My whole life, I had struggled with patterns of behaviour and emotion that I knew were “bad,” but couldn’t seem to control. I lied compulsively about things that didn’t make sense. I was terrified of being abandoned, to the point that I became furiously, sometimes abusively, upset if I thought that my friends were hanging out without me. I was full of self-loathing and anger that I bottled up, and then released by self-injuring.   

Yes, we’re visiting the pages of Everyday Feminism. How could you tell? 

And, of course, I had grown up as a closeted trans girl of colour in a cis, white supremacist society.  

So far, so humdrum.

Ever since I could remember, I had been filled with rage and fear and self-loathing as a result of the constant messages that society, friends, and family sent me that said I was deviant, bad, wrong to the core.

A chronic rage that, we’re told, prompted some introspection, of a sort, and a peek inside a textbook on abnormal psychology:

My “symptoms” fit the profile of a mental disorder called Borderline Personality Disorder, a condition closely associated with psychopathy. It was, the textbook said, historically considered untreatable.

Oh, I’m sure lashings of strident feminism and identitarian seething will put that right in no time. No? The author of this cheerless tale, Ms Kai Cheng Thom, a “trans woman writer, poet and performance artist based in Montreal,” then goes on to bemoan the fact that “disorders like violent psychopathy” are “generally considered unlikeable,” possibly hazardous, “even in social circles that consider themselves progressive.” And that, while the public at large may be sympathetic towards people suffering clinical depression, “compassion for psychopaths, pathological liars, or narcissists” is, inexplicably, harder to come by. It’s all terribly unfair. Because incorrigible monsters bent on the manipulation and harm of others have feelings too:  

Via Neatorama.

Via Bobby in the comments, Michael Wolff on the visions and follies of former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger: 

If selling had been part of his job description, Rusbridger, who never met a pound he had to earn that didn’t disgust him in some visceral way, would have been disqualified long ago. Indeed, his early enthusiasm for the internet – and a continuing principle of faith for him – was that it was free. The corollary, that free had to be supported by advertising, was one of those cause-and-effects that it was Rusbridger’s unique gift to be able to wholly ignore… Having made a personal and moral commitment to free – both as a political principle and as a way to advance the scope of the Guardian’s message – he was confronted, and confounded, by the reality that he had no way to monetise his business.

Readers may recall the Guardian’s short-lived brand expansion into the world of trendy Shoreditch coffee shops, which the paper styled as “the future of open journalism,” a supposedly “data-driven” hub of Fair Trade beverages and online journalistic collaboration, and which was opened without Wi-Fi. 

Blake Neff on destroying children’s futures in the name of “social justice”: 

While the traits listed [being rigorous and punctual, speaking grammatical English] may simply be regarded as positive traits for success in the modern world, Dr Heather Hackman described them as traits chosen and emphasised to favour whites to the detriment of non-white groups, who are forced to assimilate ‘white’ traits such as good discipline and goal orientation or else be left behind. Hackman’s solution, then, is to train teachers to move away from all these aspects of ‘white privilege’ in education. She routinely touted the benefits of collective assessments (measuring student learning at the class level instead of determining whether each student knows the material), as well as eliminating all school grades entirely.

I share the above in case any readers had assumed that Dr Caprice Hollins, who dismisses foresight, diligence and punctuality as “white values,” must be a one-off absurdity. Alas, no.

Your very own coffee shop ambience. // Chewable coffee cubes. // I’m pretty sure they drugged him. // Sensible advice for the inexperienced gardener. // They were photographed on arrival and again after three glasses of wine. // My hovercraft is full of eels. // Talk to a random Swede. // Reminder. // RDS-37. // In a cupboard I have records that sound like this. // Their spinning top tricks are way better than yours. // Well, can you accurately draw a bicycle from memory? (h/t, Damian) // Bathing bears. // Doctor Strange. // Nose hair trimmer of note. // On the economics of tent pole movies. // Oh, this would never get annoying. // This. // This is one of these. (h/t, Coudal) // On “vegan sexuality” and “meat-free sex.” (h/t, Stephen Keating) // Heather Mac Donald on the anti-rational horseshit that is “critical race theory.” Also this. // Could you outrun your own fart? // And finally, conscientiously, he’s just checking on the chickens.

The Guardian is attempting to convince readers that its columnists – those heroic truth-to-power-speakers – are, unlike writers for any other national paper, continually besieged by an ungrateful rabble, and that an alleged avalanche of sexist, racist readers’ comments proves how righteous and heroic said columnists are in their truth-to-power speaking. Amid this tale of adversity and woe, we find the following, by columnist Jessica Valenti:

Imagine going to work every day and walking through a gauntlet of 100 people saying “You’re stupid,” “You’re terrible,” “You suck,” “I can’t believe you get paid for this.” It’s a terrible way to go to work.

As many readers will know, Ms Valenti is famed for her ability to mouth mutually dissonant ideas on a regular basis, thus attracting the mockery that so offends her, and while construing double standards as the pinnacle of righteousness. As, for instance, when invading the privacy of a random male commuter on the Tube by snooping at the contents of his phone, apparently at length, and then condemning his “passive sexism.” Apparently Ms Valenti’s fellow passenger wasn’t reading enough tweets by women and was therefore to be denounced in the pages of a national newspaper. Ms Valenti went on to assert, via Twitter, that on the Tube women have “no expectation of privacy” because they’re seen as “public property.” Unlike male passengers who find themselves sitting next to a nosey Guardian columnist who’s desperate for something to bitch about in the name of feminism.

And this is the same Jessica Valenti who insists that feminists such as herself “absolutely, without a doubt, do not hate men,” before dismissing even the concept of misandry, which she frames in scare quotes, and adding, immediately, “but so what if we did?” And Ms Valenti says this while sharing photos of herself exulting in the sorrows of male readers, and while urging her fellow feminists to buy fashion items that depict men being stabbed for the sin of being romantic. And of course while complaining that some of her readers don’t find her sufficiently gifted and coherent as a cultural commentator.