An open thread, in which to share links and bicker. I’ll set the ball rolling with a satisfying squeal.

People often don’t like the words I say or write because they don’t like the way I say or write them. They don’t like the emotion, intention, passion, and words I use to emphasise all of the above.

In the pages of Scary Mommy, Ms Amber Leventry, a “queer person and educator,” is telling us how it is:

When folks become uncomfortable, they focus on the tone of the words being said and label it as unprofessional, angry, off-putting, or inappropriate. Rather than actually hearing what I’m saying, they try to avoid accountability or problem-solving by advising me to be more approachable or calm. This is tone policing, and it happens most often to marginalised groups and women — especially Black women — and it happens everywhere. It’s bullshit.

At risk of being difficult – and making claims of “bullshit” seem a tad premature – other possibilities come to mind. It is, for instance, generally easier to process calm speech and to formulate a meaningful response. Dealing with agitation and temper isn’t often conducive to mutual understanding, and it’s hard not to be defensive when someone is shouting and swearing at you. Needless to say, fits of vehemence and impatience aren’t the most obvious path to nuance and the clear communication of detail. And it may, of course, be the case that the person doing the shouting and shrieking is simply a bully and accustomed to getting their own way by means of decibels and arm-flailing.

However, Ms Leventry is much too busy to engage with such humdrum possibilities. Instead, we get a hint of the regard in which she holds her peers and employers:

I recently provided a training for K- through third grade teachers about how to make their classrooms more inclusive for transgender and gender nonconforming kids. It was LGBTQIA+ allyship 101. The principal asked me not to swear during the training because some of the elementary school teachers don’t like swearing. This wasn’t a threat; it was an admission that some of her staff would be policing my words and then shutting down if they became offended when I didn’t spoon-feed them G-rated language and in a way that didn’t disrupt their naïve view of the world… Instead of focusing on the content, they would only be able to focus on the tone or package in which the content was delivered.

A pretty good reason, one might think, to prioritise effective communication over any satisfaction to be had in unnerving strangers with incongruous coarseness and bellowed epithets. Assuming, that is, that what matters is the aforementioned content, not adolescent self-indulgence or displays of domination.

Part 2,036: 

An Antifa member in Portland who was charged with felony arson and riot crimes has been revealed to be a journalism student at the University of Oregon. Alma Yesenia Raven-Guido, 19, of Beaverton, Ore., has been charged… with two counts of felony rioting, second-degree felony arson and first-degree felony criminal mischief. A serial riot arrestee, she was arrested again Tuesday night at a Black Lives Matter-Antifa riot in north Portland where the police union hall was set on fire. 

Journalism, baby. Unbiased and impartial, bringing you the truth.

Upon arrest, Raven-Guido was found to be carrying multiple lighters and three plastic bottles, including one that was melted, in her backpack. She was also in possession of a crowbar and spray paint. Beyond her involvement in militant Antifa activities in the Portland-area, she has also been prominently featured in government diversity programmes. In 2019, she was part of the Beaverton Organising and Leadership Development programme, which exists to train emerging leaders of colour in Beaverton’s city government. She listed “racial justice” as one of her areas of interest in the programme’s survey.

And hence, of course, the vandalised Japanese restaurants. And the assaulted Asian-American journalists. And the Apple Store being on fire, again. And the targeting of local churches, whose meal programmes for the homeless were apparently deemed offensive.

Update, via the comments:

Ms Raven-Guido, being educated, is someone who seems to think that “racial justice” is enhanced by wrecking someone else’s neighbourhood with vandalism and fire, thereby ensuring the closure and withdrawal of local businesses and amenities – a phenomenon we’ve seen many times – and consequently reducing opportunities for employment, and degrading the quality of life for local residents, many of whom will be minorities, and whose homes were put in danger by the aforementioned fires.

It’s a lunatic conceit, and yet quite common among the severely educated.

And among those doing the educating. 

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

You want one and you know it. || Nommy nommy nom. || Protest scenes. || The islands of planet Earth. || The insides of planet Earth. || Their 3D-printed gummy vitamins are more deluxe than yours. || How to make mug brownies. || Bouncy castle, sort of. || I’m betting they do this better than you do. || Body positivity. || Our betters howl. || Our betters boast. || Our betters stand firm. || “The biggest seizure of human organs in history.” || The rules of the game. || “Conservatives were far less likely to be diagnosed with mental health issues than those who identified as liberal or very liberal.” || Hot stuff. || Café of note. || Fashion crisis detected. || And finally, loftily, “We are not moving in the atmosphere.”

Maths teacher Paul Rossi shares his experience of “anti-racism training” at a Manhattan high school, during which he questioned the alleged imperative to foreground each student’s racial identity, and questioned the value of racialising human attributes – including the claim that “objectivity” is somehow a characteristic of “white supremacy”:

When my questions were shared outside this forum [a mandatory, racially segregated Zoom meeting], violating the school norm of confidentiality, I was informed by the head of the high school that my philosophical challenges had caused “harm” to students, given that these topics were “life and death matters, about people’s flesh and blood and bone.” I was reprimanded… He further informed me that I had created “dissonance for vulnerable and unformed thinkers” and “neurological disturbance in students’ beings and systems.” The school’s director of studies added that my remarks could even constitute harassment.

And then the strange became stranger, one might say sinister.

Update:

Very much related. Or, Knowing That It’s Creepy And Immoral, And Harmful To Children, And Doing It Anyway.

We’ve been here before, of course, on more than one occasion.

Hot from Helsinki, the works of Finnish artist Iiu Susiraja. First, her dazzling 2018 performance piece, Big Melody:

If the charms and profundities of the above should somehow remain elusive, clarity is offered by the following:

The lockdown is easing. The salon beckons. In mere hours I shall once again be radiant and glorious.

You may rejoice by sharing links and bickering, as is the custom.

In the pages of the Guardian, an elaborate humblebrag, care of race-grifter Natalie Morris:

It’s often hard to articulate why something that sounds like a compliment can be so harmful. On the racism scale, being told that you’re beautiful is hardly the worst thing that can happen. But just because something presents as a positive on the surface, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t dig deeper into the wider implications of this phenomenon.

Being found attractive is, we’re assured, terribly “problematic.” Though the aforementioned difficulties of articulating why will soon become apparent. We learn, for instance, that celebrities who are difficult to racially categorise are merely,

cherry-picking the elements of Blackness that suit their brand without any of the uncomfortable or disadvantageous implications of actually living as Black.

Quite what this magic “Blackness” might be is, alas, left to the imagination. Likewise, the phrase “living as Black” is delivered portentously but just left to hang there, devoid of particulars. Instead, we’re treated to vague, erratic rumblings about “proximity to whiteness” – a term that is itself not so much an explanation as an incantation, a marker of status. It seems we should just know these things, or nod as if we do. We are nonetheless informed, quite firmly, that,

it’s impossible to see the rise of mixed beauty ideals as a positive thing, because at its heart sits an unsettling insistence on white superiority.

It’s impossible, you see. Again, how Ms Morris arrived at this assertion is less than clear. Though, this being the Guardian, it does have an air of inevitability, of predestination. A book-plugging detour into anecdotes concerning dating and racial fetishism does little to help matters, beyond suggesting that sometimes compliments can be informed by niche racial kinks, and that some kinks are more common than others. Not much of a foundation for sad songs of collective oppression. As if determined to be unobvious, Ms Morris shares this:

In the 1930s and 1940s, there were groups warning about the dangers of “race crossing”; there were calls for mixed people to be sterilised; we were denigrated as deviant, stupid, contaminated, undesirable. Isn’t the contemporary idealisation of mixedness – the suggestion that we are more beautiful or have “the best of both” – simply the other side of the same coin?

Wanting to sterilise people and not wanting to sterilise them are two sides of the same coin, apparently.

I see the machine uprising has begun. || Today’s word is entourage. || The road to hell. || Local stars. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Window seat. || Just like normal people. || Neighbours’ dispute of note. || I think he was impressed. || That’s the spot. || Pasta engineering. || An impressive length. || Camel’s eye. || Miniatures and model-making for film, a video collection. (h/t, Things) || King Kong Vs Godzilla, 1962. || The thrill of bread cutter restoration. || Continue the research. || The thrill of retail. (h/t, pst324) || Fighting “the toxic whiteness of musical theatre.” (h/t, Darleen) || His job is more fiddlesome than yours. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || And finally, majestically, the dominant lifeform on planet Earth.

John Sexton at Hot Air: 

Elisa Parrett teaches at a public technical college outside of Seattle called the Lake Washington Institute of Technology. Last June 19, in the wake of the death of George Floyd, the school held an event called Courageous Conversations which was based partly on Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility. 

In short, a two-hour racial struggle session based on stupefying woo. 

Dr Parrett used the session, attended by close to 200 educators, to air some fairly obvious concerns, regarding tribalism, zealotry, and the racially segregated nature of the gathering, speaking for a total of four minutes. A summary of Dr Parrett’s comments can be found at the link above and here, where Jesse Singal shares a longer, more detailed account. Readers are invited to search out anything particularly scandalous.

Five days later, Parrett got an email from President Amy Morrison… It read in part, “Because of your egregious behaviour which has led to substantial harm to hundreds of colleagues on campus, I have asked [Vice President of Instruction, Suzanne] Ames, Dean Doug Emory, and [executive director of H.R.] Meena Park to meet with you in the next few days to have a serious conversation about how successful you can possibly be on campus in the future.” Two days later, Parrett was placed on administrative leave… A disciplinary complaint was filed against Parrett by the vice president… The complaint alleged Parrett had behaved in a “corrupt, insolent and insubordinate manner.”

And because this is Clown World, where there’s always more,

When [Jesse] Singal emailed the Vice President about the story, she doubled down and claimed that Parrett had been “aggressively yelling at folks in the meeting.” At the time, she was apparently unaware that Singal had the audio of the entire session. When he sent her a copy and asked her to point out where Parrett had yelled at anyone, a university spokesperson suggested Parrett’s “visible anger” wasn’t conveyed by the audio.

It was, it seems, a kind of aggressive yelling that was radiated at inaudible frequencies and which therefore cannot be captured by mortal recording devices.