If at all highly-strung, maybe look away now. || He builds kalimbas. (h/t, Things) || Big cat diary. || Entirely for the benefit of pedestrians. || Today’s word is broken. || Crab treadmill. || Yes, but are they me…? || Riverside living. || Rome’s imperial poisoner. || Pondering canine head-tilting. || Upscale advent calendars. || “It should be really proud of itself for trying on these new pronouns.” || Pies of note. || Parenting of note. || Possible explanation detected. || The thrill of pumping. || The thrill of tea-bagging. || The Nor-277 tapping machine. || Rock, hard place. || It seems health “equity” requires a little contrivance. || An interesting choice of words. || And finally, wings made of water (and a little detergent).

Lifted from the comments:

On the first page of AT&T’s Listen Understand Act internal portal, the company encourages employees to study a resource called “White America, if you want to know who’s responsible for racism, look in the mirror.” The article claims that the United States is a “racist society” and lays out its thesis plainly: “White people, you are the problem.”

“Racism is a uniquely white trait,” says racist black woman.

He’s 30, by the way. And a teacher, obviously.

When not telling the world that “professional dress codes are inherently racist, sexist, and rooted in white supremacy,” and failing to grade papers on time, a shortcoming that crops up repeatedly, Mr Segal likes to paint his nails, play dress-up in class, and talk about the state of his mental health. A topic also revisited more than once. 

Update, via the comments, where Alice asks,

Are there any actual grown-ups left in the teaching profession?

I’d imagined that one of the functions of dress codes and broader expectations of workplace professionalism is that they help to filter out the delinquent narcissists. People who just can’t get over themselves. Say, 30-year-old men who like to bemuse 12-year-olds by playing dress-up in class, announcing how “non-binary” they are, and painting their nails.

And not, in fact, to bolster some phantom “white supremacy.”

And again, as so often, the above does make one wonder about Mr Segal’s focus on the task at hand and his priorities, which seem to extend no further than himself. Or themself, I suppose. It doesn’t seem unfair to wonder if the children – the children he’s employed to educate – exist primarily as a captive and uncritical audience, there to applaud his self-preoccupation. The hashtags #tiktokteacher and #teachersoftiktok feature prominently, however, the only video I could find in which Mr Segal speaks of what the children in his care have learned in class – a topic you’d think might be mentioned occasionally – involved the children feeling obliged to regurgitate his contrived pronouns.

Readers may wish to reflect on what it must be like to be a man in his thirties whose regular purchases still include blue and green hair dye. Or a man in his thirties who regularly films himself miming to pop records and who uploads the results to TikTok in search of approval. As not-at-all-arrested educators do.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Ugh. Am felled by some kind of bug. Please amuse yourselves in the customary fashion. 

The Reheated series is there to be poked at. 

In the pages of Scary Mommy, where progressive ladies roar, Elaine Roth wishes us to know about her mental health problems:

There’s a running monologue whispering in the back of my mind. Maybe it’s whispering in the back of your mind, too. 

Place your bets. 

My running monologue isn’t unique to me. Countless women across the country — maybe across the globe — experience a similar monologue. It results from a shared trauma, and it’s got a name: Patriarchy Stress Disorder, or PSD.

I fear woo may be incoming.

PSD is the idea that the mental, physical, and emotional impact of gender inequality is a trauma that impacts woman and builds over time, and over generations. 

It is, we’re assured, a “collective intergenerational trauma,” and “genetically transmitted,” “passed down in our genes” – albeit in ways left entirely mysterious.

PSD can impact anyone, including nonbinary people and men. Still, few people have heard of patriarchy stress disorder,

You see, you haven’t heard of it, this new and modish ailment, for which no convincing definition is offered, beyond unspecified “systems of inequality” and repeating the word patriarchy many, many times. And yet apparently, simultaneously, we’re assured that said ailment – and its purported transmission – is the obvious go-to explanation for why “high-achieving women” – ladies much like Ms Roth – have so often failed “to have it all and thrive,” despite the promises of feminism. Why supposedly empowered ladies fail to “own their own shine.”

We’re told that the term patriarchy stress disorder was coined by “Dr Valerie Rein, Ph.D.,” and that Dr Rein – allegedly a “women’s mental health expert” – “learned that trauma could be genetically transmitted.” A link is provided, introducing us to “Dr Valerie” – though, again, no explanation or evidence of this alleged genetic transmission is included. We’re merely told that “trauma lives in our nervous system.” Which, as you can imagine, is immensely helpful. A second link, written by the expert in question, supposedly explaining Patriarchy Stress Disorder and its transmission, does no such thing. A third link, to the pages of Good Housekeeping, is similarly mysterious and short on particulars.