Reheated (93)

It turns out that nothing says blurring gender lines – and being totally cool with whatever your child chooses – like pre-emptively hiding away anything with footballs on it. It’s curious how the author’s professed openness – all this free-and-easy blurring of gender lines – seems to require quite a lot of nudging and censorship, and the anxious hiding away of objects deemed too manly.

At which point, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that readers’ comments are not welcome at the Today site, and Yahoo News, where the item above is also published, is “temporarily suspending article commenting.” This, we’re told, is in order to “create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions.” Yes, we will engage and connect by not talking about things.

It does often seem that people writing on certain topics, and with certain political leanings, are to be spared the indignity of discussion or disagreement. Say, people who use their own small children as a political experiment. Or whose list of things deemed “too masculine” includes a shirt with a tractor on it, owning a Ford car, and, obviously, manual labour.

Mr Resnikoff doubtless imagines himself as the one who’s enlightened, sophisticated, and not at all prejudiced. And yet he veers towards hysteria based on nothing whatsoever beyond the race and presumed social class of a polite, visiting plumber. And note that the plumber’s reticence on political matters – i.e., his professionalism and good manners – is viewed by Mr Resnikoff as suspect.

“In… schools,” we’re told, “the desire to punish is racialised,” and “white people’s feelings often have outsized consequences on People of Colour.” The example given to illustrate this alleged phenomenon is of a white, female art teacher – Dr Stabler’s immediate predecessor – who “was said to have wept at the end of every school day” and who pursued assault charges against a black student who forcibly cut said teacher’s hair.

This assault, presumably intended to humiliate the woman and assert dominance over her, is passed over with remarkable ease by Dr Stabler, as if the “white feelings” of the teacher, and the implications of such behaviour – and its accommodation by leftist educators – were unworthy of exploration.

Apparently, hearing that your immediate predecessor was harassed and assaulted, and reduced to tears on a daily basis – by the same teenagers you’re hoping to teach about art – couldn’t possibly be a warning sign, or have any informational content, beyond a belief that those indulging in the disruption, harassment and assault must be steeped in “cultural knowledge,” and obviously oppressed, and therefore deserving of further latitude.

“As the new teacher hired to replace her, I also dealt with feelings of frustration, humiliation, guilt, and anger,” says Dr Stabler. “On the occasions when I reported infractions to parents or administrators, I too played a regrettable role in the consequences my students received at school and at home.”  He’s so sorry for having dared to complain about classroom misbehaviour and vandalism, and for being targeted for humiliation. All those “white emotions” we shouldn’t care about.

Other examples of students displaying their “cultural knowledge” – and “kinetic” creativity – include the punching of a white male teacher, who subsequently agonised over whether to press charges, and which prompts Dr Stabler to deploy the euphemism “interpersonal conflict.”