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Anthropology Art Politics

The Put-Upon And Marginalised Finally Get A Word In

March 25, 2024 81 Comments

Time, I think, to better ourselves. Come, let us peek at the culture pages of the Guardian:

the unicorn is the subject of a major exhibition opening next weekend in Perth.

That’s Perth, Scotland. Lest there be confusion.

The first UK exhibition to investigate the cultural history of this elusive, magical, and well-loved creature will be the centrepiece of the opening celebrations at the new Perth Museum, after a £27m transformation of the former City Hall, 

Bear with me. I’m setting the scene. Stoking your anticipation.

“We’re exploring how people conceptualise an animal that they’ve never seen,” says the lead curator, JP Reid, 

White horse. Big horn.

“The unicorn was a symbol of innocence and chastity, and, in time, the story develops that the only way you can catch one is by baiting it with a virgin woman,” says Reid. He pauses. “There’s obviously a lot of innuendo going on.” 

Again, big horn.

at least half of the exhibition is dedicated to present-day incarnations. A mass display of crowd-sourced items – including My Little Ponies, novelty hats, rainbow-hued stuffed toys, and clothing – reflects the creature’s ubiquity across pop and kid culture. 

Ah, tat.

Brace yourselves for a full-on face-blast of culture:

Such wonders you’ll behold. Memories to treasure forever.

Because the above is “a modern symbol of the LGBTQI+ community.” And so, while claiming to give exposure to the supposedly marginalised and unseen, the virtuous by default, the curators are expecting visitors to be enthralled by objects of mass-produced banality that are, by their own admission, utterly ubiquitous.

But wait. There’s more.

the final section of the exhibition features six newly commissioned pieces exploring the ongoing challenges faced by the queer community globally, including transgender inclusion, conversion practices and institutional homophobia, transforming blank, life-size horse heads around the theme of “unicorn hunting in 2023.” 

One of the above. Presumably the most photogenic.

“Queer stories are so seldom told in museums,” says Jennie Grady, the community co-production officer who has worked in partnership with local LGBTQ+ groups on the exhibition. 

I’m just going to leave this here, I think. Consider it an illustration of what can be done. A cultural benchmark for our times.

Regarding the aforementioned seldomness, I briefly scanned recent listings and found that the museums and galleries busily “queering” their content include the British Museum (“Desire, Love, Identity: Exploring LGBTQ Histories”), the Victoria and Albert Museum (“A Queer History of Art”), Tate Britain, Tate Kids, Queer Britain (“A riot of voices, objects, and images from the worlds of activism, art, culture, and social history”), Brighton Museum, the London Art Fair, the Glasgow Women’s Library, the Museum of Transology, the Museum of London, National Museums Liverpool, National Museums Scotland, and the National Portrait Gallery.

So seldom. So terribly seldom.

Other vigorously “queered” content can be found at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art; the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; and the Wellcome Collection, London, which among other things offers a “queer life-drawing workshop… focussing on queer bodies.” I have, due to space concerns – and the fear that readers may lose the will to live – omitted many more.

Despite which, Ashleigh Hibbins, the head of audiences at the Perth Museum, where unicorns await, tells us,

“This is a £27m project and an opportunity to tell stories in a different way – we’ve been telling the pale, male and stale stories in museums from time immemorial and for institutions to stay relevant we need to represent the people around us. It’s not just a moral consideration but a practical one.” 

Ah yes, those unheard voices. The dear downtrodden.

Via Julia.

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Written by: David
Anthropology Psychodrama

But Don’t Call Her Neurotic

March 14, 2024 46 Comments

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:

I can’t have people in my life that make me feel unsafe. They live on the other coast, but that’s not the point. The point is, if I had the option to be around them right now, I couldn’t, because I wouldn’t feel safe. And that means something to me.

And so,

The best thing for me right now is to take a step away from this relationship.

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’s hard to tell parody from reality.

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.

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Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Academia Anthropology Politics

Fake Tears And Hissing

February 28, 2024 91 Comments

Here’s a tale for those who’ve wondered what happens when two Designated Victim Groups – both accustomed to deference – collide. Specifically, “Indigenous faculty members” at Wilfrid Laurier University, and the black Dean of the university’s social work department.

At the centre of the conflict is Kathy Hogarth, 

That would be our aforementioned black Dean and self-styled “radical.” A radical who invokes the “burden” of her unspecified “trauma,” who works “in the name of resistance,” and whose melanin-related grumbles include “the system of white mediocrity,” onto which her paler colleagues allegedly hold with “a vice grip.” One can only hope that Dr Hogarth’s “trauma,” whatever it might be, was at least partly soothed by the $200,000 salary.

Professors in the faculty of social work had some pre-existing grievances with Hogarth: they found her untransparent about hiring decisions and said she had a generally uncollegial attitude.

I’m assuming that includes using social media to publicly badmouth colleagues based on their race. All that “white mediocrity.”

But it was at a faculty retreat in September 2022 that the showdown between Hogarth and the Indigenous Field of Study (IFS) social work faculty came to a head.

Since you ask,

The IFS describes itself as a distinct programme within the faculty that is based on Indigenous “traditions, languages, and territorial protocols.”

In short, magic brownness.

The IFS asked to participate in the retreat remotely because its members were still scared of contracting COVID, but Hogarth had a preference for the department’s members to appear in-person. Hogarth allowed the IFS team to participate remotely in the morning, but said the afternoon session was not conducive to virtual participation… The IFS team said they experienced feelings of “confusion and exclusion.”

It’s perhaps worth keeping in mind that the claims of emotional injury – and the subsequent escalation in rhetoric, which we’ll get to – started with a question of whether attendance via a Zoom call was ideal at a retreat intended to “foster community.”

With outcry, the in-person faculty attendees created a new Zoom link for the IFS to participate in the afternoon session, and Hogarth “relented,” though she did not apologise.

Still, everyone’s happy now, right? Time for some collegial bonding.

The IFS team… claimed Hogarth’s “exclusion” of them was “an act of anti-indigenous racism” and “colonial violence.”

Ah, maybe not.

Hogarth later recounted in a report that the faculty were “rowdy” during the retreat, interrupting her and challenging her decisions, and that they wrote phrases like “less colonialism” and “less bullshit” on the end-of-day feedback notes. Hogarth interpreted this as “implicit racism.”

Shots fired.

Following the retreat, Hogarth sent out an email to the department faculty and senior leadership,

Before we venture further, you may want to pour a large one.

As one of less than a handful of Black Deans in Canada, I cannot divorce my Blackness from my leadership identity. The experiences of colonialism are embedded in my DNA. The enactment of colonial violence on my Black body is unrelenting.

And suddenly, we’re in the realm of opera. Capes are a-flutter. The dry ice will be billowing any minute now.

After being bloodied and bruised at the Faculty Retreat, and nursing the bloodiness of the day, I was forced to dry my tears, put a smile on my face and go welcome a new cadre of students to our institution. And I ask, how can I do that with integrity after witnessing and experiencing such violence at the hands of social work ‘professionals’? Yet, I had to be strong because that is what is expected.

Dr Hogarth was being strong, you see. Stoical. Not drama-queeny at all.

As a leader, and more so as a Black woman leader,

Yes, she has all the medals. See how they catch the light.

there is always a justling for power. I saw that. I saw the subtle and not so subtle attempts at destabilising, the micro-invalidations, and the micro insults. Anti-black racism was as real and alive as it has ever been on Wednesday. As painful as it is, I am naming that.

She suffers, heroically, and yet she pushes on, also heroically.

This accusation of racism – particulars of which were not forthcoming – was followed by an appeal to take the high road, to abandon “toxicity,” and to forge a “healthy community”:

I will not join the toxic. I will not engage in the violence. Those are not negotiable. I challenge you, both perpetrators of violence and bystanders, to do better.

Alas,

Days after Hogarth’s email, the tenured faculty sent the higher-ups of Laurier a petition to have Hogarth removed as dean, claiming a “crisis of leadership.” The petition was endorsed “with the unanimous support of all 16 tenured faculty of the Faculty of Social Work (FSW).”

And,

The professors wrote that Hogarth’s… email had been “extremely distressing.”

So many feelings. We’re going to need more tissues. And louder music.

“Unfortunately, the toxic and violent climate at the FSW as a result of Dr Hogarth’s actions have deeply impacted morale, weakening our sense of belonging and community, and have negatively impacted faculty members’ wellbeing.”

And then, inevitably, the big guns boomed:

“The anti-Indigenous racism enacted by the Dean is in itself completely unacceptable. Under no circumstances should any faculty member be intentionally excluded from participating in collegial meetings, especially a meeting designed to foster community and engage in planning,” read the faculty petition.

A second letter from the Indigenous faculty, sent to the university’s senior executives, continued the tearful thundering:

“We have recently experienced colonial violence and anti-Indigenous racism at the hands of our Dean… During our remote participation, she was actively violent towards the IFS team as witnessed by our FSW colleagues.”

Again, particulars of this “violence,” indeed “colonial violence,” remain oddly mysterious. We are, however, told that the Zoom meeting was “harmful and humiliating,” a “marginalising experience,” and “resulted in the team feeling unsafe in the workplace.”

I’ll spare you the full letter, which goes on to invoke the “aggressive and assaultive” properties of Dr Hogarth’s email, albeit in oddly non-specific terms, followed by a demand for a change in leadership “effective immediately.” Apparently, Dr Hogarth’s presence no longer enables the “meaningful decolonising” that the faculty regard as their Holy Mission.

Despite the competing feats of Olympic-level hyperbole, two formal investigations by the university uncovered no evidence of racism or indeed violence, whether colonial or of some other kind. However, the social work department – this bastion of “equity,” “diversity,” and “decolonisation” – was described in one of the reports as an intimidating and hostile workplace, with one witness favouring the phrase,

cliquey, scary, and tense.

In the wake of the dramas above, Dr Hogarth has relocated her talents, and her radicalism, to pastures greener:

Hogarth currently chairs the Canadian Military Colleges Review Board, a position to which she was appointed by Defence Minister Bill Blair in December 2023. Hogarth is now in charge of deciding if Canada’s two Royal Military Colleges should continue to exist, and if so, what their curriculum should look like. 

So, nothing to worry about there.

Wilfrid Laurier University and its farcical employees have of course been mentioned here before.

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Reading time: 6 min
Written by: David
Anthropology His Pretty Nails The Thrill Of Woke Retailing

Role Models, You Say

February 19, 2024 198 Comments

And in “inclusive” retailer news:

We have an ambition to become the UK’s most inclusive employer, because celebrating diversity will make us a better business. That means creating an environment where everyone feels welcome irrespective of their backgrounds or beliefs.

So says James Bailey, Executive Director of John Lewis & Partners.

Or, as an earlier John Lewis “Inclusion Report” put it, “inclusivity” will result in “a better connection to our customers.” Customers who will learn to “respect difference,” while freeing themselves of “judgement.” The project, it seems, is an educational one, and customers are among those deemed in need of education. And so,

To commemorate LGBT+ History Month, John Lewis Partnership (JLP) released a photo exhibition called the Identity Project, which highlights staff who identify as transgender or queer. The content was created as part of JLP’s 32-page internal magazine, Identity, which was distributed to the company’s 80,000 employees.

The Identity Project will also “come to life” in “a travelling exhibition on display at various John Lewis locations.” Regarding the project, its creator, photographer Chris Jepson, says,

I started the Identity Project in 2019 to create a community portrait and redress the visual narrative that LGBTQIA+ people look a certain way. By exhibiting our portraits and stories in public locations I am hoping to improve community cohesion through making visible the depth and similarities in the identities we share, but also to give young queer people role models to look up to, to counter the constant need to be perfect that social media often promotes. 

However, all has not gone entirely to plan:

Critics on social media swiftly pointed out that some participants in the photography project had troubling backgrounds — including one trans-identified male who had been uploading disturbing bondage fetish photos to his Flickr and Facebook accounts. 

The chap in question, Marc Geoffrey Albert Whitcombe, now known as Ruby Geoffrey Michael Porcelain Whitcombe, is portrayed in the Identity Project, and presented to customers, thusly:

Ruby has been part of the team at Waitrose Brighton for over 20 years. However, back in 2015, after accessing mental health support, Ruby began to realise she was transgender. 

“My identity is the chance to express my true inner self and be accepted and supported for who I am,” says Ruby. Photographed in a rose-adorned wig and while clutching what appears to be a whip:

In search of further education and deep moral improvement, sceptics unearthed other treats from dear Ruby’s social media presence:

Posting under the alias Ruby Porcelain online, Whitcombe has uploaded hundreds of images of himself in fetish gear, bondage, and lingerie. Some photos depicted Whitcombe in dresses, spreading his legs to reveal himself in women’s underwear, and others show Whitcombe holding sex toys in his mouth. 

One of the tamer offerings:

Yes, I know. You’re feeling inspired and uplifted.

Presumably, the way to “redress the visual narrative that LGBTQIA+ people look a certain way” is to celebrate the existence of dysmorphic and autogynephile men who are also devotes of bondage and sadomasochism, and who like to share photos of themselves posing with sex toys while flashing their collection of ladies’ knickers to random passers-by.

It also seems that the way to become more authentically “queer” – to express one’s true, inner self and who one really is – is to elaborately accessorise and play dress-up, and to pretend to be something that, by definition, one isn’t.

Other John Lewis employees highlighted in the Identity Project include an in-store nursery advisor and enthusiast of the ‘pup’ and ‘furry’ communities, and who is helpfully pictured wearing a bondage harness. Because that’s the mental image you want when shopping for baby paraphernalia.

This, lest we forget, will “give young queer people role models to look up to.”

Whether female customers, the backbone of John Lewis’ customer base, will be inspired to shop harder and more often by the thought of employees bringing their autogynephilia to work, as Maya Forstater put it, remains to be seen. Ditto bondage fantasies and wearing rubber dog costumes. Perhaps well-off ladies in search of posh frocks and upscale furnishings will be dazzled and enchanted by the thought of sad, cross-dressing men in thigh-high boots who like to share photos of themselves smeared with unspecified white substances.

Also unclear is whether the elevation of employees’ tiresome kinks to the status of unassailable “identities,” and therefore something to be gushingly affirmed, will result in “a better business.” With customers feeling a warm affinity, on account of those “similarities in the identities we share.”

Needless to say, the memes have begun.

Update, via the comments:

Liz notes the unhappy combination of baby products and bondage harnesses, and asks, not unfairly,

What the hell were they thinking? 

Well, quite. I was in John Lewis recently, buying towels, and at no point did I feel a need to know about the cross-dressing bondage activities of the sales staff. Whether the person bagging my towels likes to dress up as a pantomime dame while brandishing instruments of torture was not, it has to be said, foremost in my mind.

The weirdly woke marketing of John Lewis – and the jarring mismatch with the tastes of its customers – has been noted here before, in the update to this.

And the ideological shoehorning currently underway has been explored by James Esses, here.

Update 2:

Following media coverage and widespread customer disaffection, the touring Identity Project has now been withdrawn.

However, rather than acknowledge the incongruity of the project and its dubious conceits, points aired many times by critics, a John Lewis spokesman has claimed, “We have closed the exhibition for the safety and protection of our partners.” Apparently, being mocked on social media by unhappy customers is a safety issue now. One therefore has to wonder whether anything much has been learned by John Lewis executives.

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Written by: David
Anthropology Policing Politics

It’s Trivial When The Victim Is Someone Who Isn’t Me

February 7, 2024 100 Comments

Habitual car theft is a “victimless” crime. Says Nora the socialist:

Nora doesn’t think that a third conviction for car theft should result in incarceration. Because, and I quote, the victims “get new cars though.”

They get new cars though

— Nora Loreto (@NoLore) February 5, 2024

“I write books and I know things,” says Nora, who lives in Quebec, where, in the last year, the rate of car theft has practically doubled.

I wonder if dear Nora has ever paused to consider what stolen cars are very often used for – besides, say, joyriding and endangering other road users. And whether those doing the stealing might often belong to criminal gangs, whose anti-social activities spill over into other areas. Say, smash-and-grabs, and forms of liveliness requiring a getaway car. Or, as Michael Rothe of the Canadian Finance and Leasing Association points out,

A large majority of thefts are actually being orchestrated by organised crime rings, who use the profits to finance illegal activities like drug and gun trafficking, and human smuggling. 

And then of course there are these jolly scenes.

But hey, no biggie.

Perhaps dear Nora was too busy airing pretentious sympathy for the practised criminal. Though one might note she seems rather less concerned for the criminal’s numerous victims, and likely future victims, whose violation she denies. Someone who steals a car and is apprehended for the third time is unlikely to have stolen only three cars. And the conviction rate for car theft is around one in twenty.

Perhaps it would be ungentlemanly to wish on dear Nora some first-hand experience of the crimes she so merrily diminishes when inflicted on someone else, someone who isn’t her. Though it is, I think, tempting.

And should this cake need a cherry:

Based in Quebec City, Nora Loreto is a writer, activist, and podcaster. She’s a community organiser who thinks that hard, strategic work will bring about the revolution. 

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading, of course. And yes, regular readers may detect a familiar pattern. One we’ve seen so many times.

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