Time for something grotesque, I think. Grotesque, but very of our times:

I’ll spare you the grim details, but what Mr Sonia did to the victim, a thirteen-year-old girl, over several months, was sufficiently vile to repel over a dozen jurors, who said they would be unable to sit on a case so disturbing. Suffice it to say, Mr Sonia was found guilty and incarcerated for a minimum of 22 years. During which time,

Or, convicted paedophile demands pampering, women’s undies.

As I said, it’s very now.

Because that’s what we do now with male child-rapists. And obviously, it can only go well. No bizarre complications could possibly ensue.

Despite this seemingly intermittent maleness, Mr Sonia has launched a lawsuit against staff at both the Washington Department of Corrections and his previous male prison, citing “cruel and unusual punishment.” Specifically, a failure to provide, at taxpayer expense, “breast augmentation” and “hair removal of the face, neck and jaw,” which is, we’re told, of “paramount importance.” And a lack of which allegedly results in “severe emotional anguish.”

Depending, one assumes, on whether Mr Sonia claims to be a man or a woman on any given day.

At which point, readers may wonder whether Mr Sonia’s mental health shortcomings predate their supposed causes.

Update, via the comments, where Mags suggests,

It does seem – shall we say, possible – that Mr Sonia is so irredeemably broken and malevolent, so committed to antagonism, that, having been obstructed from further child-raping, he now channels his antisocial urges into nuisance lawsuits and the feigning of victimhood.

I mean, it wouldn’t be surprising.

Jen adds,

Well, we’ve already seen the scrupulously intersectional priorities of, for instance, Canadian women’s shelters, in which a deranged dysmorphic man roaming the halls wearing only a bra and brandishing his genitals, along with several stolen kitchen knives, is deemed of much less importance than the fact that a female resident had dared to “misgender” him.

Can you not feel the progress…?

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

Academia’s Clown Quarter, I mean:

The meaning of the term “marriage fundamentalism,” a term used repeatedly, isn’t made entirely clear, and its allegedly racist and life-crushing particulars are, inevitably, “hidden,” “invisible,” and conveniently vague – despite the loudly announced use of “an intersectional lens.” But it seems to mean something like the tendency of many adults to see marriage as of mutual benefit and an optimal way to raise children.

However, our stipulator of pronouns and lecturer in Critical Praxis in Education prefers a more dismissive formulation:

Well, statistically, and by almost any measure, it is superior. Hence, presumably, the espousal.

Stripped of contrivance, I’m assuming this is a roundabout admission that, on average, people who find marriage an alien concept and much too demanding, and who opt instead for transient partners, fatherless children, and unstable relationship trash fires, tend to do less well in life, along with their offspring. And quite possibly, in turn, their offspring too.

Though I’m not sure why the response should be to blame those who get their shit together, marry, and raise children more successfully. As if their competence in this matter, or good fortune or whatever, were somehow lamentable, and racist, and a basis for indignation. And from the child’s point of view, other, more credible candidates for resentment may come to mind.

A conclusion that is simply untrue. With the benefits of stable two-parent families – an exclusively “white” phenomenon, according to Professor Letiecq – actually extending to all racial groups:

The author of the study quoted above, Brad Wilcox, can be seen being interviewed here. An interview in which he points out,

Buy hey, let’s not let the numbers get in the way of our radical posturing. Instead, let’s offer the young and credulous really perverse advice, and bitch about marriage as merely an act of complicity in “white supremacy.”

And yes, we’ve been down this path before.

Update, via the comments – which you’re reading, of course:

Regarding this,

EmC replies, tersely,

Well, if little Don’t-Know-Who-My-Dad-Is is starting fires at school and looks destined for a life of delinquency and crime, this is not obviously the fault of the happily married Mr and Mrs Jefferson and their two non-fire-starting children. And no amount of chest-puffing about “heteropatriarchy,” “unequal power relations” and “white supremacy” seems likely to alter that fact.

A child in an unstable home and consequently on an unhappy trajectory may have things to grumble about, in between the brawling and disruption, and starting fires in the toilets. But those grumbles have little to do with other people’s parents making better choices. The grumbling, it seems to me, should probably be directed closer to home.

FredTheFourth adds,

That’s this argument here, for those who may have missed it. I recommend reading the linked post in full – there’s much to chew on, and much of it mirrors the assumptions aired by Professor Letiecq.

Lifted from the comments, more pretentious agonising:

Or, Landscape Paintings Now Deemed Problematic, Racist.

Above, John Constable’s Hampstead Heath, circa 1820. Beware its morally corrupting influence.

The problem, we’re told, is that paintings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are “leaving very little room for representations of people of colour.” And obviously, even the past must be made “inclusive and representative.” Which seems to mean that we must all pretend that our islands’ population and cultural assumptions have always looked like those of, say, twenty-first century London, a city whose demographics bear little relationship to those of the country as a whole, even in the twenty-first century.

It occurs to me that notions of racial “representation” will likely be distorted by the embrace of rather parochial progressive conceits, and by proximity to the nation’s capital, which in my lifetime has gone from a native white-majority city, over 90%, to a native white-minority one, around 35%, and which is wildly out of step with the rest of the nation. Things that are denounced as “horribly white,” or whatever the current term of disapproval is, may not seem so to people who live in, say, Chesterfield or Plymouth.

Likewise, the demographics of Cambridge are skewed rather significantly by students, who make up about a fifth of the city’s population, and of which more than 40% are students from overseas. Which, again, may tilt one’s view of what constitutes “representation.”

But apparently, museum visitors must be warned that the sight of a Constable landscape may trigger TERRIFYING BLOOD AND SOIL TENDENCIES. Or at least inspire thoughts of historical attachment, continuity, and belonging – thoughts that may be disconcerting or very much frowned upon, if only by the – wait for it – keepers of our heritage.

Update, via the comments:

It’s worth noting that the museum apparently had its annual Arts Council funding reduced – from £1.2M to £637K – on grounds that the institution “hadn’t fulfilled its targets of diversifying its audience.” Hence, one assumes, the new signage, the fretting about “representation,” and the stern moral warnings about “nationalist feelings.”

It’s not clear to me how one might “diversify” the racial makeup of visitors to the museum, which is what is meant, albeit coyly. And it occurs to me that part of that problem – if indeed it is a problem – might be a “diverse” immigrant demographic that by and large shows less interest in the artistic and cultural history of the country to which they have moved.

See also, the British countryside.

Update 2:

Regarding the urge to correct the racial makeup of museum visitors, Julia asks,

Which isn’t entirely out of step with the general air of farce. The supposedly corrective fretting starts with a dubious, arbitrary assumption – that all racial groups should be visiting the museum in some given ratio, even though they choose not to. Those doing the fretting then set about insulting the people who do visit the museum by claiming that the things they have travelled to see, and with which they may feel some affinity, may result in “dark… nationalist feelings” and other unspeakable beastliness. By liking landscape paintings, they risk moral corruption.

Andy adds,

Indeed. It’s very often a condition of taxpayer subsidy, as illustrated above. And of course such ham-fisted measures, along with the encroachment of wokeness more generally, may strike some visitors as inapt or patronising, or vaguely alienating, thereby deterring further visits. While the sought-after “diverse” demographic continues choosing not to visit anyway.

But hey, progress.

I bring you art. || You are being educated. || Dating difficulty detected. || So, have you played dress-up with your robot vacuum cleaner? (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Incoming. || How to clean your bat. || Crocodile hairballs. It’s a thing, apparently. || Our betters assemble. || Celebrate Frozen Dead Guy Day at the International Cryonics Museum, Colorado. || The daring, and the disasters, of stratospheric ballooning in the 1930s. || You want one and you know it. || Step aside, peasants, make way for fashion. || A poet opines. || Another poet opines, with expressive accompaniment. || The progressive retail experience, parts 537, 538, 539, 540, 541, and 542. || A pattern is noticed. || The thrill of paint removal. || Because you demanded it, stimulated nipples. || And finally, note the lifting of the leg.

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Lifted from the comments, a tale of what can happen when love, or professed love, collides with designer agonising:

Point of view: you just found out one of your favorite people in the whole world stopped masking and now you feel unsafe.

Also, that person lives across the country pic.twitter.com/teIMYiPBUj

— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) March 12, 2024

For those who missed it:

And so,

As you can imagine, there was some speculation as to whether the outpouring above is a well-executed parody, a feat of satire.

Well. It turns out that no, it’s not.

Update, via the comments:

“It’s your choice to make,” says madam. As if the odd behaviour were somehow not her own. As if the party choosing to end the relationship – a relationship with “the person that I love most in the world” – with a weird ultimatum – were not her.

WTP adds,

It is, I think, a signature of our times. Like many others, I watched the video twice and still wasn’t sure. Though in our defence, I don’t think there’s much reality in the reality, if you see what I mean.