Via the pages of Everyday Feminism, Rachel Kuo instructs the dull masses on how to avoid “cultural appropriation” while eating: 

When we talk about “ethnic” food, we’re not referring to French, German, or Italian cuisine, and definitely not those Ikea Swedish meatballs.

I suspect few people think of German cuisine as particularly mysterious and alluring. There are, I fear, very few German restaurants beyond the borders of Germany. Good cars, though.

Usually, we’re talking about Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Ethiopian, and Mexican food – places where food is cooked by the “brownest” people.

As is the custom with articles in Everyday Feminism, the density of assumption in what follows is quite high. For instance, when my family ventures out for a meal, table for twenty, I can say with some confidence that the choice of restaurant isn’t determined by the melanin levels of the people cooking it.

What happens is that food becomes the only identifier for certain places. Japan reduced to ramen and sushi, Mexico reduced to tacos and burritos, India reduced to curry, and so on.

Again, note the loadedness, the questions begged. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten, say, chili while convinced that said meal was an adequate distillation of the entire population of Mexico and Texas, past and present. Nor can I recall “fetishizing the sustenance of another culture.” Or “subsuming histories and stories into menu items.” It’s a meal, not an attempt to absorb world history or to flirt with some notional brownness. Yet this is asserted as “what happens,” as some universal fact. And then promptly contradicted:  

Eating food from another culture in isolation from that culture’s history and also current issues mean [sic] that we’re just borrowing the pieces that are enjoyable – palatable and easily digestible. 

Um, isn’t that rather the point? You know, tastiness without baggage? Isn’t that what makes foreign cuisine commercially viable, a livelihood of millions? Or is ordering takeout only acceptable following lengthy, brow-furrowing investment in each and every vendor’s ancestral culture and current politics? Should every visit to, say, a Pakistani restaurant entail a stern lecture on the pros and cons of European colonialism and a lifetime subscription to the fever dream of Islam? Would that aid digestion? Stated plainly, it sounds a little silly. But Ms Kuo wishes to appear concerned, deeply concerned, that people of pallor might enjoy falafel and a spot of hummus “but not understand or address the ongoing Islamophobia in the US.”

More intellectual life at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire:

“Fuck you, you filthy white fucks!” “Fuck you and your comfort!” “Fuck you, you racist shits!” These shouted epithets were the first indication that many students had of the coming storm. The sign-wielding, obscenity-shouting protesters proceeded through the usually quiet backwaters of the library… and converged around fellow students who had not joined in their long march. They confronted students who bore “symbols of oppression” such as “gangster hats” and Beats-brand headphones.

The flood of demonstrators opened the doors of study spaces with students reviewing for exams. Those who tried to close their doors were harassed further. One student abandoned the study room and ran out of the library. The protesters followed her out of the library, shouting obscenities the whole way. Students who refused to join their outbursts were shouted down: “Stand the fuck up!” “You filthy racist white piece of shit!” Men and women alike were pushed and shoved by the group. “If we can’t have it, shut it down!” they cried. Another woman was pinned to a wall by protesters who unleashed their insults, shouting “filthy white bitch!” in her face.

Vain little monsters projecting their own vices and relishing the sensation of power over others.

Update, via the comments:

Janice Fiamengo on the neurotic malice of feminist outrage junkies:

See also Make Way for the Mao-lings, in which Dr Fiamengo vividly illustrates the tactics and effects of feminist hysteria, and the video here, in which she debates with a feminist professor of philosophy, Alice McLachlan, who insists that she “cares a lot about free speech,” but not for people who might dare to disagree with her. And remember, should you be at all sceptical of identitarian politics and tribal psychology, Your Failure to Agree Will Not Be Tolerated. 

Onwards to tomorrow, the progressive way: 

Student protesters at the University of Missouri asked white supporters to leave Wednesday night in order to create a “black only healing space.” Steve Schmidt, an activist who was at the protest, tweeted that Concerned Student 1950 group were “asking white allies to leave.”

Free from any contaminating pallor, the students claimed they would be able to “share, decompress, be vulnerable and real.”

I couldn’t swear to it, but I have a vague feeling this has been tried before.

Janice Fiamengo continues her series on feminism and its fictions, this time on women in the military:  

Why are women so poorly represented on the front lines? Because most women can’t do the job, don’t want to do the job, and in cases where they can do it, can’t do it as well as men… A recent study has demonstrated a big disparity in women’s and men’s battlefield ability. The US Marine Corps examined over a year the impact of female integration on combat readiness and found conclusively that women cannot match male performance. Male units were faster, more effective and able to evacuate casualties in less time. Overall, the study concluded, all-male squads performed better than mixed groups in 69% of the tasks evaluated. Women performed notably less well in their use of every individual weapons system, and in addition women had higher injury rates than men. So in terms of women’s own well-being as well as the overall effectiveness of the fighting force, its ability to kill enemies and save wounded comrades, the study showed that the presence of women in combat units has a negative impact.  

See also the last item here, on “progressive” priorities and attracting female fire-fighters by dramatically lowering standards of competence.

And Roger Kimball on the Idiot Weeping Fever™ currently sweeping academia: 

[The protesting student] had put up about ten signs before a security guard asked him to leave. Nothing doing. The guard asked again. Nada. So he grabbed the student and dragged him, kicking and screaming, from the room. What was he screaming? The chief burden of his plaint revolved around that Indian village. Greg Lukianoff had said that the response to Erika Christakis’s email was so violent that you would have thought someone had destroyed an Indian Village. He didn’t advocate destroying an Indian Village. No villages of any sort were despoiled in the conduct of his remarks. He merely suggested that the response to an email treating students as responsible adults (first mistake!) was wildly disproportionate. 

That bit of hermeneutical reasoning was beyond the distraught, poster-wielding student. And not only him. Soon there was a crowd of twenty students demanding to get into the attendance-by-reservation only event. Then there were fifty or more. Soon they were chanting loudly outside the hall. “Genocide is not a joke” was one of the little ditties with which they entertained us. By the time the last session began, word came that they intended to bar the exits. More security was marshalled and when the proceedings came to an end the speakers and the audience were escorted out of the room. A cordon of enraged students holding signs and yelling “Genocide is not a joke” greeted us. Another fifty or so lined the sidewalk outside.

Kimball refers to the fevered protestors as “snowflakes,” which sounds much too innocuous and misleading. Given the students’ dogmatism, hair-trigger intolerance and eagerness to shut down and punish any speech with which they disagree, the term Mao-lings seems more apt.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.