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Academia Pronouns Or Else Sports

This Is My Shocked Face

October 10, 2024 57 Comments

Readers will, I think, recall Mr Sasha Yates, the cross-dressing high-school sports coach with an interest in teenage girls’ panties.

The chap so loudly championed by ladies of a progressive bent, despite numerous complaints regarding Mr Yates’ inappropriate behaviour.

Progressive ladies who denounced the “hate” and “transphobia” of those expressing concerns, while ensuring that Mr Yates retained his position, and his access to the girls’ changing rooms, where he paraded around in his own bra and panties, much to the girls’ discomfort, and while asking those teenage girls about their underwear and menstrual cycles.

Progressive ladies who merrily elevated themselves with the airing of modish views, their ostentatious displays of compassion and inclusivity, while in effect screwing over the schoolgirls being harassed by a cross-dressing creep.

Girls whose discomfort and polite complaints – their failure to be progressive – rendered them low-status. Beings of no consequence.

In case you’re unsure, Mr Yates is the strapping madam in the denim.

Well, readers, I have news.

Following the renewal of his employment contract, reported previously, Mr Yates has since resigned, citing “ongoing health reasons.” Which, as the ladies at Reduxx reveal, is something of a euphemism, another coy dishonesty:

Yates’ resignation appears to have come after starring in home-made pornography, including in a video showing him smoking methamphetamine from a glass pipe.

I’ll spare you the more graphic details, but in one of the feats of erotica seemingly shared with the world, Mr Yates asks the question every parent hopes to hear from someone educating their children:

“Am I a good meth whore?”

At risk of sounding stuffy and uptight, it occurs to me that if you’re employed as a sports coach at a school, despite perving on adolescent girls, and your home-made porno videos, in which you smoke meth, can easily be found by parents, and presumably by students, this is not an ideal situation.

And because, clearly, we need more irony, there’s this detail regarding the school district’s original investigation:

In response to the public outcry [in 2023], the district quietly hired an attorney to do an investigation into the allegations that Yates had exposed himself to the female students. The attorney, Christopher Harris, determined that the allegations were unsubstantiated despite never interviewing the girls who had reported seeing Yates’ genitals. 

Wait for it.

Harris was recently arrested on child pornography charges.

You may now resume your humdrum, non-cross-dressing lives.

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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
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
Academia Those Poor Darling Paedophiles

An Interest In Children

September 16, 2024 77 Comments

And in unrepentant pervert news:

A Swedish academic who triggered severe public backlash after writing his PhD thesis about masturbating to fantasy child sexual abuse material… has now released a book on the topic. Karl Andersson, previously a PhD student at the University of Manchester in the Japanese studies department, announced the publication of his new book, Impossibly Cute Boys: The Healing Power of Shota Comics in Japan, in a recent YouTube video where he states that the text incorporates his “philosophy of boy worship.” 

That would be this chap here, mentioned previously. The chap for whom three months of masturbation constitutes “research,” the basis for a PhD. And given the not uncommon consequences of childhood molestation, Mr Andersson’s use of the words healing and worship may strike readers as somewhat perverse.

When this unobvious approach to scholarship – “an experimental method of masturbating” – first came to wider attention, four months after its submission, Mr Andersson’s peers and supervisors had apparently not noticed the particulars of his vigorous, hands-on investigations, or the legal and reputational implications of such pederastic probing.

Except, of course, for those who rushed to his defence, among them, the University of Manchester’s Professor Steven Fielding, who, in a now-deleted X post, invoked the universality of masturbation, before hailing the project as “socially useful,” albeit in ways left entirely mysterious.

A pattern of approval seemingly repeated:

In his new book, Andersson claims to have received only praise for his paper from his academic peers prior to its publication.

His own academic supervisor, Andersson claims, complimented the paper as “pretty damn good” and described it as his “best piece of writing.” Additionally, one reviewer for the academic publication Qualitative Research emphasised that the rationale behind using masturbation as a research method was “well justified,” and said of the shota-obsessed academic: “The author has conducted provocative research by use of a highly bold and innovative application of autoethnography. Best of all, the author has done this extremely well.”

According to Mr Andersson, other academic colleagues have hailed his “queer autoethnography” as “wonderfully written, reflective, analytical and intriguing,” and have described it as “very publishable.”

Readers will doubtless recall the dizzying rigour of Mr Andersson’s academic work, noted in the post linked above, in which we learned that his feverish wanking gave him “a more embodied understanding of the topic.”

As I said at the time,

As to the “embodied understanding” mentioned above, it remains unclear what exactly was achieved – beyond the obvious, I mean. Mr Andersson tells us that during three months of, er, research, and 30 notebook entries, his mind often wandered to thoughts of other gentlemen doing much the same thing with the same publications, including the copies he’d acquired second-hand. This is described as a “feeling of intimacy.” Dozing off afterwards is described as “self-care,” which is apparently important. And we’re informed that the Cellophane wrappers of his pornography collection “signalled luxury and investment in myself.” 

Clearly, the frontiers of human knowledge are being pushed back, heroically, selflessly, by our “visual anthropologist.”

The paper itself, now removed from the website of the journal Qualitative Research, is remarkable chiefly in terms of the author’s self-involvement and the sheer flimsiness of its content. The lines quoted above – about a “feeling of intimacy” and the luxurious wrappers of Mr Andersson’s porn stash – are much of the supposed substance of the thing. The rest is largely flatulent, self-involved rambling – as “autoethnography” generally is.

This, then, is what is considered “very publishable” in academia’s Clown Quarter. That progressive fiefdom.

However, one topic that Mr Andersson left oddly untouched was the matter of his own relationship to the law – child pornography, including shota, being illegal in many countries, including the United Kingdom, where his self-pleasuring project was so proudly conducted. That this detail doesn’t appear to have concerned Mr Andersson, or his peers and supervisors – at least until the project came to wider, incredulous attention – possibly tells us something about the academic circles in which he moves – or rather, moved.

Conceivably, this kind of contrived edginess, this exulting in pathology, is itself found titillating among his peers. An indicator of radical sophistication.

One might, I think, regard Mr Andersson’s paper, his boldness, and his pretence of intellectual heft, as a kind of provocation, a shit test. Readers may wonder whether, as Ben Sixsmith suggested, the field of “queer studies” is often spared even basic scrutiny, regardless of its content, or lack thereof, for fear of seeming bigoted and, with dark irony, anti-intellectual.

Readers may even wonder whether the widespread and rapid propagation, not least in academia, of transgender ideology and boutique identities has emboldened other niche psychological demographics – including, seemingly, paedophiles – to make themselves known while daring us to disapprove. Or at least, daring those sufficiently hamstrung by their own pretensions.

As commenter [+] quipped at the time,

The pedos want their ‘pride’ now.

Certainly, there has been quite a bit of nonce-as-oppressed-minority sentiment appearing recently in academia’s Clown Quarter and Clown-adjacent areas – Allyn Walker, Miranda Galbreath, and Ole Martin Moen come to mind – along with the conceit that in order to ensure the safety and wellbeing of children, we must stop being judgmental of the adults who wish to molest them and thereby ruin their lives.

Such is the eye-watering progress of our times.

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Written by: David
Academia Problematic Reproduction

Discontinued Lines

September 12, 2024 74 Comments

In the pages of the Los Angeles Times, Jade Sasser, an associate professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at UC Riverside, informs us,

American society feels more socially and politically polarised than ever. 

She then asks, somewhat bizarrely,

Is it right to bring another person into that?

Bringing another person – specifically, a baby – into a society in which people don’t always agree on every subject is a new and terrifying scenario, apparently. One entirely unprecedented in all of human history.

In an attempt to make this opening question, and its implications, seem less peculiar and contrived, our fretful educator searches out other, likeminded beings:

In 2021 and 2022, I conducted a series of interviews on this topic with millennials and members of Generation Z, all of them people of colour. 

The purpose of this racial filtering remains a tad mysterious, beyond a modish obligation to bolt race onto every conceivable subject, ideally with implications of victimhood. The nearest we get to an explanation in the article is the claim that “climate emotions like anxiety, fear, and trauma” somehow weigh more heavily on the minds of “marginalised groups.” A purported phenomenon that will “become an increasingly important component of climate justice in the United States.”

Other categories of assumed downtroddenness are mentioned too:

Some of them identify as queer, or their close family members and friends do, which shapes their sensitivity to discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

Badges, so many badges. See how they catch the light.

All of them are college-educated. 

Hold that thought as we dive into the wisdom of these brown and suffering souls:

Melanie, a 26-year-old Native American woman, was raised on the Navajo reservation and in Southern California. She idealises having a big, happy family, but there are aspects of the world that give her pause, so she struggles with whether it’s morally okay to have children.

“I think I may not have children although I do want them,” she notes. “Just because, with all of the things we see going on in the world, it seems unfair to bring someone into all of this against their will.”

Readers are welcome to suggest how one might bring someone into existence – a child, say – with their consent. And no, you can’t use a time machine.

Melanie adds,

“It almost feels, like, kind of shameful to want to have children.”

Such sorrow. Such sweet, pretentious sorrow.

Juliana, a 23-year-old Mexican American woman, is strongly aware of negative peer pressure from friends. She recently graduated from art school, 

Clue.

and her friend circle is mainly composed of queer and transgender, anti-establishment artists. Most of them have no intention of having children of their own, 

Punchline incoming.

Her friends cite environmental and mental health concerns. 

Whether the latter is a function of sexual dysmorphia and compulsive pronoun stipulation, or of art school, I leave to the reader.

Their anxiety tells them that they can’t properly take care of themselves, much less a child.

For some reason, the words natural selection come to mind.

Elena, 22, is one of the most certain people I’ve met: She is not having children. “Me being interested in environmental policy cemented my decision to not have kids, but I do have some personal things that I’ve gone through in life that I wouldn’t want my kids going through, like not having a dad.”

Not having a dad is indeed regrettable. And so, naturally, Elena makes a point of rejecting any potential fathers:

Elena brings this conversation up on every first date with any new guy she sees. Given that most of them expect to have families in the future, Elena feels strongly that she does not want a relationship.

As part of her reasoning for shunning motherhood, and by extension, shunning a stable relationship, Elena also invokes a dread of “really weird weather patterns,” should any arise. Yes, I know. The word reasoning is creaking under the load.

Other interviewees envision a future in which they are free to focus on themselves. Which may strike readers as a mixed blessing.

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