Toni Airaksinen pokes through the scholarly journal Feminist Media Studies: 

“The purpose of including an abortion plotline is to make jokes about abortion, recognising that such satire is valuable for some people as both a means and an end,” [sociology lecturer, Gretchen] Sisson explains. “Comedy has often been used as a subversive way of challenging predominant social structures,” she adds, arguing that because comedy has a history of challenging taboo social issues, abortion “is even intuitive new ground for comedy to address.”

When not devising new realms of feminist comedy, Dr Sisson is an advocate of third-trimester abortion. And hey, destroying nascent human life – whether for health reasons, personal convenience, or as a display of feminist piety - what could be funnier?

David Solway on the comedy-cum-despair of being a college-level teacher: 

Where was one to start trying to educate an adult student who thought the Great Depression began in the 1960s; who was unable to distinguish between the First and Second World Wars; who thought that Moscow was the capital of Missouri… or who averred, in a paper on George Orwell’s Animal Farm, that “George Orwin, arthur of The Animal Firm, was heavily into natur.” You can’t make this stuff up. 

And Toni Airaksinen, again, on another educational breakthrough arrived at via feminism: 

Together, [professors] Laura Parson and Casey Ozaki interviewed eight female students majoring in math or physics to learn more about why women struggle in STEM. From their interviews, the professors learned that many women feel pressure to conform to so-called “masculine” norms. According to the professors, these masculine norms include “asking good questions,” “capacity for abstract thought and rational thought processes,” “motivation,” the expectation that students would be “independent” thinkers, and a relatively low fear of failure. “This requirement that the average student asks questions and speaks in class is based on the typical undergraduate man,” they contend.

Apparently, this “masculine” ideal – of diligence, rationality and a willingness to ask questions – “is very difficult for women students to achieve,” on account of female students not possessing an “unencumbered male body.” Dr Parson has of course entertained us before with her claims that the scientific method and notions of objective reality are “masculine” conceits and therefore oppressive. Instead, says she, we should rely on “feminist critical discourse,” of which her own writing is presumably an example. Again, if you think of modern leftism as a kind of perverse counsel, an attempt to erode realism, stoicism and self-possession, along with academic standards and expectations of competence, and to ruin the lives of the vain and credulous, it can save a lot of time.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Further to the last item here, and various rumblings in the comments, here’s Nanette Asimov on The Screeching Left versus Ben Shapiro (and anyone who wants to engage him in debating ideas): 

For many protesters, the specifics of what the opposition says is not the point. “It doesn’t matter what the guy’s going to say,” said Michael Heaney, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies the sociology of protest movements. “He could talk about the joys of apple-picking. What matters is that the counter-movement is trying to use the energy of the (event) to grow. This is an opportunity for them — and they are likely to seize upon it.”

And hence the conceit that any disagreement is an act of “violence,” to be repaid in kind, violently. For the hyperventilated protestors, it’s all about them and their psychodrama. Because it always is. And so we see self-styled ‘progressives’, the self-imagined woke, calling a Jewish man “Nazi scum” and a “fascist xenophobe” because he opposes racism and thuggery, and wants to have conversations in which students consider issues of basic humanity.

See also, Charles Murray, Heather Mac Donald, Janice Fiamengo, etc., etc. 

Anthony Gockowski reports from Purdue University, where a debate on abortion takes a strange turn: 

“What would you call the public display of a butt naked body of a child?” [pro-abortion speaker, Professor David] Sanders questioned. “I would call it child pornography. Do they have their permission? Do they have the permission of the foetus? Obviously not.”

The permission of the foetus. All things considered, not the happiest turn of phrase.

He went on to question whether or not [anti-abortion group] Created Equal obtains “the permission of the parents to show these images of children,” soliciting a shocked reaction from the audience, with one in attendance pointing out that Sanders had effectively admitted that “it’s a child.”

So, to recap. Showing images of terminated babies-to-have-been during a debate on abortion is apparently pornographic and indecent, a violation of the subject, unlike actually terminating said subject with forceps, suction tubes or abortifacient drugs.

Related: Just Thwarted Sperm. 

Ben Shapiro on abortion and evasion: 

Today, The Atlantic ran a bizarre piece by Moira Weigel titled, in Orwellian fashion, “How the Ultrasound Pushed the Idea That a Foetus Is a Person.” Which is somewhat like saying, “How the Microscope Pushed the Idea That Cells Exist,” or “How the Hubble Telescope Pushed the Idea That There Are Stars Outside Our Solar System.” […] But Weigel goes even further, assuring readers that ultrasounds were primarily a form of warfare against women rather than a tool allowing doctors to identify problems with foetal development as early as possible.  

“What is a foetal heartbeat?” asks Ms Weigel. “And why does it matter?” As we’ve seen, pregnancy is a subject that leaves some feminists looking not only disingenuous but actually monstrous. 

Roger Kimball on academia’s inauguration meltdown: 

Academia has an infantilising effect. I understand that. Many professors dress and act like adolescents right up to the time they are ready to hand in their tenure and live off their generous pensions. The Peter-Pan aspect of academia is not entirely the professors’ fault. After all, the points at which the real world intrudes upon academia are so few and so tenuous that academics may be forgiven for some of their hyperbole and inadvertently comic displays of self-importance. They exist, like kept women of yore, entirely at the pleasure of an affluent society they despise. So in a way it is not surprising that they endeavour to transform their entire campus into a sort of existential boudoir, which is French for “room for pouting in.”

Peter Wood on attempts to make ‘progressive’ activism mandatory for students:

New Civics has appropriated the name of an older subject, but not the content of that subject or its basic orientation to the world. Instead of trying to prepare students for adult participation in the self-governance of the nation, the New Civics tries to prepare students to become social and political activists who are grounded in broad antagonism towards America’s founding principles and its republican ethos.

And Malhar Mali interviews the people behind the excellent Real Peer Review:  

@RealPeerReview is a Twitter account that has steadily gained popularity and fans by exposing the humorous, nonsensical, and absurd trends in scholarship that are sometimes found in academic research. From Ph.D. theses, M.A. theses, to articles in disciplinary journals, the account highlights laughable “scholarship” such as exploring the black anus, how pumpkins and pumpkin spice lattes are oppressive and symbols of white privilege, a paper on a researcher’s experience of completing jigsaw puzzles, and how a scholar felt while drinking coffee and reading the Guardian.  

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, proud feminist and former educator Polly Dunning shares her experience of motherhood:

I’ve always been a feminist. I’m lucky. My mother, Jane Caro, is a feminist, as is my grandmother, and both always have been. It’s something I’ve never questioned and always felt confident and strident about. Just ask me about it at a dinner party (if you dare…)

Setting aside the prospect of some horrendous dinner parties, note Ms Dunning’s satisfaction with a set of assumptions that are stridently voiced and “never questioned.”

Motherhood has been quite a confronting experience for my feminism so far, and I'm sure it will continue to be. Ever since discovering I was pregnant it’s been a process of adjusting and reconciling my biology with my ideology, particularly when I discovered that my baby, my most-beloved Alfred, would be a boy.

That little red light is a warning sign.

I had never wanted a son. In fact, I had decidedly not wanted one. I wanted daughters, probably because I am one of two daughters and six granddaughters, no sons or grandsons. This seemed altogether to fit in with my feminism better… There were dark moments in the middle of the night (when all those dark thoughts come), when I felt sick at the thought of something male growing inside me.

Yes, I know. The little red light is flashing now. Best cover it with a towel.

In this patriarchal world, this world where even the best men (and women, for that matter) engage in casual and ingrained sexism, how will I raise a son who respects me the way a daughter would?

Oh sweet naïveté. But thank goodness that Ms Dunning, who “felt sick” at even the thought of “something male” growing inside her, is totally opposed to all that “casual and ingrained sexism.”