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Anthropology Free-For-All Pronouns Or Else

She’s Taken It Upon Herself

October 8, 2024 118 Comments

Not a lady, but a they-dy, obviously:

This is what happens when you hire woke. When they tell you who they are, believe them. pic.twitter.com/gk4EGnahps

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) September 5, 2023

As an employer, the person paying for this privilege, you’d never tire of that.

Previously and entirely unrelated:

Resumes including ‘they/them’ pronouns are more likely to be overlooked, new report finds.

Following which, I added:

If a job application includes imaginary pronouns and claims of themness, I think one could treat it as roughly equivalent to the words I like to shit on the carpet. Signalling, as it does, insufferable pretension or serious mental illness, or some unhappy combination of the two.

Oh, and we mustn’t forget the male teacher who required three months of paid medical leave, supposedly due to emotional exhaustion and “severe burnout” on account of the small children in his class being reluctant to lie about the sex of the person teaching them. The honesty of small children – who used the words mister and he – had rendered him unfit for work.

And every employer would walk over hot coals for an employee who demands validation of his psychodrama from other people’s children. And who, when this bold stratagem fails, retires to his fainting couch for months on end.

Update, via the comments:

Behold, another model employee:

Male teacher who thinks he’s a woman says he had a conversation with a student about growing fake bre*sts and is upset that other students haven’t noticed his “additions” yet.

These are the people teaching your kids pic.twitter.com/i5ouCKHQ5S

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 8, 2024

Just so we’re clear. He’s a teacher who wants the children he teaches to notice – and comment on – his breasts. Or his approximation of breasts.

And surely that’s what every parent hopes for in a teacher.

Consider this an open thread.

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Written by: David
Academia Interviews Politics

Verboten Realities

October 5, 2024 124 Comments

Lifted from the comments, here’s an interview with Professor Amy Wax. Topics touched on include academia’s practised unrealism, declining competence, and the seeming irrelevance of whether a thing is true:

I did read John McWhorter’s piece [on me] – John and I were friends for a very long time… I’m surprised at some of the things he says in that piece. I’m grateful for the fact he says I shouldn’t be punished… But for him to call what I say “demeaning,” or that it somehow undermines trust, a lot of that is puzzling.

You know, the word truth never appears in his op-ed… Usually, it was falsehoods that undermine trust, back in the good old days, and truth that supported trust. Now they’ve turned that completely on its head. Whether what I said is true or not seems completely irrelevant.

 

The discussion, at 24:45, of who gets to define extremism – and, very much related, The Party Of Shoplifting – is, I think, entertaining and rather on-the-money.

Update, via the comments:

The complaints against Professor Wax were compiled, with some enthusiasm, by the law school’s Dean, Theodore Ruger, who claims to have experienced “lasting trauma” after hearing Wax speak. This, remember, is a supposedly grown man. An intellectual.

Ruger’s improbable assertion echoed those of several students who would have us believe that Wax’s mere presence on campus is “physically and emotionally harming all of us.” And whose list of grievances included one student who resented the expectation that in order to win a debate, she “had to prove herself” – i.e., make a compelling argument – and another who was crushed by the suggestion that affirmative action policies can leave their supposed beneficiaries academically unprepared.

At which point, the word irony springs to mind.

This, then, is the standard at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school. Where tuition is a mere $76,000 a year.

So far as I can see, Professor Wax’s heretical comments – whether on the statistical benefits of bourgeois values, or on cultures of dysfunction, or on “equity” versus competence, or on her own students’ performance disparities and drop-out rates – have yet to be refuted by those trembling with indignation. They have, however, been denounced as “hate speech,” “racist,” “segregationist,” “white supremacy,” etc.

Apparently, among our betters, it is now scandalous to suggest that a way to minimise the risk of poverty and imprisonment is to be diligent and hardworking, charitable and civic minded, and to “eschew substance abuse and crime.”

Again, $76,000 a year.

At which point, it’s perhaps worth repeating this, from an earlier post on those supposedly traumatised by Professor Wax and the fact that she exists:

If a person’s worldview and piety, and social standing, are based on a series of fairly obvious lies, they will tend to be touchy. This can, of course, be extrapolated to describe an institution, many institutions, an entire elite culture.

Hence the bizarrely narrow range of permissible opinions, the unmentionable statistics, and the zeal with which transgressions are punished.

Update 2:

In the comments, ccscientist adds,

AA students are being sacrificed for the sake of appearances (a point Wax makes of course).

And the result is very often disaffection and resentment, which is eagerly redirected, not least by many of Wax’s critics, towards “whiteness,” or “white supremacy,” or “structural racism,” or some other self-flattering conspiracy theory. The resentment may be misdirected, or entirely unearned, but it is exploitable.

It’s also worth remembering that Wax’s comments about performance disparities and drop-out rates among her own students were prompted by Glenn Loury, who had noted, correctly, that such disparities must necessarily result from racial favouritism and wildly varying standards in admissions. A point he explains more fully in the short, and very much recommended, video embedded here.

Wax was essentially confirming Loury’s own reasoning, and stating clearly what Loury had cautiously tip-toed towards. And yet she, unlike he, is demonised and punished for articulating a statistical necessity, an observable fact. As Wax puts it, common knowledge, albeit of a kind studiously ignored by those doing the punishing and puffing out their chests.

As Wax says in the video linked above,

On the one hand, all good people are for affirmative action. That’s a sign of virtue. On the other hand, to talk about the predicate, the reason that affirmative action is needed, which is that there are these gaps in educational achievement and proficiency, is verboten. So, we kind of twisted ourselves in knots that we have to embrace something but deny the factual underpinning of it.

And noticing the knot, the mental contortion, is very much forbidden.

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Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (739)

October 4, 2024 111 Comments

For some reason, I wasn’t expecting the bra. || Bar tab of consequence. || Bracing scenes. || Brush thoroughly. || Sky potholes. || Spillage of note. || Stalin’s longevity serum. || How jellyfish hunt. || It’s not hijinks, it’s an attempt to harass and dominate. || Disruptive customer detected. || Uncanny resemblance. || The thrill of ingrown hair. || Nosferatu, 1922. || When it happens, it will have happened 3,000 years ago. || You want one and you know it. || Today’s word is visibility. || Street justice scenes. || How to needlessly get yourself tased. || String and typewriters. || On pronouncing scone. || “Dear person,” and other letters. || Dispute of note. || The progressive retail experience, parts 583, 584, and 585. || Spider goats. || And finally, stroking, rubbing, and definitely some bulging.

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Written by: David
Academia Free-For-All Parenting

It’s Been “Queered,” You See

October 2, 2024 122 Comments

Time to run a finger along academia’s cutting edge:

A Kutztown University professor is using art to advocate for the expansion of the term “motherhood” to include “LGBTQIA+ communities.” Art education Professor Leslie Sotomayor will discuss questions about mothers at the public university’s annual Gender and Sexual Minorities Conference, starting Wednesday.

Sotomayor’s presentation is titled, Madres Radicales: Queering Art & Motherhood.

Book those tickets now, ladies. Time is short and you’ve so much to learn.

You will, needless to say, be taking instruction from “agents of self-knowledge production” who will fearlessly and heroically “expand traditional narratives about madres / mothering as an action, an embodied experience,” and who will be “expanding the terminology of motherhood as it connects to LGBTQIA+ communities, racial identities, gender expressions, surviving oppressions, straddling socio-economic statuses, citizenship, and cultural memory.”

At which point, readers may wonder whether referring to oneself, rather earnestly, as an “agent of self-knowledge production,” as if self-awareness were an area of expertise, actually suggests something other than self-awareness.

Other temptations include “virtual LGBTQ-affirming yoga,” an exploration of “trauma-informed movement,” conducted via Zoom. And for which participants are reminded to “bring your own mat or towel.”

Yes, it’s a “self-empowering learning environment,” in which the big questions will not be shied from:

Who is a madre / mother? What do madres do? What is their role in our communities? Societies? How is a mother / madre radical? What does a madre radical look like?  

It’s no use trying to flee. I’ve locked the doors.

While pondering these questions, and the inevitable “intersections of identities,” attendees will be given a precious opportunity to mingle with Professor Sotomayor, along with Dr Ashleigh Strange – a they-person, pictured here – and numerous, equally dazzling “protest organisers, musicians, poets, and drag performers.”

And obviously, when anyone thinks of motherhood, the first thing that comes to mind is the term drag performers. Which is to say, suggestively gyrating men, wearing tights and corsets, and generally being fierce, while demanding your fealty. Your full-throated affirmation of their gyrating, corset-wearing cause.

This, then, is “the expanding terminology of motherhood as it connects to LGBTQIA+ communities.” And nothing screams motherhood quite like a convulsing bald man in a bodystocking.

Above, the embodiment of motherhood.

You will become “AUTHENTICALLY YOU” – authenticity being a recurring theme of the event – by watching peculiar men hurling themselves about while dressed up as women, something they aren’t.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
His Pretty Nails Problematic Height Pronouns Or Else

We Can Rebuild Him

September 30, 2024 134 Comments

From the fun-time world of the sexually dysmorphic:

This sounds like something worth talking to a therapist about, since that’ll be much less traumatic and most likely cheaper. 

Wise words, as Transgender Reddit goes, from the replies to this:

Please let me know what height reduction surgeries are out there, and the cost. It’s been really difficult to find out. I’m 18 years old, on hormones since I turned 18. I’m 169 cm or just a little bit under 5’7″ and I’d like to go down as much as possible. Please let me know on both legs and spine. Also I’m a size nine-and-a-half in women’s shoes, if that is important.  

According to our height-conscious chappie, it’s all about “just being myself.” And his self is apparently a shorter person than the person he actually is:

I only need to go down about two inches to be happy. I would be happy at 5’5″.

And hey, who wouldn’t want a “controlled breaking” of their legs? Which is how his idea of ladylike shortness would be achieved. A procedure that entails an exciting range of possible complications, including limited mobility, nerve damage, chronic pain, and deformity, and for which the success rate is, intriguingly, “not known,” according to the people offering the service.

Update, via the comments:

Twin Cities Teegan adds,

The advice to this person to seek therapy is the absolute correct one… Gender dysphoria is a heck of a disorder and it can create some really bad ideation without therapy. As someone who fights with GD, my heart goes out this person to a certain extent, but dang it, his idea is hella dumb and I can’t think of an outcome his idea will create but more problems.

And yet in some quarters, among certain activists and their ‘allies’, anyone suggesting this might find themselves assailed with indignant name-calling. Something I’ve said many times is that it seems we’re not supposed to tease apart the various phenomena currently bundled together as “trans”:

Taken broadly, we are being asked to affirm, wholesale, a bundle of phenomena that includes not only actual gender dysphoria, whether the result of developmental anomalies or childhood molestation, but also autogynephilia, serious personality disorders, adolescent pretension, and assorted exhibitionist and unsavoury compulsions. The expectation seems to be that we should take these different phenomena, with very different moral connotations, as being one and the same thing, and then defer to them, habitually and uncritically. Which is asking rather more than can readily be agreed to.

And if we’re not supposed to make any attempt at unbundling those things, insofar as one can, and if we’re not supposed to do anything but affirm and defer, then it’s difficult to remain approved of while saying, however politely, “Actually this thing here – say, men getting their legs broken in a quest to become more ladylike – is unhinged and a recipe for disaster.” And it’s not at all obvious how one might define an upper limit to the pretending that’s expected.

Regarding this undefined upper limit, commenter [+] adds,

Call me Napoleon, you bigots.

But here’s the thing. If observable reality is no longer the measure of things, and if observable reality must actively be shunned in order to be affirming, in order to be an “ally,” – as seen, for instance, here – then where is the threshold? Where’s the point at which it all becomes too bonkers, too big an ask?

When a shirtless, deranged man – a man attacking a breastfeeding mother and her four-month-old baby – is referred to by the Vancouver Police Department, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the Vancouver Sun, as a woman – despite all video and photographic evidence – then we’re in surreal territory. And the mismatch of claim and reality is not neutral or benign. It is corrosive. Not least to any trust in the Vancouver Police Department, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the Vancouver Sun – the probity of which is, necessarily, called into question.

Because the public, including witnesses to the assault above, don’t generally appreciate being lied to about the identity of dangerously deranged criminals.

As I said at the time,

For the passers-by who intervened and overpowered Mr Beekmeyer, it must have been quite strange to see subsequent reports in which this shirtless man was referred to by the police and the media as a woman. As if their own, first-hand perceptions, from mere inches away, were somehow wildly and implausibly inaccurate.

And if you follow the link above, you’ll see this example, this feat of incongruous pretending, is but one of many.

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Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.