For newcomers, more items from the archives.

Among The Little People. 

Feminist academic Dr Jane Bone has “intra-active encounters” with children’s furniture.

This traumatic and “haunting” experience – being a grown-up among lots of small chairs – apparently reveals “the undervalued nature of teaching young children.” A point Dr Bone underlines with an anecdote involving a teacher who, during a meeting, perched on a chair intended for children, rather than searching out a more suitably proportioned one. Damning and conclusive, I think you’ll agree. And Dr Bone’s mental reach extends beyond mere anecdote: “In order to recapture this [experience]… I went to IKEA to sit on some small chairs.”

Turf War. 

Charles Murray attempts to speak on campus. A riot ensues.

As one of Middlebury’s sociology professors noted, “few, if any” of the protestors had ever read Murray’s books. Evidently, he’s nonetheless someone to be ‘othered’ and to whom the students can attach the usual out-group labels – denouncing him as “sexist,” “racist,” “anti-gay” and a “white nationalist.” (As even the briefest use of Google would reveal, Murray married a Thai woman while in the Peace Corps, has mixed-race children, has tutored inner-city black children for free, and was an early advocate of gay marriage – hardly the most obvious markers of a supposedly anti-gay white nationalist.)

Feign Diabetes, It’s The Only Way. 

The Guardian’s Sarah Marsh is being oppressed by free cake.

Struggling with unfamiliar pronunciation is a “racist practice,” apparently.

Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Listening to the broadcast, the dogmatic vanities are hard to miss, and the ladies appear oblivious to how they might seem. At least beyond the circle of the severely educated.

It’s also interesting how the grievances of the recreationally indignant – these self-regarding young women who wear victimhood like jewellery and complain about the emotional travails of ordering coffee – so often read as an assertion of class status. As if a modestly-paid coffee-shop worker, with whom they interact for a few seconds, and whose own name they don’t share, or presumably recall, should somehow automatically divine the unobvious pronunciation of an unfamiliar name, and then remember it, forever, despite interacting with hundreds of people every day, and having a life and priorities of their own.

We’ve been here before, of course.

Update, via the comments: 

While invoking Alex Haley’s slavery novel Roots as a guide to their own suffering, the ladies insist that, if you aren’t instantly sure how to pronounce Ms Ali’s Somalian first name, or Ms Roy’s Indian first name, then you’re a “vehicle of racism” and are “damaging” their “self-worth and sense of confidence,” and should, one assumes, prostrate yourself at the nearest Temple of Woke Sorrows. Given this kabuki of the implausibly downtrodden, it occurs to me that the charming lady who runs the local Chinese takeaway, and for whom English is at best a second language, has struggled to pronounce my surname for close to two decades. Presumably, I should storm in there one evening and publicly berate her for oppressing me and invalidating my personhood. Delicate flower that I am.

In the comments, Daniel Ream notes,

Teenagers gonna teenage, but for some reason we’ve decided to grant ignorant adolescents whose brains haven’t fully formed yet bizarrely elevated status and moral authority.

Readers may wish to ponder why it is that modern leftism dovetails so neatly with the psychological shortcomings of adolescents.

Christopher Snowdon attempts to feed himself for a day while abiding by the Lancet’s latest nutritional guidelines:

There’s breakfast, and lunch, and a lovely chicken dinner.

Readers are advised that Mr Snowdon is seen handling a dangerous quantity of bacon.

A student group at a California university is hosting a month-long “Body Love” celebration, which includes events about how “menstruation and environmentalism go hand in hand.”

Not, I think, an entirely happy image. But apparently, students will be “empowered” and “feel more comfort” by exploring the “intersection” – because you knew there was going to be an intersection somewhere – of “body love and Earth love.”

Students could also attend a “Self-Care for Body Hair” event that offered answers to questions such as: “What do you do with your body hair? Does your relationship with your body change when you’ve shaved recently? Do you shave at all?”

Because when you call yourselves The Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment at the University of Southern California, and proudly declare a mission to fight for those “oppressed by the patriarchy,” while “working towards intersectional, collective liberation,” then obviously you’re going to focus on the big, meaty issues of the day. And so,

At the group’s “signature event,” a “body love fair,” students were treated to “crafts, donuts, boba, music, and self-lovin’ vibes!” At that event, attendees were also invited to “release your anger at our Scale Smashing!”

Yes, students with weight issues – issues of such magnitude that they have anger to release – will be encouraged to gorge on doughnuts and thick sugary drinks containing various types of pudding and requiring an extra-wide straw, before hating themselves all over again, while pretending to be empowered and totally okay with it. You see, the way to help overweight people is to encourage the kind of high-sugar consumption that results in weight gain, and inviting them to smash objects that remind them of how unhappy they are about being fat. A situation that they’ve just made slightly worse.

It’s intersectional science, people.

For those who missed it in the comments, behold Guardian World, where all things are possible:

I’m sensing mixed messages.

And so, on one page we’re reminded of some unhappy realities:

Prof Jamie Waterall, Public Health England’s national lead for cardiovascular disease, said: “It’s worrying that so many people are at risk of dying unnecessarily from heart attack and stroke. [But] I was unsurprised … given that we have a population that’s becoming more obese and we have major problems with things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, alcohol and physical inactivity.” […] 80% of heart attacks and strokes are preventable, he stressed.

To summarise. Hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, gallbladder disease, stroke, osteoarthritis, joint failure, incontinence, sleep apnea, breathing problems, depression, anxiety, and cancer.

I know. Let’s call it “body positivity.”

However, elsewhere in the Guardian, we’re informed – by “an 18-stone woman who refuses to diet,” a self-styled “feminist killjoy” – of much more pressing matters. Specifically, that obesity tends to limit one’s access to a flattering wardrobe, which is a form of oppression; that taking selfies from above, to minimise double chins, is a form of “fatphobia” and therefore oppression; and that restaurants often fail to provide widened, armless, reinforced chairs in order to accommodate their more girthful customers. Which is, obviously, a form of oppression. The oversized author, Virgie Tovar, helpfully instructs the non-obese in how to change their wicked ways.

Presumably, then, we must avoid becoming heavily overweight while acting as though we’re doing it for no reason whatsoever.

I don’t generally care about how big someone is and I manage to get through the day without making gratuitous remarks about other people’s size. But I have noticed a recurring dynamic, whereby someone will get fat and obviously be unhappy about it, while being intensely reactive to even the most cautious acknowledgement of either their size or its effect on their mood and health. And this defensiveness can lead to all kinds of mental contortion and some quite bizarre behaviour. Not least among self-styled “fat activists.”

And so we see endless articles in which activists bemoan their unhappy lot and the seemingly life-ruining difficulties of being obese, while the most practical solution, the one over which they might exert some leverage – losing weight – is either not mentioned at all – as, for instance, here – or is disdained as both a personal affront and a betrayal of The Cause, i.e., of whatever martyrdom drama the activists in question imagine themselves engaged in. As one unhappy lady put it, “Intentional weight loss goes against everything that I stand for.”

And so rather than changing the situation, they choose instead to shout at the rain. And complain about people who take selfies from above so as to avoid double chins. Because the drama must go on.

Via Holborn.