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Anthropology Free-For-All Pronouns Or Else

Penis Discourse

July 17, 2024 112 Comments

From transgender Reddit, a new niche woe. Specifically,

Trans Feminine Penis Discourse Makes Me Extremely Dysphoric.

And more specifically,

I find terms like “girlcock” or “princess wand” to be stomach churning. Partially because they sound ridiculous but largely because it feels so masculine no matter what terms you use. It reminds me of how men incessantly discuss their dicks…

We’re all learning things today.

Proudly talking about, displaying, and constantly joking about your dick is typical male behaviour…

Again, learning things.

and I think it only furthers the impression that trans women aren’t really women. 

Ooh. So close.

In subsequent replies, the similarly traumatising terms gock and bussy are also pondered, along with girldick and female penis. And yes, these will be on Friday’s test.

Other commenters suggest a policy of coyness on the subject:

The less I hear the better. I shove the thing up into my body for a reason. Don’t want to see it or think about it… I don’t refer to it at all if possible, and if I do, it’s just “bits,” “bits and pieces,” or on the rare occasion I want to make a joke about myself, “retractable landing gear.”

The terrible wrongness of terminological appropriation crops up, as do thoughts as to which terms are most affirming of a gentleman’s state of ladylikeness. Another contributor, a “genderfluid he/she/they,” insists that, as one would obviously defer to a person’s pronouns, one should likewise defer to that person’s preferred terms for their genitals. Because discussing the other person’s genitals is a thing that happens, apparently.

Those unschooled in the world of transgender penis discourse will find much to chew on.

Via Eliza Mondegreen.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Parenting

Display Purposes

July 15, 2024 125 Comments

Or, And This Is Mommy’s Snatch.

I make a point to walk around the upstairs of my home (we have far too many uncovered windows downstairs!) naked. 

Yes, I’m reading Scary Mommy, where exclamation points abound, and where ladies of a progressive leaning share their political radicalism. In this case, Ms Kate Auletta, the publication’s editor-in-chief, is thrilling us with tales of her domestic nakedness:

I hold my weight now in my hips and upper legs, and my large breasts have not defied gravity in the slightest. All this to say, I have far from the perfect body. Which is exactly why I walk around naked. 

It seems, then, that the nudity is not so much shared, a gift to the world, but more something inflicted. Specifically, on the author’s two small boys. I’ll spare you the lengthy description of Ms Auletta’s various physical imperfections – the rolls of excess flesh, the big, sagging bosom, and the whole Fat Upper Pubic Area thing.

I was and never will be one of those women who walk around naked at the gym.

I’m assuming she means naked in the changing rooms, though any observance of such boundaries is not made clear.

In other words, it’s not because I love my body; I don’t really. It’s because I want my kids to see reality, self-love, and body positivity come from one of the people they trust most. 

At which point, sharp-eyed readers may be attempting to reconcile this,

I want my kids to see… self-love, and body positivity 

With this:

it’s not because I love my body; I don’t really. 

Come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure what loving one’s body might mean, beyond the obvious off-colour jokes. But apparently, it’s something that one is supposed to proclaim as an accomplishment, a credential of progressivism. I have, however, noted that it tends to be announced by people whose declared triumph in this matter is not altogether convincing, and whose basis for doing so is generally much slimmer than they are.

Still, there are the obligatory noises to be made, and empowerment to invoke:

My show of feminism, of empowerment and acceptance… comes in the form of being literally naked with my imperfect body. 

There we go. Because, clearly, it’s a blow to the Patriarchy, a radical act. A feat of progressive heroism. Not just some incongruous crack and badger. Come up onstage to collect your certificate and enamel badge. Everyone applaud.

Instead of covering up with a bathrobe — which always makes me hot and sweaty post-shower anyway — I just walk around in all my unrefined glory. 

That’s quite enough. You can stop now.

To me, it’s showing my sons what a real woman’s body — one that has birthed two kids and has its flaws — looks like, and how to stand proud in it. 

No, really. We have everything we need, madam.

It’s showing them that while, sure, I like air-drying, bodies come in all shapes and squiggles, that bodies aren’t a “problem” to be dealt with, even if I have a hard time with it on most days myself. 

So, again, it’s all about empowerment and “body positivity,” you see. Oceans of self-love. Or at least the intermittent appearance of such. Something done “without a care,” except “on most days.”

It must be quite strange to go through life feeling a need to boast in print of some pointed behaviour – specifically, “showing my sons what a real woman’s body… looks like” – as if this feat of not wearing knickers were somehow radical, empowering, and a basis for applause. And to then have to justify this lifestyle affectation in ways that are somewhat contradictory and not particularly convincing. As if no-one would notice. It seems a lot of effort.

When not treating her small boys to the sight of her arse and undercarriage, Ms Auletta offers other educational experiences:

As a parent, I spend a lot of time pointing out gaps in thinking about race or inequality in media or books or on the street when I see it. 

Those lucky, lucky kids. How the time must fly.

 

Previously in the world of Scary Mommy:

Empowered woman dreams of Donald Trump, has panic attacks.

Empowered woman, user of Xanax, suffers from internalised capitalism.

Another empowered lady and her mood-stabilising medication.

A tale of laundry and resentment.

On auras, emanations, and paranormal parenting.

Empowered woman, who is in no way unhinged, teaches her small children to scream profanities at random people.

There’s more, should you want it, if you poke through the archives.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the six items linked above, Aitch adds,

Where the hell do they keep finding all these mad women? 

Not an unfair question. What with the recurring motif of mood-stabilising drugs, the existential trauma of hearing differing views, the lurid fantasies regarding Mr Trump, or the obsessive thoughts about babies heads spontaneously falling off. To say nothing of how often these preoccupations bedevil ladies who are employed, or have been employed, as public-school educators.

I should add that the links at the end of the post are but a small sample. I can’t monitor Scary Mommy around the clock. And frankly, I wouldn’t care to.

It’s rather like the now-defunct Everyday Feminism, a publication once very popular among the super-woke, with over four million monthly visitors, had an extraordinary number of articles, several every week, on the subject of living with mental illness. From delusions of witchcraft to serious Cluster-B personality disorders.

But among progressive women, there is, I think, a pattern. One that’s fairly hard to miss.

Though doubtless many try.

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Reading time: 5 min
Written by: David
Anthropology The Thrill Of Endless Noise

Don’t Oppress My People With Your Expectations Of Politeness And Basic Consideration

June 17, 2024 156 Comments

Lifted from the comments – which you’re reading, of course – an item deserving of a little more attention.

The Atlantic is currently promoting an article from its archive, one selected by the editors as a “must-read,” a measure of the magazine’s importance to the progressive lifestyle. A choice that is perhaps more telling than intended.

The chosen article, by novelist Xochitl Gonzalez, poses the question, “Why Do Rich People Love Quiet?” It is sub-headed, “The sound of gentrification is silence.” A racially judgemental tone prevails. Such that the term rich people can be read as meaning white people. Followed by implied tutting.

It begins with an account of life at university – Brown, since you ask – and the merits of Brooklyn hip hop combos:

I first arrived on campus for the minority-student orientation. The welcome event had the feel of a block party, Blahzay Blahzay blasting on a boom box. (It was the ’90s.) We spent those first few nights convening in one another’s rooms, gossiping and dancing until late. We were learning to find some comfort in this new place, and with one another. 

Ah, those downtrodden minority students, huddled together for mutual safety. Lest the roaming tigers find them.

Then the other students arrived — the white students.

As I said, the tutting is implied.

And then, belatedly, the realisation that attempts at intellectual activity – say, at an upscale university – tend to require a certain restraint, noise-wise:

I just hadn’t counted on everything that followed being so quiet. The hush crept up on me at first. I would be hanging out with my friends from orientation when one of our new roommates would start ostentatiously readying themselves for bed at a surprisingly early hour. Hints would be taken, eyes would be rolled, and we’d call it a night. 

Morning lectures being an inconceivable thing, it seems.

Ms Gonzalez, who repeatedly mentions how “minority” and “of colour” she is, also tells us how she, “just wanted to be around people in places where nobody told us to shush.” Say, when being a late-night annoyance to roommates and neighbours, a thing that by her own account happens repeatedly, or when playing music in a library. Where other people are trying to study:

One day, when I accidentally sat down to study in the library’s Absolutely Quiet Room, fellow students Shhh-ed me into shame for putting on my Discman… I soon realised that silence was more than the absence of noise; it was an aesthetic to be revered. Yet it was an aesthetic at odds with who I was. Who a lot of us were. 

A bold admission. One, I suspect, that reveals more than intended. Also, the claim that one can sit down in a library accidentally.

Ms Gonzalez’ tale of woe continues:

Within a few weeks, the comfort that I and many of my fellow minority students had felt during those early cacophonous days had been eroded, one chastisement at a time. The passive-aggressive signals to wind our gatherings down were replaced by point-blank requests to make less noise, have less fun, do our living somewhere else, even though these rooms belonged to us, too. 

Ms Gonzalez, it seems, was being oppressed. Just for being thoughtless and noisy when people are trying to study. Her comfort was being impacted by requests for civility. How very dare they.

As dicentra notes in the comments,

Quiet means you’re studying, and boisterousness means you’re not, and given you’re at a university, which aesthetic ought to win out? 

Well, indeed. One of the many things to have somehow not crossed our author’s mind.

A boisterous conversation would lead to a classmate knocking on the door with a “Please quiet down.” 

Feel her pain. The outrageousness of it all.

I felt hot with shame and anger, yet unable to articulate why. It took me years to understand that, in demanding my friends and I quiet down, these students were implying that their comfort superseded our joy. 

Well, yes, It does. You selfish, classless bint.

And note the sly downgrading of an ability to do some actual work as mere comfort. Or an ability to sleep without hearing hip hop once again booming through the wall.

And the Atlantic publishes this – this ode to antisocial selfishness – as if it might leave the reader morally improved. And feeling sympathetic towards the author.

Inevitably, Ms Gonzalez blames her own moral shortcomings on other people’s race and class, as if, by expecting politeness, they were imposing on her in cruel and unusual ways. Because – magic words – “of colour.” But the common variable, the one that’s hard to miss, is the author’s own rudeness and self-absorption. And so, she blunders into the library’s “Absolutely Quiet Room,” and fires up her music.

Oh, and for those of you curious about the author’s precise level of brownness, and thereby magical qualities, and all those rather handy exemptions from reciprocal proprieties, I’ll just leave this here:

Ms Gonzalez tells us that the “absence of noise” – by which she means, consideration for others – is “at odds with who I was. Who a lot of us were.” And yet she wonders why other people – less selfish people – might want to get away from her. Away from all the noise. And to live somewhere nicer, somewhere she doesn’t.

Readers may wish to ponder the possibility that noise may often be a pretty good measure of other issues. People who don’t care about stopping their neighbours from studying or sleeping may not care about other things too. Other boundaries. Which in turn may go some way to explaining the existence of those quiet, gentrified neighbourhoods, the ones that so offend Ms Gonzalez.

The expectation of consideration is soon, predictably, via contrivance, framed as a form of racial oppression. A way to torment “Black and brown communities,” in which the ethos is “loud and proud.” Because if residents of respectable neighbourhoods object to their nights being disrupted by endless overdriven sound systems, then this is merely “an elite sonic aesthetic: the systemic elevation of quiet over noise.” And almost certainly racist.

“One person’s loud is another person’s expression of joy,” we’re told. “I take pride in saying that we are a loud people.”

An expression of joy by loud people can be found embedded below:

What’s the point? 🤦‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/oIcSwQH82f

— Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_) June 11, 2024

Note the self-satisfied quip, “They’ll be fine. They can buy a house somewhere else.” Today’s words, by the way, are recreational spite.

At which point, readers may wonder how Ms Gonzalez, a novelist, manages to write her books amid the fashionably vibrant racket that she recommends to others. All that shouting and shrieking and “ceaseless music” that she finds so liberating and authentic. Wouldn’t those extended and rather complicated trains of thought be disrupted, and likely made impossible, by all the shouting and laughing, all the whumping and thumping, all those jolly sirens?

Happily, an answer is provided in the pages of Elle Décor, in which Ms Gonzalez opined some two months earlier:

Writing novels is intrinsically solitary. Which is no small part of why I switched professions in the first place. Despite wearing the coat of an extrovert, I am pure Greta Garbo. I want to be alone.

This point is expanded upon:

The early pandemic found me without a permanent residence and on a deadline. In March, while getting my MFA in Iowa, I’d come home to New York City for a quick visit to celebrate having just sold my first novel. Three months and one case of COVID-19 later, I was quarantining with my best friend, her husband, and their toddler in their Brooklyn apartment. Before long, the close quarters and endless sounds of sirens made revising my novel there untenable. I decided to head upstate. 

And so, our silence-needing novelist sought out “a gorgeous historic house in downtown Kingston, New York.” Ah, yes. An “upstate vacation rental.”

Perhaps Ms Gonzalez was hoping that readers of her Atlantic article – the one about noise being so vibrant and racially affirming – would not stumble across her Elle Décor piece, published weeks earlier, which rather calls into question her own later claims. And which, it has to be said, suggests a certain pretence, a certain hypocrisy.

In short, then, your desire for peace and quiet is terribly problematic, and probably racist. While hers, not so much. Which is enormously convenient. If not entirely convincing.

 

Previously in the Atlantic:

A woman oppressed by crumbs.

And another expensively educated Brooklynite who insists that crossword puzzles are “one of the systemic forces that threaten women.”

And then there was the attempt to convince us that chronic thievery is totally fine and nothing to complain about, provided it’s being done to someone else. Someone who isn’t an Atlantic contributor, presumably.

Oh, and let’s not forget that the Atlantic referred to Elon Musk as, and I quote, “a far-right activist.”

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Reading time: 7 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Art Free-For-All Politics

Our Betters Make Plans

June 11, 2024 160 Comments

Attention, comrades. My fellow heroes, titans, thinkers of deep thoughts. It is time to map out the world of tomorrow:

There are no post revolution theatre troops, only post revolution mine troops, comrade. pic.twitter.com/ACIref7r9r

— Hegel Borg™️ (@xxclusionary) June 10, 2024

Because after the revolution, we will need accessible theatre.

Presumably, to take our minds off all the riots and ruin and burning cars. Earlier revolutionary rumblings can be found here and here. Topics covered include the pivotal importance of “artists and visionaries,” and the righteous washing of other people’s bin contents. Thereby enabling us to “eat from a revolutionary and resistance standpoint.”

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

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Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Politics Suburbia Travel

Preference Expressed

May 30, 2024 55 Comments

Lifted from the comments, a small point, on suburban versus city living. And those who would prefer that you didn’t have a choice:

I went out on my porch last night and there was a guy milling about in front of my neighbor’s house, sitting on their retaining wall, just, you know, hanging out on somebody else’s property at 11pm.

Freedom from that (and a million related things) is what suburbanites are… https://t.co/O94JKBdBv5

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) May 30, 2024

A thread ensues.

In the comments, Jacob adds:

I like living somewhere where you don’t have to explain things like this.

Well, yes. Quite.

Not having to guess whether some stranger sitting on your wall at 11pm is a threat, or just someone with an impaired sense of boundaries – and not having to do that regularly – is freeing. Likewise, being able to park your car on the street outside without fretting, routinely, about whether someone may try to steal it, or steal some part of it, or just vandalise it out of moron spite, is similarly non-trivial.

And contra Mr Gifford, a thing one might wish to enjoy.

Update, via the comments:

Mr Gifford, since you ask, is a proponent of the “15-minute city.” He doesn’t much like car ownership, or people having the option of living in the suburbs. He’s also rather disdainful of the fact that some of us would rather not “live closer to all kinds of different people,” a proximity to difference – now there’s a euphemism – that is presented as some kind of unexplained moral imperative.

That some people prefer to have neighbours with broadly compatible values and expectations – say, regarding behaviour, noise, the observation of normal boundaries, things of that kind – seems to vex Mr Gifford. The word “privilege” is deployed in a rumbling kind of way.

A rumbling we’ve heard before, while marvelling at its implications.

Update 2, via the comments:

Regarding Mr Gifford’s enthusiasm for our proximity – that’s coerced proximity – to “all kinds of different people,” MattS notes,

Diversity implies diverse preferences about noise and boundaries in public spaces, and diverse views about how to interact with the passing scene, with strangers, and especially with female strangers.

Another non-trivial point, one touched on here, and about which readers may have views somewhat at odds with those of Mr Gifford.

Dicentra adds, not unreasonably,

But fantasizing about making everyone walk everywhere while lugging things is stridently ableist. 

YOU WILL CARRY THOSE FOUR BAGS OF SHOPPING ON PUBLIC TRANSPORT. OR DIE IN THE ATTEMPT. CITIZEN. 

And where, needless to say, you will delight in being surrounded by “all kinds of different people.”

At which point, this came to mind, along with this. And of course this infinitely charming scene. Among many others.

Update 3:

In the comments, Daniel Ream adds,

A great many unusual ideas can be made to work if everyone involved is filthy stinking rich. 

And if everyone involved has shared values and behavioural expectations – the kind of cultural common ground – and moral common ground – that Mr Gifford would presumably disdain as problematic, as mere “privilege.”

A while ago, I mentioned that for many years a neighbour has had an ‘honesty box’ on a small, home-made stand on the pavement outside their house. Passers-by can help themselves to surplus produce from the owner’s vegetable garden, or small plants, or unwanted toys, or whatever. People leave the suggested, very nominal charge or whatever they deem appropriate.

In a box. That doesn’t get robbed.

Almost every time I pass it, I’m faintly pleased that it exists. It does seem rather symbolic. And it serves as a reminder that I’ve lived in neighbourhoods where such a thing would very promptly be vandalised and thrown into the road, and where delight would be taken in its destruction – and in the misery of its owner.

And the difference between the two scenarios – or between this scene and this one – is not caused by poverty, or indeed “privilege.” It’s about being better people. The kind of people one might, say, prefer as neighbours.

Update 4:

Regarding the reference to better people, EmC replies,

You’re not supposed to say that bit out loud, David.

To acknowledge the obvious does have an air of scandalousness. Such is the practised dishonesty of our times. But at risk of being thought “privileged,” or insufficiently egalitarian, I would prefer to walk down the street without someone doing this in order to do this. To me or anyone else.

Outrageous of me, I know.

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