Stealth mode engaged. || Egg living dangerously. || Why dogs don’t rule the… Oh. || Sorcery with cardboard. || Children’s table manners of the fifteenth century: “Pyke notte thyne errys nothyr thy nostrellys.” || A brief history of the F-word. || He does this better than you do. || They do this better than you do. || Incoming. || This just in. || Just one kiss. || Coke stash of note. || How to wash your hands. || If we all attack at once, this island is ours. || Today’s words are sociology department. || ‘Progressive’ incentives and their predictable outcomes. || “This is a car. And this is a trampoline.” || Swimming while waterproof. || Want to tell the government what you think of the BBC? || And finally, blustery scenes.

Or, In Which Your Host Learns Whether What He Does Is Of Value.

Yes, it’s time to remind patrons that this rickety barge, on whose seating your arses rest, is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant a while longer, and remain ad-free, there are buttons in the sidebar with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. And if one-click haste is called for, my PalPay.Me page can be found here. Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last thirteen years, in close to 3,000 posts and over 100,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year summaries. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.

If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. Also, open thread. 

On the upside, I bet the acoustics are tremendous. || For readers overseas, a brief guide to the beauty of English. (h/t, Brian) || “I own big shoe company.” || Today’s word is enrichment. || She’s really showing those patriarchal oppressors. || She does this better than you do. || At last, sliced mayonnaise. || “It loves like a man.” || Mothers and sons. || More joys of public transport. || Pulling Gs. || Script Doctor recaps Picard. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. || A project for the weekend. || Ice, ice, baby. || Two football tribes, one alley. || Crush, kill, destroy. || The Chrysler Building’s art-deco eagles, 1930. || How to move around your space station, plan B. || In Indonesian sperm-related news. || And finally, three times, you say?

It’s a bold alternative.

Also, open thread. Share links and bicker.

This isn’t someone who barely squeaked through her degree. She was celebrated as the best there was at her school.

Janice Fiamengo ponders the mental state of a feminist and openly misandrist social worker. 

Kristina Agbebiyi, the lady in question, was hailed as “student of the year” by the University of Michigan’s social work department for her “commitment to political activities,” her embodiment of the “professional ethics of social work,” and for her “contribution to the positive image” of said field. Repeatedly boasting of a hatred of men is, we learn, not only a “commitment,” “a way of life” and a “revolutionary task,” but something to applaud. A credential of some kind. It “isn’t a game,” says Ms Agbebiyi.

Update, via the comments:

Readers may find themselves marvelling at how someone so fêted, and who evidently expects no challenging of her pronouncements by either peers or employers, nonetheless exults in theatrical victimhood and insists that she is “living oppression from the inside.” That the supposedly radical politics of which Ms Agbebiyi is so proud is usually an ostentatious leisure activity, an indulgence of the privileged, somehow passes unremarked. Though I do like the description of Ms Agbebiyi as a “narcissistic self-infatuate.”

Needless to say, the cause of this alleged “oppression” isn’t made clear, let alone persuasive. Apparently, it’s now the custom to invoke victimhood, as if it were a goal, a basis for acclaim, without actually specifying what it is that’s supposedly oppressing you. After browsing the lady’s Twitter feed, the best I can deduce is that the fact that prisons exist, at all, anywhere, is an unendurable burden on Ms Agbebiyi’s tissue-paper psyche. We should, it seems, wish for the “abolition” of prisons and “the ending of cops.” Because the world would be so much better if rapists, carjackers and sociopathic predators could act with impunity, uninhibited by even a small risk of punishment.

Some of Professor Fiamengo’s previous adventures in feminist psychology can be found here and here.