. Been doing it for years. I been arrested. Twelve times. But I’m still doing it.”
responded, in print: “Yup. We want those bad guys to know, if they come to SF, we know how to handle them.”
And that was before, YEARS before, Chesa Boudin got into office there.
Heh. What Fred said. Don’t you get tired of the incessant LARPing that these lefty douche bags and even main stream and even some conservative…”conservative” douche bags are playing as if we live in some fascist society, all the while that they engage in shutting down free speech and turning a blind eye to the abuse and even murder of those who even passively oppose them? And yet it rolls on and on and on and on. Clown world. Except when I was a kid, the clowns were at least trying to be funny.
Do not click this link: A “prosthetic” to enable trans women to “experience and celebrate the miracle of childbirth”.
Play Star Wars Bingo.
Perhaps the theory should have been A liberal who has been mugged and survived will probably become conservative. to have more women to join the company as engineers, I asked when the similar push to do to have more males join the company as engineers would happen. I wasn’t surprised at the, as it so happens, female VP’s response. I doubt any of you would be surprised as well.
Recently, when one of our VPs pushed how much we need to do
I was disappointed at the chickenshit males who emailed me with their words of support. None of those assholes had done any push back whatsoever, but were willing to be behind a meatshield (like me).
I hope those idiots were in sales or HR. They were too stupid to realize that using the company email server to send me their support would be painting themselves with whatever mark of death I got from my comment. Or they thought that I wouldn’t think they were similar to FBI informants in the local KKK group that consisted of other FBI informants that try to rope in idiots.
This post might provide @WTP some amusement. Or validation.
I ask our gracious host to remove my previous post that looks suspiciously very similar to this one. Alas, I am used to using meta-variables delineated by < and > and missed the fact that such things would not render in the preview. I assume I will get several marks of shame for this.
Perhaps the theory should have been A liberal who has been mugged and survived will probably become conservative.
Recently, when one of our VPs pushed how much we need to do X to have more women to join the company as engineers, I asked when the similar push to do X to have more males join the company as engineers would happen. I wasn’t surprised at the, as it so happens, female VP’s response. I doubt any of you would be surprised as well.
I was disappointed at the chickenshit males who emailed me with their words of support. None of those assholes had done any push back whatsoever, but were willing to be behind a meatshield (like me).
I hope those idiots were in sales or HR. They were too stupid to realize that using the company email server to send me their support would be painting themselves with whatever mark of death I got from my comment. Or they thought that I wouldn’t think they were similar to FBI informants in the local KKK group that consisted of other FBI informants that try to rope in idiots.
This post might provide @WTP some amusement. Or validation.
I was disappointed at the chickenshit males who emailed me with their words of support.
Bless you for speaking up. The time I got “kept after” my almost-Jane Elliott level diversity training class my boss, my conservative…”conservative” naive boss with whom I still do lunch about once a year or so, sent out an email to a group of somewhat sympathetic coworkers asking what I could have possibly done to warrant such a response. The were a couple of people who indicated nothing that they noticed. What had prompted it was partly my being one of the taller people in the room along with one of the few people willing to raise my hand when asked the direct question as to whether we felt we were being held hostage. That and my eye rolling at the absurdities of being scholled on things that never happened. I had this crazy idea that this might prompt him to raise the issue with higher ups. Perhaps he did. Either way, nothing came of it. I continued to push back both there and at other companies whenever it was bloody obvious things were whacked.
On a non-diversity but similar situation, at one time….well for a couple years ongoing actually, we were being pushed 50-60 hour weeks on end, and some people were even doing more. At a big team meeting (probably 150 people total from both locations) management addressed several issues yet danced around the bloody obvious semi-technical one that was most concerning for a significant subset of the development team. Afterward a couple of the women developers thanked me for speaking up. I sensed the men agreed as we continue to bitch about the same and similar problems at lunch and in subteam meetings. It, and the project in general, improved considerably when they replaced our milquetoast project manager with a retired army colonel a few months later.
I’ve known a few liberals who have been mugged. They did not become conservatives.