A discussion ensues. The teller of said tale, Ms Kelly Jo-Bluen, describes her interests as “feminism, international justice,” and “coloniality.” “White supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy” is, we’re told, “the problem.”
Consider this an open thread, in which to share links and bicker.
Thanks to feminism and our ability not only to work but to take on positions of leadership in our careers, women are now able to provide ourselves all the benefits husbands used to provide us. We don’t need a guy to spoil us or buy us a house – we’ve got that locked down already. We don’t even need a husband for kids; if we really want to become mothers, there are ways to achieve that without having to tie the knot with someone we’ll just end up divorcing a few years later.
Following a number of enquiries as to why I don’t have a specific tag for items involving the cartoonish Laurie Penny, I thought I’d compile a few of my posts on the British left’s foremost unreliable narrator. It’s necessarily incomplete – there are several short posts and endless, lengthy comments I haven’t included – but it should convey a flavour of Laurie’s intermittent relationship with reality, her ongoing struggles with logic, and her delightful personality.
This discovery of general preference, some 71%, is not only deemed “alarming,” but also “startling,” and what’s more, it apparently constitutes a “masculinity crisis within the LGBTQ community.” Says a website quoting a magazine, the front cover of which looks like this.
As Ted S notes in reply, “How dare you gays not like the type of man we think you should like!”
I realise it may be difficult to feel great concern for the kinds of people who base their worldviews on the high and noble teachings of the publications Attitude and Queerty, but still. The unstated contortion required to achieve the indignation that is now social currency – in this instance, a belief that not being aroused by overly effeminate men is obvious and damning proof of “misogynist attitudes” and “toxic masculinity” – is a thing to behold. We’re also informed – quite confidently, yet with no elaboration – that, “[Gay men] enjoy the privilege of being male in a patriarchal society that for some reason values our genitals way above a woman’s.”
It is clear that, for Antifa, the purpose [of their language] is to cloak reality. Antifa’s reason for describing something or someone as “fascist” is not that it is actually fascist… but that describing it that way is politically advantageous. Likewise with any number of other slurs. Antifa are in effect claiming to oppose everything that is bad — and, of course, it is Antifa who decide what is bad. Hence the organisers of the Inauguration Day protests could write, as their mission statement, that “#DisruptJ20 rejects all forms of domination and oppression.” That is a good monopoly if you can get it… They are, in the final analysis, simply claiming that people who think like them should be exempt from the law’s constraints, and that people who do not think like them should not receive the law’s protections.
When your political worldview is premised on the coercion of others, and on pathological self-flattery, it’s not too much of a stretch.
Heather Mac Donald on a real “rape culture” that’s oddly unacknowledged by campus feminists:
In March, a 15-year-old girl in Chicago was lured into a basement and gang-raped by five to six males. The girl was threatened with a pit bull if she tried to flee… One of the participants live-streamed the rape on Facebook. So far, two boys, 15- and 14-years-old, have been arrested for the attack… Up to 40 people watched the rape live; none reported it to the police or to Facebook. Since then, threats, taunts, social-media bullying, and physical assaults have been directed at… the victim and her family, not at the rapists. A group of girls beat the victim’s twelve-year-old sister last week, reports DNA Info Chicago. One of the girl’s attackers said: “Why [did] you send my brother to jail,” according to her mother. You want to see an example of “blaming the victim?” This is it.
Ah, this old chestnut: ‘traditional marriages often fail so polyamorous ones are worth considering.’ What nobody ever does is closely examine the rate at which polyamorous relationships fail, the mental state of the people involved in them, and the effect on any children unfortunate enough to be caught up in them.
Related, in two contrasting parts, the views of Laurie Penny and Brad Wilcox, only one of whom uses data.
And Dominic Mancini on a grave threat to the wellbeing of minority students at the University of Michigan:
Anna Wibbelman, former president of Building a Better Michigan, an organisation that voices student concerns about university development, stated at a student government meeting in late March that “minority students felt marginalised by quiet, imposing, masculine [wood] panelling” found throughout the 100-year-old building, the meeting’s minutes state.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Empowered feminist Melissa Fabello explains the deep, deep trauma of being disagreed with.
Ms Fabello chastises those who ironically use the term “social justice warrior” – which, she explains, is an “invalidating behaviour,” one that can get “really oppressive really quickly.”
The Clown Quarter is a foretaste of left’s corrected, more compassionate society. Hence all the threats and punching.
To recap, the university’s stated rationale for censorship is that it can’t protect either the speakers or their audience from disruption and thuggery by its own students, which is quite an admission, really. And as we’ve seen, the threat of physical intimidation and mob harassment – by these would-be intellectuals of the left – is quite real. What the university doesn’t admit, however, is that this problem won’t be solved by banning any speakers deemed remotely controversial – in this case, two speakers who prefer evidence and debate over threats and hysteria. The problem will only be addressed, or begin to be addressed, when leftist students no longer feel that mob censorship and physical intimidation are things they can get away with, and get away with repeatedly, without facing consequences. Say, being expelled.
Avowed “feminist killjoy” Josefin Hedlund wants to correct your erotic preferences and make them egalitarian. For “social justice.”
Love and sex are unequally “distributed,” says Ms Hedlund, with an unfair amount of both going to people who are deemed lovable and attractive by the people loving them, and not to insufferable sociopaths with horrific disfigurements. Or, one suspects, self-styled “feminist killjoys.” And this is because of capitalism. It’s “obvious,” you see.
There’s more, should you want it, in the greatest hits. And tickling the tip jar is what keeps this place afloat.
One notices, of course, that feminists never criticise gay men for adoring male beauty, nor are lesbian preferences subject to feminist critique. No, in feminist discourse, it is only the heterosexual male’s attitudes and behaviour that are the target of this kind of “fuck your beauty standards” rhetoric.
Mark Bauerlein on the ideological desiccation of the humanities:
When English turned into a practice of reading literature for signs of racism, sexism, and ideology, it lost touch with why youths pick up books in the first place, said University of Virginia Professor Rita Felski. And Duke professor Toril Moi told the Chronicle of Higher Education, “If you challenge the idea of suspicion as the only mode of reading, you are then immediately accused of being conservative in relation to those politics.
Heather Mac Donald on progressive discipline policies and subsequent delinquency:
The idea that such street behaviour does not have a classroom counterpart is ludicrous. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic males of the same age. The lack of socialisation that produces such a vast disparity in murder rates, as well as less lethal street violence, inevitably will show up in classroom behaviour. Teens who react to a perceived insult on social media by trying to shoot the offender are not likely to restrain themselves in the classroom if they feel “disrespected” by a teacher or fellow students.
Democratic voters are almost three times as likely to have “blocked, unfriended, or stopped following someone on social media” after Donald Trump’s victory, according to a study… The survey shows considerable splits along gender lines as well. Women were “twice as likely as men to report removing people from their online social circle because of the political views they expressed online,” 18 percent to 9 percent, according to the study conducted by Daniel Cox and Robert P. Jones… Meanwhile, 5 percent of those polled said they will alter plans to spend less time with select members of their family because of their political views. This, too, showed a partisan divide: 10 percent of Democrats said they planned to avoid certain family members, and 2 percent of Republicans said they would do likewise.
Speaking of wordplay, we’re once again being told that Baby, It’s Cold Outside is actually an ode to date rape. As so often, the umbrage-takers display a remarkable level of tin-earedness regarding the sentiment of the song, and a joke about feigned intoxication as an excuse for behaving as one might wish. And as noted in the comments over at Instapundit, “There was a time progressives would have said it was about a woman who obviously wants to have sex, but is being oppressed by slut-shamers through fear.”
Update, via the comments:
From the Huffington Postpiece linked at Instapundit:
The duo, singer-songwriters Lydia Liza and Josiah Lemanski, told CNN that they felt that the original song was “aggressive and inappropriate,” arguing that the listener never finds out what happens to the woman in the song. “You never figure out if she gets to go home.” “You never figure out if there was something in her drink. It just leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth,” said Liza.
You’d think that self-styled singer-songwriters would be able to deduce things from lyrics, arrangement and intonation. And it’s interesting how the rather sour, supposedly progressive interpretation, wheeled out every year in near-identical articles, assumes that the woman in the song is somehow passive and a victim, rather than an equal and willing participant. As Darleen puts it in the comments here, the song is in fact a kind of lyrical tango, “an intricate dance where each partner consents to play a part.”
And from a related CNN article, where the point of the song is, again, spectacularly missed:
The song’s seeming disregard for the woman’s desire to leave never sat well with Lemanski or Liza.
Somewhere, Mr and Mrs Loesser, the writers of Baby, It’s Cold Outside, are rolling their eyes in unison.
Readers are invited to ponder which party – the songwriters or Ms Penny – is actually “ignoring women’s sexual agency.” A demonstration, were one needed, of how rote feminism can bleach away any trace of subtlety.
To my ear, and plenty of others, the woman in the song is far from passive and is listing the customary reasons for leaving, almost all of which are external social pressures and proprieties – gossipy neighbours, maiden aunts with vicious minds – while very much wanting to stay. The crude feminist reading of the song, illustrated above, is of him trying to coerce her. It’s actually about both of them, together, very knowingly, pushing against the social conventions of the time. Which is probably why the song was once considered somewhat risqué.
Still, one has to marvel at how the default progressive line is not only tin-eared and wrong, but actually an inversion of the songwriters’ intent.
The song isn’t about ignoring or overriding the woman’s preferences, or indeed drugging her – but quite the opposite. Throughout the song, they’re both thinking of ways to delay her departure. Half a drink, another cigarette. And despite the woman running through the list of obstacles to her passion, and saying that she “ought to say no,” because social convention expects her to forego her own preferences, the song concludes with the woman deciding that she’s “gonna say” that she tried to go home but was thwarted by the blizzard.
The two of them then agree, in unison and in harmony, that the weather outside really is terrible.
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