Spare a few minutes for this small but instructive drama in which a self-described “bottle blonde bacon-eating vegan,” one famed for railing against “privileged people,” “conservatives” and “heteropatriarchal crap” – and for complaining about the burden of student debt – is shocked to discover that her degrees in “social justice and peace studies” and of course “gender studies” are not entirely useful in the job market.
It’s a reality our heroine finds difficult to process.
Update:
“Connie-Anne is a veteran at being a target for her mother’s cutlery.”
Via Coudal.
The Heresiarch ponders the Chinese market for human milk:
Apparently – well, according to the South China Morning Post, as retailed in shocked tones to readers of Telegraph Online by Tim Stanley – there’s a trend among China’s increasingly prosperous and fashion-conscious middle classes to hire wet-nurses. Only not all the milk is intended for babes in arms… Yes, it’s unconventional. But you may reasonably wonder why it’s normal for people to consume milk intended by nature to feed baby cows, yet enjoying milk intended for human beings should be considered disgusting and wrong… Leaving aside the yuck factor, it is of course impractical (and morally unacceptable) to milk women in the same way that cows are milked commercially: human milk as such will only ever be a niche product.
For those sufficiently curious, recipes are provided. Via sk60 in the comments here.
Jim Treacher notes the totally non-racist racial fixations at Netroots Nation, where the ‘progressive’ left rubs its collective rhubarb:
Sharon Kyle writes, “For social justice advocates, Netroots Nation 13 is the place to be… I was a member of the panel selection committee. As we prepared to make our selections, we were instructed to dismiss any panel that was comprised entirely of white males.” Good idea. Everybody knows that people with the same skin colour are all alike, and people of the same gender are all alike. What happens when you put together a bunch of people with the same skin colour and the same gender? I hope I never have to find out! I mean, what’s diverse about that? It looks really bad on camera. Well, that’s assuming they’re white males. If not, the preceding paragraph is racist. See, we must have diversity of appearance, not of thought. We need to get people of all races, colours, and creeds to come together and agree with Sharon Kyle. What’s the point of engaging in meaningful dialogue if other people are going to disagree with you?
When faced with strident “diversity” blather, it may help to remember the acronym LETELU. Looks Exotic, Thinks Exactly Like Us.
CJ Ciaramella* mingles with the moral heavyweights at
Netroots Nation:
There
were “80 panels, 40 training sessions, inspiring keynotes, film screenings and
other engaging sessions designed to educate, stimulate and inspire the nation’s
next generation of progressive leaders,” according to the conference website… I
found myself at a panel titled: Free your
Ass: Defining and Creating a Progressive Sexual Culture. Panellist Favianna
Rodriguez, a new media artist, talked about her explorations into polyamory and
kink. “I’ll close it out with this image I created of an awesome sex party I
went to,” Rodriguez said, displaying one of her paintings. It was full of
psychedelic colours and an arrangement of Picasso-style figures entangled in
various sex acts. Kind of like Guernica,
but with erections.
Chris Snowdon on “health inequalities” and unspoken causes:
Public health folk would argue that such choices are not rational (because of hyperbolic discounting and suchlike) and sociologists would argue that they are not free (because accidents of birth make them more likely to choose the unhealthy option). I have little time for such arguments. Accusations of irrational consumption invariably revolve around the moral judgement of the accuser while choices, even if constrained by imperfect information and financial circumstance, are still choices. The fact that the smoking rate is higher in Glasgow than Sevenoaks, for instance, in no way predisposes a Glaswegian to smoke. It is not ‘victim-blaming’ to point this out.
Tim Worstall adds this.
And Jim Goad is amused by the cannibalism of the self-designated “oppressed”:
So much for transcending labels and viewing one another as individuals. These people want to institutionalise such labels. They balk at the concept of “assigned identity,” yet they also seem unable to live without it. So many of these multitudinous oppressed “identities” seem like nothing more than cheap cloaks to mask nakedly annoying personalities. People with bad personalities seem to have a built-in defence mechanism that makes them believe you actually hate them for any other possible reason besides their bad personalities. With all the banter about oppression, it’s hard to think of anything that stifles free speech and free expression more than such strident humourlessness.
Readers who wish to behold the endpoint of competitive victimhood are welcome to revisit this glorious incident. Part
2 here. And, because you’ll need them, some explanatory notes.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets. [ *Added via the comments. ]
In my nightmare I’m sitting in this audience of socialists and communists, unable to leave, while other socialists and communists – more statusful socialists and communists – spend an hour telling me how “serious” they are, and how important and “dangerous” their ideas are. Amid references to Lenin, Marx, Gramsci and other totalitarian fantasists, I’m also told how much these gathered “radicals” value humility. After all, when a room full of unhappy leftists say they want to “break the government” and initiate a “revolutionary transformation of society” – in their own image – humility is the word that springs immediately to mind.
Then, while I try biting down on my own neck, Laurie Penny starts to speak, at length, almost randomly. “We need to be talking seriously about trauma,” says she. Because “it’s quite difficult for the left to talk about how it’s feeling.”
A note of caution. The linked video – hailed as “a very good discussion” – lasts for the better part of an hour, and you won’t get that time back. Though there is, I suppose, a grim humour in listening to denunciations of the “elite” and the “establishment” from a blowhard Trotskyist who, like his peers, wishes to be those things, only much more so.
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