The word has done incredible damage to my body.

In the pages of Slate, Emily Duke, a woman who “loves carbohydrates,” shares her sorrows as a professional person of girth:

When New York state announced that Phase 1B of vaccinations would include those who are “obese” or “severely obese,” I knew I would qualify. My heart sank into my stomach. I am fat. I am a fat activist. Like a lot of larger-bodied people, I have embraced the word fat. Doing so allows me to buy clothes that fit, rather than those that could fit if I changed. 

The last three words of that sentence are perhaps worth keeping in mind.

It allows me to exist.

Which, we’re to assume, the word obese does not. It being less fluffy. With the power to send a fat woman into an emotional tailspin. 

Among all the radical self-love coffee mugs I’ve seen, “I love being obese” has never been one of them. The word obese elicits an unparalleled grief in me. 

Well, recognition can do that, especially if belated and previously avoided. And incidentally, if your world is one in which “radical self-love coffee mugs” feature prominently, I’d suggest something may be awry.

When I heard the [vaccination] announcement I had been waiting for, I spent three hours in the grocery store trying to figure out what I “should” have for dinner that night.

Three hours. One might call that a telling preoccupation. Ms Duke then detours, at length, into recollections of being in therapy, parental divorce, the “trauma” of dieting, and the woes of being told she is an “emotional eater.” 

When I heard the good news about my eligibility for the vaccine… I panicked that I was a bad fat activist. I felt like I was just one weigh-in away from losing my chosen identity because I can’t face a number on a scale… I’d need to know my BMI to ensure I qualified, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle it.

No emotional issues there, thank goodness.

Frances Widdowson on the “indigenised” Canadian university, where pretending is everything:  

In 2018, one of the co-directors at my university’s Office of Academic Indigenisation invited an Indigenous elder to give a presentation on “Western Medicine vs. Traditional Healing Medicine.” A member of the audience asked the elder what he recommended for the “gut problems” afflicting her child. In response, the elder stated that the parent should “rub corn pollen on his feet and do a sunrise ceremony.” A number of professors in the Faculty of Science and Technology attending the session acknowledged afterwards that this example of “traditional healing medicine” was completely inconsistent with evidence-based scientific medical techniques (as seems obvious, even to those of us who aren’t doctors). But they remained silent at the event, as did everyone else, out of “respect.”

Not quite the right word, I think.

Readers will note that the beneficiary of this “respect” is the peddler of primitive woo, the one being deferred to as a quasi-magical being, some kind of leprechaun. Not the mother whose child was in need of medical attention. I am, of course, assuming that gastro-intestinal ailments won’t actually be cured by rubbing corn pollen on your feet. But such are progressive priorities. There’s much more to chew, and some noteworthy contortions are performed, so do peruse the whole thing. It does rather convey the unhinged, neurotic atmosphere of woke academia. There are also other gifts of aboriginal piety and “indigenous knowledge.” For instance,

[A]t the University of Winnipeg in 2015… presiding Indigenous elders declared that it was in keeping with their traditions that women in attendance should wear long skirts. (Two years earlier, at the University of Saskatchewan, a poster promoting a similar event instructed women to skip the ceremony if they were menstruating.)

And,

[W]hen I attended an “Empowering Indigenisation Symposium” a few months later, an elder said that his “knowledge” included the belief that trees come out of dormancy in the spring because birds sing to them.

Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Somewhat related: Guardian columnist denounces Western medicine as “outdated,” champions use of bush dung.

Via Nikw211.

One sudden move and I would be shot.

A student at the University of Minnesota shares his first-hand experience of racial profiling and police brutality:

After multiple questions, they turned off their lights and left me alone: no apology, no explanation, nothing. Just me: mentally and emotionally tormented with an experience that will last a lifetime.

You see,

It was brutal.

Not only brutal, but,  

the most traumatic thing I have ever experienced.  

And so,

Defund these bastards.

But before you start signing petitions and making placards, you may wish to watch video of the actual interaction:

I paraphrase, of course. Though not by much: 

The hired facilitators asked each member of the department to respond to various personal questions about race and racial identity. When it was my turn to respond, I said “I don’t feel comfortable talking about that.” I was the only person in the room to abstain. Later, the facilitators told everyone present that a white person’s discomfort at discussing their race is a symptom of “white fragility.” They said that the white person may seem like they are in distress, but that it is actually a “power play.” In other words, because I am white, my genuine discomfort was framed as an act of aggression. I was shamed and humiliated in front of all of my colleagues.

I filed an internal complaint about the hostile environment, but throughout that process, over the course of almost six months, I felt like my complaint was taken less seriously because of my race. I was told that the civil rights law protections were not created to help people like me. And after I filed my complaint, I started to experience retaliatory behaviour, like having important aspects of my job taken away without explanation…

What passes for “progressive” today at Smith [College] and at so many other institutions is regressive… and I fear this is rapidly leading us to a very twisted place. It terrifies me that others don’t seem to see that racial segregation and demonisation are wrong and dangerous no matter what its victims look like. Being told that any disagreement or feelings of discomfort somehow upholds “white supremacy” is not just morally wrong. It is psychologically abusive.

Of the people being degraded and stupefied by “critical race theory” – and there are a lot of them – some, a few, are daring to object, albeit belatedly. Those who do, however – like Ms Jodi Shaw, quoted above – may find themselves being told that they are “in need of further training,” which is to say, more of the aforementioned psychological abuse. Iterations of which can be found here. By politely questioning the assumptions of “critical race theory,” and by drawing attention to its non-reciprocal premise, Ms Shaw is apparently a danger of some kind and requires yet more indoctrination, and more bullying, “before she can safely interact with students and fellow staff.” 

Update:

Douglas Murray on the “unconscious bias” hustle: 

[“Unconscious bias” testing] became the basis of an industry, propelled by people pushing divisive ideas about identity politics. These people either believed or professed to believe that the exercise was scientific and could actually correct the brains and behaviour of anyone who had beliefs they disagreed with. So far and fast did this run that soon the inventors of the monster realised what they’d created and tried to kill it. Two of the three Harvard academics responsible said publicly that the exercise was not capable of being used in the way it was being used. There are too many variables in peoples’ behaviour over any day, never mind over time, to quantify, pin down - let alone ‘correct’ anyone’s ‘biases’. But that is where the opportunists came in. For in recent years another group decided to claim that these ‘tests’ had some laser-like precision. They began to charge hundreds of pounds to people to tell them that they were biased. A very nice racket to get into. For if anyone objected then this was simply yet more evidence of unconscious bias.

The particulars of “unconscious bias” woo were touched on here, where we learned that guilt – and the need for correction – can be determined by the random positioning of a chair. Such is intersectional science.

Via Darleen, Christopher F Rufo finds more primary school indoctrination: 

A fifth-grade teacher at the inner-city William D. Kelley School designed a social studies curriculum to celebrate [Angela] Davis, praising the “black communist” for her fight against “injustice and inequality.” As part of the lesson, the teacher asked students to “describe Davis’ early life,” reflect on her vision of social change, and “define communist”—presumably in favourable terms. At the conclusion of the unit, the teacher led the ten- and eleven-year-old students into the school auditorium to “simulate” a Black Power rally to “free Angela Davis” from prison, where she had once been held while awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder. The students marched on the stage, holding signs that read “Black Power,” “Jail Trump,” “Free Angela,” and “Black Power Matters.” They chanted about Africa and ancestral power, then shouted “Free Angela! Free Angela!” as they stood at the front of the stage.

In news that will shock no-one, the school in question is not rated highly in academic terms, with only 3 percent of students proficient in maths by sixth grade, and only 9 percent proficient in reading. Still, fear not. Our peddlers of “equity” have a fix for everything.  

And via Mr Muldoon, whiteness has been helpfully classified. For children. By educators.