Frankness And Its Opposite
Further to recent rumblings in the comments on the subject of frankness, this, by Devon Eriksen, caught my eye:
If you believed that, you would not be able to engage with the question “Why are boys not reading?” because the very question is an admission that there is something distinct about certain children that makes them boys and not girls.
No, what you actually believe is “If I acknowledge the differences between boys and girls, I will be punished by my social group.”
This belief is true.
But so what? It’s entirely your fault that you chose a social group which makes such ridiculous demands.
My social group doesn’t demand I pretend to believe silly things.
You don’t actually have to play this game anymore, you know. You can just stop. Sure, some people you know will say mean things to you, but you and I both know they kinda do a lot of that already just because of the kind of people they are.
You and I also both know they would throw you under a bus in microsecond if some innovation in the mandatory belief system rewarded them for doing so.
Ms Katie Campione, at whom the above is directed, is a “journalist living in Los Angeles,” a “TV and labour reporter.” She doesn’t like the idea – one might say the reality – that boys and girls tend to be interested in different things.
We are going to have a fundamental difference of opinion if you think the answer to boys not reading is to write about “boy stuff” and not rethink how we engage with boys in general let alone as readers. No specific interest or taste should be placed on a gender binary!!!
— Katie Campione (@katie_campione) November 7, 2026
She has pronouns in her bio.
As seen above, and so many times before, progressive contrivance tends to point away from reality. That’s pretty much its defining attribute. Often to a degree that’s bewildering, maddening, and something close to surreal.
Because contrived unrealism is where the in-group status is.
And hey, priorities.
Update, via the comments:
Needless to say, and despite contrary evidence being mustered, Ms Campione is not exactly rushing to engage with any of her critics.
While we wait, readers are welcome to ponder how one might “rethink how we engage with boys… as readers” while simultaneously – and quite vehemently – disdaining any notion of “boy stuff,” i.e., subject matter and writing styles to which boys are more likely to be attracted, and while denouncing the very idea that, in aggregate, boys and girls have differing interests and sensibilities.
Readers may also wish to ponder undertaking such a task on grounds that “a gender binary” is something one must be seen to reject, loudly and often, if not coherently or persuasively.
And despite such assumptions not exactly working out well in the real world.
Update 2:
Mags quips,
Ms Campione continues by insisting that the reading tastes of children are merely “indicative of their upbringing and socialisation,” because “gender is a social construct.” No other possibilities are, it seems, conceivable. In her mind, the fact that boys and girls tend to differ in their reading interests is merely “a thing that we made up.”
And by implication, something to be corrected.
Apparently, Ms Campione has “been reading books written by and about men my whole life,” and therefore boys should be taught “that they can and should identify with all sorts of stories.” I.e., stories generally preferred by girls and written by women.
I think we can assume she’s not referring to, say, Agatha Christie.
Update 3:
The determined affectation is very nearly surreal.
Ms Campione does “not agree… on a very foundational level” that boys will tend to be more interested in the kinds of books that they tend to be more interested in. Apparently, their inclinations can be manipulated and overridden, by women like her, one assumes, via some means not disclosed, and despite all evidence to the contrary.
“Maybe your son could stand to read some romantasy,” says she.
I suspect that any actual interest in getting boys engaged with books will take second place to a more exciting re-education project, via which they will be made less like boys. I mean, that is what seems to excite Ms Campione, and doubtless other women very much like her, many of whom will be employed as publishers, or teachers.
Ms Campione is currently boasting of “making men mad online.” While lying about what it is she said that prompted the avalanche of mockery and correction.
Our betters. These glorious beings.
Update 4:
Readers of an unforgiving bent may find amusement in the replies to Ms Campione, not least the ones sharing screengrabs of what she actually said, as opposed to what she says she said. I suppose interacting with people who don’t aspire to be thought of as progressive, according to this week’s rules, must be quite stressful.
Which brings us back to the initial point – the problem of being accustomed to pretending things, and being surrounded by people who also pretend those same things, and who will punish you for not pretending them – and then having to deal with people who do not pretend. And who can see, and mock, all of the pretending that’s been going on.
It’s the tragedy of our times. Send tissues, stat.
🎯
I am reminded how the late Scott Adams would view his detractors. He would simply think, “Does anything they say have any effect on how I am going to live my life today” and if the answer is no, the thought of them is simply dismissed.
Well, it’s why you can find yourself having a conversation with someone, about a subject they brought up, only to discover that you’re having the conversation for quite different reasons. And so, you can find yourself in a game you didn’t know you were playing.
Examples abound.
Needless to say, and despite much contrary evidence being mustered, Ms Campione is not exactly rushing to engage with any of her critics.
“Maybe the boys aren’t the problem.”
I’m still pondering how one might “rethink how we engage with boys… as readers” while simultaneously disdaining quite vehemently any notion of “boy stuff,” i.e., subject matter and writing styles to which boys are more likely to be attracted, and while denouncing the very idea – again, one might say the reality – that in aggregate boys and girls have discernibly differing interests.
All because “a gender binary” is something one must be seen to reject, loudly and often, if not coherently or persuasively.
And despite her own assumptions not exactly working out well in the real world.
She’s not a parent then.
Alternate explanation: She dislikes boys and wants to turn them into girls. What is actually good for boys is of no interest to her.
I wonder why.
It’s working out well for her: She’s harming boys.
Earlier today, my wireless keyboard stopped working. The batteries were changed, the machine was rebooted. Still nothing.
Turns out it was full of toast crumbs.
As an example, in 8th grade I discovered the Lord of the Rings books and read the whole thing–my brother in 6th grade read them along with me. We were reading above our grade level because of this. Did teachers praise us? hahahaa no.
I remember quite well my mother had wisely stocked my bookshelf with books for boys and I read them all at that age: The War in the Atlantic, Sam Houston the Tallest Texan, The Alamo, The Secret Service (about counterfeiting), etc. I hated the books the teachers made us read like The Red Badge of Courage and Johnny Got his Gun. These two I think they thought were “boys” books. They were not, they were anti-war books.
[ Post updated. ]
“This keyboard is not intended for use as a toaster” hasn’t been added to the product warnings yet? I must speak to the management.
Despite the mocking laughter of someone not too far from me, I’ve decided to reframe this incident as further proof of my heroism – specifically, of toiling away through my lunch break.
This. Covid proved it as much as any such thing can be proven. Many of those are people I once trusted. A lot of them are people I once trusted and if you told me that they were going to react this way , as cynical as I can be, I wouldn’t have believed it. I mean some of them, sure…maybe…but…
It’s not unlike asking why more boys aren’t dabbing their eyes and sobbing uncontrollably while watching Bette Davis in Now, Voyager.
Notice that is adults who read fiction. Again…fiction. As I keep saying, and I will say it over and over and over and over again, consuming too much fiction is a big part of our problem. Big part. That and the undermining of a child’s right to physically defend themselves from assault. The two kinda go together in some respects. But again…fiction. It’s a problem.
This. See also, Lord of the Flies. An explicitly anti-boy book. At the time, while I had read the Narnia books, I was not aware of Tolkien. I didn’t understand the connection with the title until many years later when I learned about what an absolute shitstain William Goulding was and that he turned a true, positive story about boys in that situation upside down. It was one of those…oooooh…moments. They shoved that book AND the movie down our throats in my private, fundamentalist Christian middle school. The teacher used it as a slightly softened bludgeon to shame us boys.
Lord of the Flies: in Polynesia a few years ago, 6 boys out fishing were marooned on an island for 18 months or so, the oldest 16. They survived quite well because they had skills. Even brought one with a broken leg down off a cliff (they were harvesting bird eggs). They did not kill each other.
To elaborate on my point, you might have noticed that aside from LOTR, the books I mentioned were NON-fiction, which I have continued to love as an adult. Nonfiction about sports, war, heroes, and biographies appeal to boys but not to female teachers.
Maybe she’s only seen children on TV
Ms Campione has spent the last day or so insisting that the reading tastes of children are merely “indicative of their upbringing and socialisation,” because “gender is a social construct.” No other possibilities are seemingly conceivable. In her mind, the fact that boys and girls tend to differ in their reading interests is merely “a thing that we made up.”
And by implication, something to be corrected.
Apparently, Ms Campione has “been reading books written by and about men my whole life,” and therefore boys should be taught “that they can and should identify with all sorts of stories.” I.e., stories generally preferred by girls and written by women. I think we can assume she’s not referring to, say, Agatha Christie.
Again, I’ve seen no meaningful responses by Ms Campione to any of the attempts to shoehorn new information into her head. However, her air of superiority remains intact.
Thanks to that John Lewis post, Youtube is now feeding me holiday ads from M&S, Morrisons, Tesco… all of which prove that it’s not so hard to produce one of these without offending.
I don’t even know who Morrisons is, but the ad is funny and charming with great, detailed visuals.
[ Post updated again. ]
Dindu muffin?
Wrong implement.
Try a bludgeon.
Muffins aren’t normally toasted, so no.
What Democrats Would Do to America
When I think back to the things I chose to read as a wee seedling, I can’t say that “upbringing and socialisation” were obvious determinants. Quite the opposite in many cases. My preference for The Fantastic Four over Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers wasn’t a result of parental influence or some “thing… made up” by “society.”
Like “all cultures are equal”?
1) boys and girls taste in reading DOES follow general trends just as their taste in play (house v cowboys & indians | Barbies v D&D) and while there is overlap, the differences are significant enough to be noted
2) I’ll repeat what I’ve said to every teacher once my girls were old enough to read … the priority, and the only priority, to encourage reading is to give them books they WILL read without prompting. (I remember a teacher who sniffed with disdain that I had a whole shelf full of Goosebumps that kids devoured)
3) I wish there was some way we could get elementary & middle schools into some kind of 50/50 male/female teachers. The feminization of public schools has been as disastrous as allowing them to be 99% leftist.
And, OT, but I find this depressing but unsurprising.
Darleen:
Another one for the “the old-timers weren’t so crazy after all” collection:
All Orthodox Jewish schools are sex-segregated. It also helps to have a culture that values scholarship and has lotsa real kids around – many of our teachers were young-ish seminarians with 3-4 kids at home. “Discipline” and lesson plans reflected their own experience, and meant something completely different compared to the girls’ classes.
Between the fathers – most of whom were very involved and modeled Torah study and community work, even in the minority of divorces – and the teachers, there was little need for a Jordan Peterson type to try and make up the gaps.
More recently, almost every Jewish Day School in North American now has a staff of post-army Israeli volunteers and a regular stream of inspiring personal speakers.
(Obligatory post-election comment:)
Nobody in the Jewish community sat around waiting for somebody else to do this. You either build a family and a community, or you don’t. Freedom means it’s up to you.
Too many Americans offloaded to the educational/entertainment complex – and when Covid came and they saw what their kids were learning, they started waking up.
Regarding asymmetries of interest, this blast from the past came to mind:
In which we consider variables deemed unthinkable by left-leaning academics and New York Times columnists.
Well, this woman has never seen one episode but does have Die Hard on annual Christmas-movie-must-watch list.
Yes, there are typical female things I watch and do (e.g. I sew so I also get a kick out of Project Runway) but a lot of my interests developed growing up a tomboy. I’m part of that overlap group.
And while homeschooling and co-op education has increased in response, not enough. The whole Industrial/Academic/Teachers Union complex is seething and working to curb or outlaw these apostates.
Checking in from CA. Never heard of this she/her journalist person until now, but I can smell the social peer pressure from here, even with the fan on.
The differences between little boys and girls can be seen in their crayon drawings. Girls draw flowers, kittens and ponies. Boys draw dinosaurs, bbq grills and Carter carburetors.
You do realize it’s a Hannukah movie, don’t you?
And we love you all the more for that.
Enriching our culture, one shooting at a time.
This is why gated communities exist.
OK…so the Kaleb Cooper (proper spelling) Kaleb: Down Under series (no trumprickroll this time), will be released January 8 (which is a Friday…got one thing right) of next year. Wife misinformed me once again. Well, she had the general idea…once again…
ESR: I wouldn’t touch tradpub with an insulated 21-foot pole.
Speaking of William Golding, my high-school boyfriend recommended Darkness Visible, because he said there was something in it that spoke to him.
I started it but stopped because it contained some awful stuff, including a schoolmaster who fantasized about his boy students. That’s the only detail I remember. I also remember a dark undertone to the novel’s moral universe that I didn’t want to imbibe.
It’s not that I don’t want to confront awful things, it’s that I want to do it from within a moral universe that’s actually moral. The universe must be able to portray evil as evil rather than as something interesting that you might want to try.
It turns out that boyfriend was one of the most screwed-up people I’ve even known. We were both 17, an age at which you can’t diagnose Cluster B, but I’ll warrant he was well on his way to developing the whole cluster. Looking back, I wonder if his “selfless” volunteer work at a camp for disabled, non-verbal kids might have been cover for something else.
This is a fact.
Teachers don’t want to teach books they don’t like, and they want to teach books that their college professors would approve of.
Ender’s Game is a superb boy-focused novel, but it’s sci-fi (so it fails the college-professor test) and Orson Scott Card was one of the first artists to be cancelled for his non-leftist views.
OSC’s writings on the snobbery of college lit-crit are worth reading. He delivered a lecture at my uni where he talked about artistic snobbery, something I had been indulging in during my teens. He pointed out that people consume art for different reasons, looking for different things, and so who are you to sneer at them for not having your high-fallutin’ tastes? I think that lecture might have saved me from becoming more left-leaning.
Maybe we’re not completely cooked?
This is something all alleged “anti-Zionist” people must answer: if this is merely about a territorial conflict between Palestinians and Israel, then why are Jews being harassed in Paris, London, and NYC?
I’ll tell you why: It’s not about the political entity called Israel, it’s about the ancient hatred of the lineage.
Maybe YOU, Ms Leftist, are merely upset by Israel’s behavior, but the middle-eastern folks wearing keffiyeh next to you in the protest are determined to extirpate the lineage from the face of the earth, merely because they would not submit to Muhammed’s sword back in the day.
Are you really signing on to that ancient tribal blood-feud? Why?
Did no one notice the Instalanche? Nine hours ago?
The original short story / novella was better than the novel. The same with his Lost Boys.
Speaking of Orson Scott Card, my wife and I both loved his Women of Genesis series about Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. (As religious Jews, we’re well familiar with the biblical narratives and the rabbinical commentaries on their lives, and it was quite interesting to compare and contrast with the details he added.) I wish he’d get the last two,The Wives of Israel and The Sons of Rachel, finished and published; he’s not getting any younger, after all.
The determined affectation is very nearly surreal.
Ms Campione does “not agree… on a very foundational level” that boys will tend to be more interested in the kinds of books that they tend to be more interested in. Apparently, their inclinations can be manipulated and overridden, by women like her, via some means not disclosed, and despite all evidence to the contrary.
“Maybe your son could stand to read some romantasy,” says she.
I suspect that any actual interest in getting boys engaged with books will take second place to a more exciting re-education project, via which they will be made less like boys.
I mean, that is what seems to excite Ms Campione, and doubtless other women very much like her, many of whom will be employed as publishers, or teachers.
Ms Campione is currently boasting of “making men mad online.” While lying about what it is she said that prompted the avalanche of mockery and correction.