Further to the last item here, Andy Ngo on attempts to discuss ideas versus recreational outrage: 

“James [Damore] argues, accurately, that there are differences between men and women,” evolutionary biologist Heather Heying said during the panel discussion. “This is a strange position to be in, to be arguing for something that is so universally accepted in biology… You can be irritated by a lot of truths, but taking offence,” — here, Heying paused as hecklers shouted and began to walk out — “is a response that is a rejection of reality.” A non-student protester then yanked the cables from the sound system and shoved the equipment to the ground, breaking an antenna. She was promptly detained by police. “[Damore’s] a piece of shit!” she screamed as she was issued a citation for criminal mischief in the second degree. “Even the women in there have been brainwashed!” Another protester stated: “Nazis are not welcome in civil society.”

Today’s word is projection. Video here. 

Nikita Vladimirov on more “social justice” psychodrama: 

Activists at the University of Vermont have intensified their protests against the school this week, blocking rush hour traffic on Thursday while demanding social justice related reforms… The protesters remained in place [blocking a busy intersection] for about three hours… causing traffic congestion that eventually began to impact neighbouring towns, and even caused problems for the UVM Medical Centre, creating 15-minute delays for ambulances that were headed to the hospital.

Arrest them, and expel them, and maybe this will stop. Anything less will be regarded as encouragement.

And Dave Huber offers a reminder that opportunist outrage isn’t confined to students: 

[University of Delaware law professor,] Sheldon Pollack thought that the academic hoax The Conceptual Penis As A Social Construct was pretty damn funny, and decided to send it along to a male colleague and his son. However, that dread auto-fill feature placed the address of a female colleague on the message. That colleague asked what he meant by the message, indicating it was “inappropriate.” Pollack fully explained what had happened and apologised for the error. Half a year later, the erroneous recipient initiated a formal complaint about the matter… Pollack says the university’s human resources department also recommended that he attend sexual harassment counselling as a result of the incident.

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

Or put another way,

The patriarchal race to colonise Mars is just another example of male entitlement. The presumed right to use and abuse something and then walk away to conquer something new is a hallmark of colonialism.

No, really. It says so here. The author, Marcie Bianco, is quite adamant on this point. One might almost say feverish:  

The desire to colonise [space] — to have unquestioned, unchallenged and automatic access to something, to any type of body, and to use it at will — is a patriarchal one… It is the same instinctual and cultural force that teaches men that everything — and everyone — in their line of vision is theirs for the taking. You know, just like walking up to a woman and grabbing her by the pussy.

Apparently, and for reasons that aren’t shared, exploring space is not about ambition, curiosity or survival, or even a hope of distant profit; it’s all about “gendered power structures” and “men giving up on the planet they have all but destroyed.”

Naturally, Ms Bianco has a degree in Women’s Studies and has taught “social justice courses” at Rutgers University and John Jay College.

Update, via the comments:

It’s odd how articles of this kind, by self-declared feminists, seem determined to, as it were, erase and marginalise the choices and agency of other, more accomplished women. Are we to believe that Gwynne Shotwell, the President of SpaceX, is a mere dupe of The Patriarchy? According to Ms Bianco, our “queer public intellectual,” yes. 

And what about these ladies here? Are their minds not their own? And has anyone told them this, to their faces? I wonder how that would go down. But this is a standard pattern for dogmatic feminism. Just as Ms Bianco acknowledges only “the menz” who complain about her writing and its laughable conceits, while ignoring the numerous women who also find her article insulting, incoherent and absurd.

And so a question comes to mind. If you were a young woman in search of role models, who might be more likely to inspire? Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist who worked on the ground-breaking Voyager missions and was Head of Imaging Science for Cassini, and who speaks enthusiastically about exploring – and colonising – other planets? Or Marcie Bianco, a third-rate scold with a Women’s Studies degree?

Answers on a postcard, please.

Further to the recent, eye-widening exchange between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman, Conor Friedersdorf on scandalous paraphrasing: 

In the interview, Newman relies on this technique [of perverse rephrasing] to a remarkable extent, making it a useful illustration of a much broader pernicious trend. Peterson was not evasive or unwilling to be clear about his meaning. And Newman’s exaggerated restatements of his views mostly led viewers astray, not closer to the truth… One of the most important things this interview illustrates — one reason it is worth noting at length — is how Newman repeatedly poses as if she is holding a controversialist accountable, when in fact, for the duration of the interview, it is she that is “stirring things up” and “whipping people into a state of anger.”

Fabian Tassano on “critical thinking”: 

It is interesting that the scholars feel able to announce in advance, on behalf of their own students, and the students of other history tutors at Oxford, a decision on whether students will engage with the [Ethics and Empire] project. One might think that the ability to “think critically” would include openness to ideas from heterodox perspectives, as well as the capacity to decide for oneself, independently of one’s tutors, whether a source of information is worthy of consideration. One has to remember, however, that the word “critical” may have a special technical meaning in the context of the humanities.

Via Claire Lehmann, Kerryn Pholi on Aboriginal taboos: 

Those who mourn the demise of Aboriginal culture almost always regard things from the viewpoint of the men, who were indeed dispossessed of their land, and subsequently their traditions and status. Land wasn’t the only item of property they lost, however. They also lost or traded their women to the settlers, and this absorption – along with frontier warfare and disease – rapidly eroded tribal structures and doomed Aboriginal traditions to obsolescence. The settlers arrived with a wealth of goods and a shortage of females, and they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture… The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain.

And Joe Katzman on leftism as a never-ending status game: 

Do you have any doubt about the left’s hatred for those who will not stay in their assigned status? Have you noticed their quickness to turn on their own allies? Fail to follow the latest fad, and your status is demoted. Perhaps you’ve noticed that endlessly callous virtue signalling is the identifying badge of our modern try-hard Striver Class. Maybe that’s because American public education is now a 20-year Milgram Experiment, where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favour of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status. These aren’t accidents. They’re clues.

Very much related, the second item here. 

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

Roger Kimball on “shitholes” and theatrical indignation: 

And here we come to a second curiosity in the preening and ecstatic outrage over the president’s comment. Everyone, near enough, knows that he was telling a home truth. It was outrageous not because he said something crude that was untrue. Quite the contrary: it was outrageous precisely because it was true but intolerable to progressive sensitivities. In other words, the potency of taboo is still strong in our superficially rational culture. There are some things — quite a few, actually, and the list keeps growing — about which one cannot speak the truth or, in many cases, even raise as a subject for discussion without violating the unspoken pact of liberal sanctimoniousness. Donald Trump, of course, does this regularly, delightedly.

Tim Newman on the same: 

Trump’s comments are pretty innocuous to anyone who is not a deranged anti-Trumper or a fully paid-up member of the media or political establishments. He’s asked the question millions of people across America and Europe have been asking for years, waiting in vain for their leaders to do so. And now he has, and the reason his opponents have gone apoplectic is because they know how much this will resonate with ordinary people they wish didn’t exist. That, and they wish to virtue-signal in order to keep their places in what they think is polite society.

And Mitchell Gunter on the posturing of Antifa – and sociopathy as a lifestyle choice: 

Tim Newman on the bigotry of low expectations: 

When I was in Melbourne, some government body or other put on a display of “Aboriginal culture” in Federation Square and advertised it all over town. I guessed in advance that it would consist of a bunch of primitives sat around bashing drums while metropolitan white folk looked on as if they were visiting a zoo. Child-like art would be on display wrapped in copious quantities of mumbo-jumbo. I passed by one Saturday afternoon and sure enough, that’s exactly what it was.

And somewhat related, William Buckner on the ‘noble savage’ fantasy, and the rather less charming realities: 

Comparatively little attention has been given to the risk of ‘traveller’s diarrhoea’ common among hunter-gatherers. For mobile groups, infants, the elderly, and other vulnerable individuals have little opportunity to develop resistance to local pathogens. This may help explain why infant and child mortality among hunter-gatherers tends to be so high. Across hunter-gatherer societies, only about 57% of children born survive to the age of 15. Sedentary populations of forager-horticulturalists, and acculturated hunter-gatherers, have a greater number of children surviving into adulthood, with 64% and 67%, respectively, surviving to the age of 15.

Ah, but we must politely overlook the tedium and illiteracy, the malnutrition and dehydration, the alarming levels of child mortality, murder and infanticide, the sharply truncated lifespans, the child rape, and the delights of stone-age dentistry. We must see only how egalitarian and vibrant these exotic creatures are, if you squint and tilt your head, and then carefully turn away while the other stuff takes place.

And if you think such fantasies are confined to the distant past, consider the Utopian ruminations of Guardian columnist George Monbiot, whose urge to romanticise The Other – especially if The Other is brown and poor, and unable to challenge his bizarre worldview – is a thing to behold:

It is impossible not to notice that, in some of the poorest parts of the world, most people, most of the time, appear to be happier than we are. In southern Ethiopia, for example, the poorest half of the poorest nation on earth, the streets and fields crackle with laughter. In homes constructed from packing cases and palm leaves, people engage more freely, smile more often, express more affection than we do behind our double glazing, surrounded by remote controls.

That’s right. Forget about sanitation and drudgery, and the limited options in life. Think instead of how happy these Ethiopian peasants are, these beings we should emulate, with their quaint little shelters made of leaves and packing cases. It’s just so adorable. And not a single remote control to harsh the egalitarian buzz. Like his Guardian colleague Oliver James – another anhedonic hypocrite stressed by the contradictions of being a well-heeled middle-class lefty – Mr Monbiot wants us to believe that “wealth causes misery.” Yes, wealth is bad for “us” – by which of course he means bad for you.

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