From time to time, I wonder whether I overuse the word psychodrama. And then, within days, I find another one of these:
Andy Ngo on media dishonesty and racial shakedowns:
The genre of “white people doing something to black people” is, by now, a well-established media genre that generates easy clicks. But there is also an unsettling subplot that few seem willing to discuss. Rashsaan Muhammad and Mattie Khan, the two people of colour who star in last week’s viral video, both act abominably toward a young woman they’ve just met… And it was Ms Khan, not the pedestrian, who instantly racialised the incident, while her male partner called the woman an “idiot” and told her that she doesn’t belong in the neighbourhood. Who’s the racist—not to mention segregationist—here?
The couple’s abominable behaviour didn’t end after that encounter and the publication of the video, however. Within hours, Ms. Khan named the bicyclist publicly and posted her photo on social media. Friends and followers of Ms Khan then continued the doxing, publishing more photos and personal details of the woman… Sha Ongelungel, who was recently profiled glowingly as a racial justice activist in the Guardian, published the woman’s employer information on Twitter and encouraged others to call or email them. They obliged and demanded that she be fired. Ms Ongelungel stopped responding after I inquired if she took any steps to verify the couple’s (false) allegation.
Previously and somewhat related: When “dismantling the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy” trumps little things like opening hours.
Heather Mac Donald on pathological academia and the barking left:
The epithets used by the left are simply reflex actions. They have nothing to do with reality. “White supremacy” is now the favoured term of art and it’s trotted out in situations that are ludicrous… We saw this during the feminist hysteria over the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. Those who defended the idea of due process… were accused of supporting “white supremacy” and “white privilege.” What was left out of the equation was that his accuser was also white. So how does race come into this?
And in unambiguous hate-crime news:
Men, listen up… Join me, with due diligence and civic duty, and publicly claim: I am sexist!
In the pages of the New York Times, a philosophy professor named George Yancy is gushing his little heart out:
It is hard to admit we are sexist. I, for instance, would like to think that I possess genuine feminist bona fides, but who am I kidding? I am a failed and broken feminist.
Upon which revelation, I suppose we could all just stop and go home. But no, let’s press on.
More pointedly, I am sexist. There are times when I fear for the loss of my own entitlement as a male. Toxic masculinity takes many forms. All forms continue to hurt and to violate women.
The word toxic, by the way, is deployed no fewer than nine times, excluding various synonyms, as if it were an incantation. Now brace yourselves for some full-on testosterone-jacked beastliness.
For example, before I got married, I insisted that my wife take my last name… While this was not sexual assault, my insistence was a violation of her independence.
To reiterate. Asking a fiancée if she’ll change her surname upon marriage, as is still the custom, perhaps to avoid confusing people as to whether you’re actually married or not, and possibly to avoid imposing on any children lengthy hyphenated surnames… this is not sexual assault. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.
However,
John Staddon on Ethnic Studies standards:
The anonymous sociologist’s claim that empirical facts are irrelevant… raises an important question: if theories in the social sciences are not constrained by empirical facts, what are they constrained by? The answer seems to be that theories in Race and Ethnic Studies sociology are mainly constrained by the political opinions prevailing in that branch of the field… [‘Race theorist’] Eduardo Bonilla-Silva scorns the very idea [of truth], speaking of the “devil of ‘objectivity’” (note the scare quotes). Without the possibility of objectivity, there is no science. Has sociology become, then, just political activism? To some extent, yes. According to Tukufu Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva: “The aim is to attain epistemic liberation from White logic.”
Professor Bonilla-Silva and his nasty, paranoid contortions have been mentioned here before. When not denouncing objectivity and “white logic” – or complaining that his employer, Duke University, “oozes whiteness,” which is, it goes without saying, a terrible thing to ooze – the professor equates critics of affirmative action with 19th century supporters of slavery. He also claims that non-racial ‘colour-blind’ attitudes and policies are merely a “way of calling minorities niggers, Spics or Chinks.”
One of the more bizarre indicators of Bonilla-Silva’s mental state is his written insistence – published in a course syllabus – that students must control their “body language” and avoid any “irresponsible contestation” of his arguments. Black students who disagreed with the professor’s lurid racialist theories have been denounced by him as “Uncle Toms.” Oh, and Professor Bonilla-Silva, a grown man, a tenured academic with a six-figure salary, refers to the United States, in class, as “Gringoland” and “AmeriKKKa.”
Further to this recent hoaxing drama, James Lindsay on laundering hokum:
‘Critical race theory’ is a mess, for example. It’s an explicitly political situation, in which ‘whiteness’ has to be bad and therefore can’t do anything right, and they take these ideas and launder them through the academic process. And these departments exist specifically to launder these ideas, to put them through the academic process and give them the appearance of being rigorous studies, so then activists can go and say, “Oh, a study has shown…”
For more on so-called “critical race theory,” see also this.
Our beloved state broadcaster brings tidings of intersectional joy:
Reading about quantum physics has really helped me understand my queer identity… It is in this model of space-time as a series of entanglements that I’m able to piece together all of the fragmented sects of my identity – being able to identify as British and Iraqi, as queer and Muslim, as someone of many genders and potentially no genders at all.
Readers may wish to imagine the faces of, say, Erwin Schrödinger or Max Planck on hearing their field being compared with the staggering intellectual heft and rigour of “queer theory.” By a chap with blue eyebrows, fake boobs and voluminous pink acrylic hair.
Via sk60.
Why female superheroes shouldn’t hit old ladies.
Yes, it’s the Guardian, a page labelled “Opinion: Women,” where we find Zoe Williams mulling the issues of the day:
The new female Captain Marvel does just that in a film trailer – Superman would never be allowed to stoop so low. What’s going on?
That’s this trailer here, and specifically, this brief scene.
Apart from… some obligatory superhero amnesia and a bit of kinetic energy, the main thing we see is the Captain punching an old lady.
The punch in question is the most memorable shot of an otherwise unremarkable trailer, and as Marvel Comics enthusiasts may know – and as anyone within reach of a search engine could rapidly discover – the titular heroine is almost certainly not punching an old lady, but punching an alien shapeshifter, a Skrull, disguised as an old lady and up to no good. However, Ms Williams is famed for her struggles with research, even as a concept, a thing one might do, theoretically, and doesn’t seem entirely clear what her own point is. And so we must endure a rambling, barely coherent piece, jumping from Jodie Whittaker’s swearing to Germaine Greer and “gender fluidity,” before arriving at a conclusion. Or at least an approximation of one. Namely, that women being at odds with other women – whether in the form of televised debates between feminists, or female superheroes belting sinister aliens disguised as pensioners – is another facet of the Patriarchy and its relentless Male Gaze.
You see, gal-on-gal conflicts are,
Heather Mac Donald on media dishonesties and contrived definitions:
What do you do if you are the New York Times and 20 people show up to the white-supremacist rally that you had been breathlessly billing as further proof of the normalisation of hatred in the Donald Trump era? Expand the definition of “white supremacist” to cover a large portion of the American electorate and its representatives… It turns out that if you are for “immigration restrictions,” “ending affirmative action,” or “instituting trade protections,” you have been influenced by white nationalism and are embracing “policy issues the far right has promoted.”
And again, on biology, ideology, and inconsistent feminists:
It turns out, however, that males and females differentially respond to stress, environmental risk factors, drugs, and disease, as an initiative called Women’s Health Research at Yale devotes itself to documenting… Such discoveries should be the death knell for social constructivism. Along with many others like them, they buttress the possibility that uneven sex ratios in various fields are in part the result of males and females’ different average dispositions toward competition, risk, and abstract rather than people-centred work (an observation that got computer engineer James Damore fired from Google). And yet, feminist social-justice warriors are perfectly capable of proceeding on several contradictory fronts simultaneously. Even as the director of the Yale initiative insists that it’s time to “stop treating women as a subgroup of the human population” (because women are biologically and psychologically distinct from males), the magazine and its sources carefully follow the conventions of social constructivism.
As Ms Mac Donald points out, “For academic feminists, male and female biology is either interchangeable or immutable, depending on what complaint they need to lodge.” The James Damore saga was outlined here.
Steven Pinker on feminist utopia:
An unnamed New York Times reader asks, “How can I cure my white guilt?”
I’m riddled with shame. White shame. This isn’t helpful to me or to anyone, especially people of colour. I feel like there is no “me” outside of my white/upper middle class/cisgender identity. I feel like my literal existence hurts people, like I’m always taking up space that should belong to someone else.
Times contributors Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond, self-styled purveyors of “radically empathic advice,” inform this unhappy, seemingly demented reader that, “We do live in a culture steeped in white supremacy and class bigotry, as well as patriarchal values,” and therefore any comforts and advantages the reader might have, however they were arrived at, are “unearned, the product of corrupt systems,” for which “every white person should be ashamed.” “What you really feel,” they continue, “is trapped within an identity that marks you, inescapably, as an oppressor.”
Today’s words are abuse, creepy and cult.
Via Dicentra.
Michael Jones on the Clown Quarter’s approximation of scholarship:
In her paper, How to Write as Felt: Touching Transmaterialities and More-Than-Human Intimacies, University of Toronto scholar Stephanie Springgay suggests that felt, a “dense material of permanently interlocking fibres,” can be linked to racism and capitalism.
It’s those “cis-heteronormative White supremacist settler colonial logics,” you see. And the “queer self-touching,” obviously.
Charles Cooke on the latest young titan of US socialism:
Speaking to a friendly Trevor Noah, [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she does not know the difference between a one-year and a ten-year budget; confused the recent increase in defence spending with the entire annual cost of the military; implied that the population of the United States was around 800 million strong; and, having been asked to defend her coveted $15 minimum wage, launched into a rambling and inscrutable diatribe about “private equity” firms that would have been a touch too harsh as a parody on South Park.
Charlotte Allen on “healthy masculinity,” as defined by campus woke-lings:
In May, the University of Texas-Austin hastily pulled back a programme on “healthy masculinity” that its counselling staff had devised – amid a flood of ridicule over such aspects of the programme as posters depicting young men wearing pencilled-in dresses (complete with bust-lines) and encouraging UT’s male students to try nail polish and makeup. The programme, titled “MasculinUT” and devised in 2015, had been originally marketed as a means of reducing campus sexual assault and domestic violence. Instead, as even UT administrators ultimately conceded, it mainly consisted of promoting “gender fluidity” and the treatment of traditional masculine roles and goals — such as focusing on career “success,” becoming the family “breadwinner,” and being told to “act like a man” — as inherently pathological.
And Jonah Goldberg on Sarah Jeong and racism as a credential at the New York Times:
SEARCH
Archives
Interesting Sites
Categories
- Academia
- Agonies of the Left
- AI
- And Then It Caught Fire
- Anthropology
- Architecture
- Armed Forces
- Art
- Auto-Erotic Radicalism
- Basking
- Bees
- Behold My Massive Breasts
- Behold My Massive Lobes
- Beware the Brown Rain
- Big Hooped Earrings
- Bionic Lingerie
- Blogs
- Books
- Bra Drama
- Bra Hygiene
- Cannabis
- Classic Sentences
- Collective Toilet Management
- Comics
- Culture
- Current Affairs
- Dating Decisions
- Dental Hygiene's Racial Subtext
- Department of Irony
- Dickensian Woes
- Did You Not See My Earrings?
- Emotional Support Guinea Pigs
- Emotional Support Water Bottles
- Engineering
- Ephemera
- Erotic Pottery
- Farmyard Erotica
- Feats
- Feminist Comedy
- Feminist Dating
- Feminist Fun Times
- Feminist Poetry Slam
- Feminist Pornography
- Feminist Snow Ploughing
- Feminist Witchcraft
- Film
- Food and Drink
- Free-For-All
- Games
- Gardening's Racial Subtext
- Gentrification
- Giant Vaginas
- Great Hustles of Our Time
- Greatest Hits
- Hair
- His Pretty Nails
- History
- Housekeeping
- Hubris Meets Nemesis
- Ideas
- If You Build It
- Imagination Must Be Punished
- Inadequate Towels
- Indignant Replies
- Interviews
- Intimate Waxing
- Juxtapositions
- Media
- Mischief
- Modern Savagery
- Music
- Not Often Seen
- Oppressive Towels
- Parenting
- Policing
- Political Nipples
- Politics
- Postmodernism
- Pregnancy
- Presidential Genitals
- Problematic Acceptance
- Problematic Baby Bouncing
- Problematic Bookshelves
- Problematic Bra Marketing
- Problematic Checkout Assistants
- Problematic Civility
- Problematic Cleaning
- Problematic Competence
- Problematic Crosswords
- Problematic Cycling
- Problematic Fairness
- Problematic Fitness
- Problematic Furniture
- Problematic Monkeys
- Problematic Motion
- Problematic Neighbourliness
- Problematic Parties
- Problematic Pasta
- Problematic Plumbers
- Problematic Punctuality
- Problematic Questions
- Problematic Toilets
- Problematic Walking
- Problematic Wedding Photos
- Pronouns Or Else
- Psychodrama
- Radical Bowel Movements
- Radical Bra Abandonment
- Radical Dirt Relocation
- Reheated
- Religion
- Reversed GIFs
- Science
- Shakedowns
- Some Fraction Of A Sausage
- Sports
- Stalking Mishaps
- Student Narcolepsy
- Suburban Polygamist Ninjas
- Technology
- Television
- The Deep Wisdom of Celebrities
- The Genitals Of Tomorrow
- The Gods, They Mock Us
- The Great Outdoors
- The Politics of Buttocks
- The Thrill of Friction
- The Thrill of Garbage
- The Thrill Of Glitter
- The Thrill of Hand Dryers
- The Thrill of Medicine
- The Thrill Of Powdered Cheese
- The Thrill Of Seating
- The Thrill Of Shopping
- The Thrill Of Toes
- The Thrill Of Unemployment
- The Thrill of Wind
- The Thrill Of Woke Retailing
- The Thrill of Yarn
- The Year That Was
- Those Lying Bastards
- Those Poor Darling Armed Robbers
- Those Poor Darling Burglars
- Those Poor Darling Carjackers
- Those Poor Darling Fare Dodgers
- Those Poor Darling Looters
- Those Poor Darling Muggers
- Those Poor Darling Paedophiles
- Those Poor Darling Sex Offenders
- Those Poor Darling Shoplifters
- Those Poor Darling Stabby Types
- Those Poor Darling Thieves
- Tomorrow’s Products Today
- Toys
- Travel
- Tree Licking
- TV
- Uncategorized
- Wigs
- You Can't Afford My Radical Life
Recent Comments