As I’m otherwise occupied, some items from the archives:

Already Broken.

A radical young lady asks, “What do we eat during the revolution?”

The Genitals Of Tomorrow.

For readers in search of some below-the-belt upgrades.

He Was Expecting Free Hits.

He didn’t know he was in a gang, you see, so how dare you sentence him?

Members, You Say.

Ladies, good news. Danger is now something you can just pretend away.

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

Lifted from the comments, where Mr Muldoon directs us to,

There is a dull mediocrity, a predictable trajectory:

I think it’s fair to say that, whatever her creative limitations, Liberal Jane, aka Ms Caitlin Blunnie, does like her slogans. One might say incantations. Almost all of which have an air of self-satisfaction, as if some previously unregistered profundity had been heroically unearthed.

One creation extols the radical virtues of skiving in the workplace and not doing the work one is being paid to do. “Craft is resistance in a late-stage capitalist society,” reads another. Also, “Self-love is self-care.” “Riots, not diets.” “Hex the imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.” “Fantasy is for everyone.” “Abortion builds new futures.” Oh, and “Smash the state and masturbate,” and “Stretch marks are ubiquitous to the human experience.”

And if even more excitement is called for:

The item below is a recent and fairly topical example of Ms Blunnie’s morally corrective offerings to the world:

Happy #InternationalWomensDay! 💜 pic.twitter.com/8LEdvZDeSj

— Liberal Jane (@liberaljanee) March 8, 2024

At which point, readers may note just how often progressive posturing seems to require a fairly high tolerance of contrivance and short-cuts, internal contradiction, and the kind of begged-question soundbites that are all but designed to shut down thought. A kind of pre-emptive short circuit.

For instance, in Ms Blunnie’s X feed, a professed concern for “bodily autonomy” appears alongside the slogans “Abortion builds new futures,” and “Funding abortion is an act of radical empathy,” along with a jolly pink poster for “Abortion Provider Appreciation Day,” which suggests that the bodily autonomy of some people, very small ones, doesn’t count.

And even if “bodily autonomy” applies only, and rather conveniently, to women, or a subset of women, one might have thought that it could extend to concerns regarding creepy, mentally ill men barging into women’s intimate spaces for a furtive wank.

But apparently not. Because “a woman is anyone who identifies as one.”

Update, via the comments:

Incoming. Apparently, surprisingly, no-one died. || His grilled cheese sandwich is more fiddlesome than yours. || It’s a look. || It’s a look 2. || She’s healing her womanhood. || Regarding submarines in space. || Ruffian intercepted. || He’s super-happy. || He wants your thoughts on his boobs. Includes obligatory head-tilt. || In Barnsley’s NHS, there were “less than ten amputations due to medical negligence.” || Because your face just says problems, love. || Imported Muhammadan piety. || And then it became apparent. || For the protesting class, it’s an outlet for their issues. || WiFi-enabled cock ring with built-in camera. || Incoming 2. || In fashion accessory news. || The car of the future, 1971. || And finally, I’m not entirely sure what this is, but apparently there’s a heated debate.

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Via Uma Thurman’s Feet, some educational news:

The particulars of which, we’ll get to in a moment. But in the meantime, do feel free to take a guess. Perhaps it could be the basis for a drinking game.

The email to union members, sent by John Vince, the chief negotiator for Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation district 27, is positively heaving with thou-shalt-nots:

As we’ve seen, many times, some teachers and educational bureaucrats do seem rather titillated by the prospect of actively deceiving parents. As, for instance, when middle-school teachers in Missouri were urged to fabricate and publish a false curriculum, purely to hide from parents the details of their activism and what they were actually up to in class. A move pre-emptively described by its proponent, Natalie Fallert, as “not being deceitful.” And regarding which, I wrote:

But I digress. Let’s get back to Mr Vince’s emailed instructions to Ontario educators:

Apparently, tardiness is a human right. Other sins to be avoided include the words blind spot, and the immensely oppressive phrase ladies and gentlemen. 

Also forbidden are:

These, it turns out, are “right-wing” opinions, and therefore have soul-blackening properties.

Needless to say, this quoted selection is but a small sample, a mere appetiser. Teachers are also warned not to congratulate parents on their child’s performance in a school play. Why this humdrum politeness should be avoided, with the threat of disciplinary consequences, is not entirely obvious and no hints are offered as to the reasoning. It is, however, framed as equal in sinfulness to informing a parent that their child has been “snorting a white powder.”

Because if little Billy is chopping them out in class, it’s now a teacher’s duty to keep parents in the dark, you see.

The full text of the email in question can be found via the link above. Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Oh, and by all means consider this an open thread.

Lifted from the comments, via Mr Muldoon, a pretty good example of The Unreliable Narrator:

Lt. Col. Bree Fram, a trans U.S. Space Force official spoke to the U.S. Air Force about inclusion and DEMANDED everyone to respect LGBTQ people and use pronouns.

The world is laughing at us pic.twitter.com/I9gftUQWYX

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 1, 2024

In the above, we see Lieutenant Colonel Bree Fram – a man pretending to be a woman – invoking “dignity and respect,” while peevishly insulting his audience by insisting that they should also aspire to pretence – by which I mean habitual dishonesty – that they should abandon probity, disregard the evidence staring them in the face, and become cowed, cartoonish, and absurd. Lest they be denounced as bad people.

From here, it looks an awful lot like an attempt at psychological bullying and demoralisation, a kind of abuse. Which, given the rote intimations of victimhood, is a tad ironic. One might say perverse. As noted previously, those who play The Pronoun Game, and who insist that others play along too, may not be as benign and morally fragrant as they would have the rest of us believe:

And so, we arrive at a familiar question. If someone will lie about that, something so obviously untrue, what else would they lie about? Again, what we’re seeing has the air of a civilisational shit test. One underway on many fronts, and often with serious consequences for those who dare to retain a sense of realism.

And in entirely unrelated news, which I mention for no reason whatsoever, the US Air Force is currently facing a “critical staffing shortage,” with a “persistent shortfall” of around 2,000 pilots, and with recruitment levels so bad – the prospect of joining so unenticing – that the service is seeking out retirees to return to active duty.

Readers may, however, wish to speculate as to whether the kinds of people who would be most drawn to serving in the armed forces, and most suited to roles therein, are overly enthused by “unconscious bias diversity training,” a growing number of officers appearing publicly in drag, and scolding sessions on the importance of repeating those cross-dressing officers’ fabulist pronouns. Or by the news that a failure to do so – to lie on demand and thereby become absurd – could be considered “discrimination” and a basis for disciplinary action.

In light of which, the prospect of alienation doesn’t seem entirely far-fetched.

Those with a taste for condescension and farce will find more of Lieutenant Colonel Fram’s pronouncements here. Among them, a belief that the competence of the US military, and thus the fate of the world, may hinge on whether modern warriors stipulate their pronouns in all of their emails.