Grapes Deemed Sour
From the pages of Vogue, where upscale ladies probe the issues of the day:
Specifically,
That’s the issues of their day, of course, not necessarily yours.
The author of the above, Ms Chanté Joseph, formerly of the Guardian and a stipulator of pronouns, has a theory to share.
“Quite culturally loser-ish.” I’m guessing the intended readership may be the kinds of ladies whose days are driven by endless niche anxieties regarding in-group status. Of “social benefits” and seeming, as if that were the primary function of an intimate relationship or a lifelong pairing.
Writer and activist. Because one can’t just be a writer. Also, norminess. And dear Lord, we can’t have that.
If you say so, madam.
Ah, the innate loveliness of women. The tender, caring sex.
But remember, it’s totally not about image. Just the embarrassment of an Instagram feed cluttered with obsolete boyfriends. Like unfashionable shoes.
One more time:
I would guess that these are not routine anxieties for regulars of this parish.
Behold, the social blemish of norminess. Or possibly conservative.
Again, the loveliness of women. And then there’s the implication that one might tailor one’s romantic life to the preferences of random strangers on the internet. Dating, or not dating, for likes.
Readers will, I suspect, have registered that these agonies seem to bedevil those who inhabit a world of activists, influencers, and self-styled content creators, and in which one has to be mindful of any shifts in the script. Because those other bitches are always watching.
Don’t look at me. I have no idea. Apparently, women are being “forced to re-evaluate our blind allegiance to heterosexuality.”
We seem to have veered off a cliff. In a cloud of old gender-studies lecture notes.
Never. Not once, you hear.
At which point, readers may be left wondering – among other things – whether the above is an elaborate attempt to rationalise sour grapes, a matter of loudly dismissing that which isn’t easily had. Of, as they say, cope.
Possibly on account of being the kind of women whose world is one of influencers and activists, of Instagram narcissism, and whose preoccupations include denouncing heteronormativity while needlessly stipulating one’s pronouns. The kind of women who fret about whether having a husband or partner, someone to love and be loved by, looks “culturally loser-ish,” or unfashionably “Republican.”
Not the most obvious enticement for a man with other options.
Update, via the comments:
The piece quoted above would seem to fit a genre of article, typically appearing in progressive publications, in which unendearing women try to conjure some elaborate social or political explanation for why they’re so often found unendearing.
It’s also an article in which almost every other assumption is alien to me.
I’m still trying to imagine being the kind of person who frets about whether coupledom or singledom is the more fashionable “flex.” The kind of person who stresses about how an intimate relationship will seem – say, to strangers on the internet – and whether that relationship denotes norminess and therefore being insufficiently radical. Whether it will look too conservative, too “Republican.”
It strikes me as quite bonkers. A weird and impractical set of priorities. And should it need saying, a recipe for misery.
This blog is kept afloat by the tip jar buttons below.
As if one were the star of some low-budget reality-TV show. Always on, always being watched.
A recipe for neurosis.
Food stamp recipient does not understand biology:
“We didn’t ask for these kids. What are we going to do with them?”
And it is “interesting” to see what they deem worthy of shame: Uneducated, lazy, impulsive and untrustworthy, criminal record? Not shameful. Gainfully employed, married with children, honest and “boringly” responsible? Deeply shameful.
Among the progressive classes the only shame is not being shameful enough.
Recall the hatred and contempt screamed at Brad and Janet by Rocky Horror fans–which only amplifies the contempt shown by the film.
Heh.™ Indeed.™
Yet another mass stabbing, this time on a train in Huntingdon train. Eleven people injured in rampage, two in critical/life-threatening condition. At least one of the targets was a young girl who was shielded by an older man. The police quickly said it was not terrorism, even though the attackers were two black men who were randomly attacking strangers.
At the intersection of sour grapes and pampered entitled bitches we find ourselves at that well known community college in a three piece suit, Harvard, where students are upset they might have to study for their obligatory A grades.
Yes, grades should be based on whether you have to study.
Strict standards where 60% of grades are As.
In that vein, “What makes a Harvard student a Harvard student is their engagement in extracurriculars,” Peyton White ’29 said. Because it is all about enjoyment and doing crap other than go to class.
Elsewhere on campus, ITEOTWAWKI. “What we we do without PhDs in angry and useless studies?” one laments.
*they all die childless and alone*
My sympathies lie with the cats.
I’m not entirely sure what the plan is. Presumably, these ladies expect the state to love them and take care of them in their twilight years.
I’m still processing this one:
The word bint scarcely covers it.
There is no way to guarantee your (grand)children will not squander the efforts of millenia and turn out like this.
We talk of woke nihilism but this is not just philosophy, it is personality.
I think the word wastrel applies.
Wedding ring: as with most traditions, there was a reason for the ring. As well as being a symbol of commitment, it also signaled that the young man had sufficient means to afford a ring. Parents worry if their daughter will be ok financially, especially in days when women mostly did not work outside the home. If the suitor is broke, they may end up taking care of the daughter (and even husband) and their kids. Two families on my block in the suburbs had to do this. It is not an unrealistic worry.
She also looks as if she could live off stored fat for the duration of the shutdown … however long that might be.
Definite Daughters of the American Revolution vibes from that name.
Why? They get a fantastic meal at the end.
This.
I follow a fun little FB group “Midcentury Fashion” where the author posts all sorts of pics from magazines, articles, advertisements, home movie clips, etc, from the 50s-60s. Heaven forbid there’s an advertisement on girdles or a magazine column on how to manage one’s home or how to make a happy marriage … there’s always a handful of females who sneer that the era was nothing but Stepford wives and OPPRESSION!!! RHEEE! “Women couldn’t get a credit card or open a bank account without their husband’s permission!” Which isn’t quite true but no trying to explain that.
My mother said she needed not Dad’s permission but his credit rating (or whatever the equivalent was in 1950.) I assume this was because was not working and thus had no income of her own to point to. Or that’s what I recall many decades after she told us kids. But she also said there was one department store which would issue her a credit card, and so she was their loyal customer for a very long time. Cannot recall if that was Sears or JC Penny or ???.
My personal experience managing state support for a trio of (now deceased) parents is that working the bureaucracy to get what is promised is a full time job for an able adult. There’s no love & care there, nor do I see any plausible way for there to be love & care in the future.
You want and expect that for your own future? You better be a loving and caring parent to your own children now.
The State Doesn’t Love You.
A reply to this.
It’s hard for these young females to understand the nuances of the era. Major credit cards (like VISA) had barely begun and were pretty much restricted to people with very good incomes. If a wife didn’t work, of course any card extended to her was based on her husband’s income. Individual stores have extended credit themselves to customers in one form or another long before VISA was ever thought of. Layaway was very popular for big purchases.
And one thing a lot of stores of the era knew was that women are the ones who make the big purchase decisions in a household. It benefitted them to give a store card to the wife.
People shopped local, too, so owners and managers actually knew many of their regular customer base.
But trying explaining that to youngsters convinced that the marriage of the era was slavery.
Darleen: I know many young women who are tormented by the need to put their kids in daycare. They would much rather stay home with them while young. If feminists want to call that “oppression” it is not clear what words even mean.
My neighbor’s wife was getting very stressed at work (age 50). He suggested that she quit and stay home since he made good money. Again, this is oppression?
Yes. Well explicated.
Remember these?
Instead, Ms Penny thrills to the “growing power of uncoupled women” and “the threat this poses to the socioeconomic status quo.”
The requisite modifiers just run off the page.
Dude, not even utility grade meat.
You would think that today’s emotionally-pampered “feminists”, finding themselves desperately unhappy, might like to revisit and raise questions about the seminal 60s “I am woman, hear me roar” book “The Feminine Mystique” and it’s author Betty Friedan … a woman who universalized her own failure as wife and mother to make it about The Patriarchy.
Women were told their worth was never to be found in family but in commerce. And in the last 60 years as women have greatly increased their numbers in the workplace they’ve also become less satisfied, less happy and more mentally ill.
Hello? :::tap tap tap:::: is this mic on? The problem may be YOU, not the guy(s) who have withdrawn from dating women like you.
I saw some polling of young men and their priorities. They want family/children as their top goal. Young women have that down around #16 in the list.
This is not good.
Pull the other one.
A future doctor walks out without paying, assaults worker.
When I was a teen, working in a fast food restaurant, the only dine-and-dash incidents I witnessed were by blacks. My manager warned me to always get the money before placing the food in front of black customers: They weren’t all thieves, but nearly all the thieves were them.
Thanks for that link to the past (2016). It’s interesting to see what I had to say before I had my glucose under control.
“The grocery stores on Mission Street are what made me realize that the Jean Valjean theory of crime—that people steal because they’re desperate and hungry and trying to survive—is 100% nonsense in the U.S. today. Not ‘overstated’, not ‘mostly wrong’, but ‘absolutely zero connection to reality whatsoever’. Maybe it had some truth to it in 1850, I don’t know, but here and now it’s a complete fantasy.”
The Growing Divide in the Rainbow Coalition.
““What we’re seeing is a witch hunt against lesbians,” she said. For their part, trans advocates argue that trans women can also be lesbians and that it is lesbians who are being exclusionary. “Efforts to exclude trans women and non-binary people from lesbian and feminist communities are ahistorical, morally wrong and go against the founding values of those movements,” the National Center for LGBTQ Rights wrote in a statement issued during Lesbian Visibility Week.”
Gift link from me to y’all.
Oh, I’m almost certain Ben Appel was quoted here before on this subject.
I’ve seen some quite shockingly sexist statements from trans advocates recently that seem to indicate the supposedly loving progressive push to be welcoming to trans people is really so they can do so at the expense of women and gays/lesbians. One that sticks in my mind is a male comedian whose long-term partner is a trans woman – ‘I know she’s a woman, because like every girlfriend I’ve had, she’s manipulative’. (As someone in the comment says: ‘a trans take on ‘I hate my wife’ jokes is not the flex I saw coming’).
More generally, I seem to recall that trans-Atlantic commentator Andrew Sullivan attributes the progressive attitudes to a decision by gay advocacy group Stonewall, after same-sex marriage was legalised, to begin aggressively lobbying for trans rights. Maybe so. We certainly have a similar madness here in Australia too, but then again, we tend to inherit these fads from you chaps in the UK and the US.
Because the alternative, disbanding once their goals had been achieved, would have been unthinkable? I shudder to speculate what sexual minorities they are likely to embrace next.
This right here is a major problem (made 10 times worse if the entity is government-funded).
Why does having a happy wife/husband feel so Republican?
Why does owning my own home feel so Republican?
Why does having well adjusted kids feel so Republican?
Etc…
Well, quite. The role of status-conferring perversity in progressive mouthings is sometimes hard to miss.
ESR: It’s more difficult to argue for liberty when there are not simply individuals but identifiable large classes of people that are morally incompetent.
Once again: [Delano] Middleton has a violent criminal history, including prior arrests for aggravated assault, battery, and weapons charges in 2021 and 2023.
On a totally personal note, mom turned 94 today. We had a rough patch the first part of the year when she took a couple of nasty falls and ended up in rehab for 3 months … had to sell her home of 58 years. But she has really rallied, talking with her today she was bright, happy and mock-shocked at her age.
One of those “tradwives” of the 1950s who was happily married for 67 years until my dad passed. They married young (19 & 22) had kids and enjoyed life and each other. (PS they were Republicans … heh)
Mom 1961
Oh, no it’s not. They understand nuance just fine. It’s just a shit test, and the more you indulge it the more you fail it.
What a great milestone. I’m sorry for not noticing earlier, but my father-in-law passed last week. He was 93. He might be the closest thing to a saint that I’ve ever experienced. He had a very rough beginning in life and yet he never had a bad or angry word to say against any one. Up until a year ago, when he could no longer manage it, we would take him up north to the shores of Lake Huron to a place he loved dearly. My wife and I and our two boys shared those moments with him for 15 years after his wife passed. So important to cherish their lives while they’re still living.
I believe I said it before, your mom was a real hottie! Wish her a Happy belated Birthday from me.