From The Independent, a new moral crisis:

A plus-size content creator and traveller who said seatbelts on planes cause “emotional damage” is now sharing tips on how to avoid the trauma.

It occurs to me that the thing causing the annoyance – sorry, emotional damage – is not in fact the seatbelt, or asking for an extender. If, say, a person of average proportions found that all plane seatbelts had suddenly been reduced in size by 38%, this might well be irritating, and somewhat surreal, but it would not, I think, be a likely cause of similar “emotional damage,” let alone psychological trauma.

Likewise, if you’re rendered incensed by the fact that a plus-sized bath towel is still insufficiently commodious, then the cause of any sorrow and agitation probably isn’t the towel, but rather what you’re trying to fit in it. However, it seems that certain obvious realities must not be acknowledged – and so we get performative indignation about how oppressive towels are.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding airborne stowing dramas, readers may recall the delightful and ladylike Lindy West, a “fat activist” whose “work focuses on pop culture, social justice and body image.” In a tearful tale shared in Jezebel, Ms West insisted that she should always be accommodated, regardless of practicality and inconvenience, as if her own choice to be, and remain, notably overweight could have no bearing on the issue. While struggling to squeeze into her plane seat, Ms West decided to pick a loud verbal fight with an adjacent male passenger, and then amused herself by deliberately knocking him with her luggage as he tried to sleep. She then complained, seemingly without irony, that “nobody wants to sit next to a fat person on a plane.”

When not writing about herself for Jezebel and the Guardian, or testing the endurance of plane seats and fellow passengers, and insisting that her difficulties fitting into seats and other spaces are nothing whatsoever to do with her choices, Ms West makes videos of herself eating biscuits and junk food.

Be the ‘quit’ in equity.

Noah Carl has a proposal:

What we need is a “Resign for Diversity” campaign…

Any academic from an overrepresented group who advocates more “diversity” is directly contributing to the lack of “diversity” by remaining in his position. Assuming the number of jobs is relatively fixed, such an individual is effectively saying, “I want the percentage of academics who have the same demographic characteristics as me to go down, but I am not willing to give up my job in order to achieve that goal. Rather, I want other academics with those demographic characteristics to give up their jobs, or to lose job opportunities.” Needless to say, this is not a principled stance…

If you can’t explain why you haven’t resigned, then don’t expect others to partake in this foolish “diversity” charade.

The goal wouldn’t be to encourage mass resignations; since most people look out for themselves, we shouldn’t expect many to actually resign. Rather, it would be to “get the incentives right” – to internalise the externality of advocating “diversity.” At the moment, white academics who have jobs can go along happily, waxing lyrical about “diversity,” while white academics who don’t have jobs bear the consequences. If those incumbents were pressured to resign, they might start to rethink their ideology.

A longer, more detailed airing of the idea, with much to chew on, can be read here. 

Also, open thread.

The progressive San Francisco school-board president recalled by voters earlier this week claimed her ousting was a “consequence” of fighting for racial justice, and represents a victory for “white supremacists.”

Yes, those “white supremacists” for which San Francisco is famed – i.e., local parents, including hundreds of “non-citizen immigrants,” who happen to have skin of many different colours.

More than 70 percent of voters elected to recall [board president, Gabriela] López and two other progressive board members, Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga.

The trio’s history of mismanagement and self-indulgence is pretty much what you’d expect of leftist monomaniacs given power and a seemingly endless supply of other people’s money, with a budget deficit of $125 million, and two hours spent debating whether a gay white dad was sufficiently “diverse” to join a volunteer parent committee.

One of the ousted ladies, Ms Alison Collins, has of course been mentioned here before, when disdaining pupils of Chinese or Korean ancestry as “white” or white-adjacent, and therefore suspect, and when insisting that a parental preference for academic rigour is “racist,” and that the way to fight for “high-quality schools” is to abandon expectations of competence.

An educator, you see.

I have things to do, and mojo to restore, so I’ll be largely absent for a few days. Consider this an open thread.

Play nicely. Use coasters.

Andrew Gutmann and Paul Rossi on the woke indoctrination that parents aren’t supposed to see:  

In workshops such as “Integrating Healing-Centered Engagements Into a DEIA School Program” and “Racial Trauma and the Path Toward Healing,” we learned how DEI practitioners use segregated affinity groups and practices such as healing circles to inculcate feelings of trauma. Even students without grievances are trained to see themselves as victims of their ancestors’ suffering through “intergenerational violence.”

The next step in a school’s transformation is “inclusion.” Schools must integrate DEI work into every aspect of the school and every facet of the curriculum must be evaluated through an antibias, antiracist, or anti-oppressive lens. In “Let’s Talk About It! Anti-Oppressive Unit and Lesson Plan Design,” we learned that the omission of this lens—“failing to explore the intersection of STEM and social justice,” for instance—constitutes an act of “curriculum violence.”

Children of kindergarten age are defined, enthusiastically, as “natural social-justice warriors” and “small activists.”

Regarding the above, a professor of political science doesn’t want you to notice: 

Dr Tabachnick, above, also thinks that “critical race theory,” of which we’ve spoken many times, is being targeted with a “smear campaign.” As opposed to, say, being revealed as stupefying and pernicious, and its boosters and practitioners quoted verbatim.