Lifted from the comments:

A feminist educator in the United Kingdom is making a point not to step aside when men walk in her direction, playing what she refers to as “patriarchy chicken.” […] “A few days ago, I was having a bad morning: my train tickets were expensive, my train was delayed, and my coffee was cold,” [Dr Charlotte] Riley wrote. “But I cheered myself up by playing a game on my commute. The game is called Patriarchy Chicken, and the rules are simple: do not move out of the way for men.” If that sounds like something that would be ungentlemanly conduct if perpetrated by a man, you would be correct in your assessment.

Dr Riley, you’ll note, is a grown woman.

Our feminist lecturer’s New Statesman article, in which she elaborates on Patriarchy Chicken and its allegedly empowering effects, can be found here. We’re told, somewhat implausibly, “It’s important to note that Patriarchy Chicken isn’t about anger.” When not applauding herself for repeatedly and deliberately colliding with male commuters, Dr Riley informs us that “war and peace can only be understood through gender.” 

Also, open thread.  

Melodrama. (h/t, Julia) || Maintain focus. || Forbidden love. || Forbidden love 2. || Lighting and focal length. || “Allahu Akbar.” || Can confirm. || Masked hero rescues cat. One of these. (h/t, Tim) || Snail versus baby carrot. || Soviet synthpop, 1989. Big hair, cool shades. || On the origins of sports mascots. || On screenwriting. || A ride through the West End of London, 1959. || Just how wide is the neck of the Enterprise? || A heart-warming tale. || Today’s words are educator – and also poisonous harpy. || At last, director’s viewfingers. || The vanishing anus. You heard me. || Gives good tongue. || The treasures of Google Earth. || Possible lair location #46. || And finally, a premonition of trouble ahead.

Via Rafi, a peek into the world of Brooklyn hipsterdom, where the “unsung heroes of the new new left” – who are “culturally potent” and “extremely online” – gather at a loft party in search of love, and to announce how radical and fabulous they are:

The roster tonight is heavy on extremely online political-media types. The podcaster and performer Katie Halper tells me she’s a fourth-generation socialist from the Upper West Side who used to attend a summer camp once affiliated with a communist organisation called the International Workers Order… Nearby, Sarah Leonard, who, at 30, is a veteran of the lefty-journalism orbit, tells me she’s launching a Marxist-feminist glossy called Lux, named for Rosa Luxemburg.

We learn,

At least in Brooklyn, and the spiritual Brooklyns of America, calling yourself a socialist sounds sexier than anything else out there.

Yes, sexy socialism.

The guests of honour tonight are the creators of Red Yenta, a new DIY dating platform: Marissa Brostoff, 33, a grad student at CUNY, and Mindy Isser, 28, an organiser in Philly. “I was complaining about how socialist men don’t date socialist women and it really bothers me,” Isser says.

Now there’s a sentence. It seems that the ladies and gents who feel compelled to announce their revolutionary ambitions, and their pronouns, and various mental health issues, aren’t meeting quotas for finding each other attractive. Which is baffling, really, given the bait on offer:

Dr Deborah Cohan is a self-described “dancing doctor” and mistress of “embodied medicine,” the aim of which is to “bring compassionate presence to healing encounters” via “a collective experience of dance.” Being, as she is, so in touch with the rhythms of her innards, the doctor’s statements of hard-won profundity are varied and numerous, including:

I am inviting myself to live at the speed of one second per second.

And,

There’s something edible inside incredible.

And,

A tree is never alone in the forest.

And,

Imagine new-born babies teaching medical students how to dance and touch empathetically.

Given the above, these fruits of “shamanic healing,” readers may not be entirely surprised to hear that Dr Cohan is also entranced by the potential of woke theatre. And so we turn to the New England Journal of Medicine – specifically, an article titled Racist Like Me — A Call to Self-Reflection and Action for White Physicians – in which our dancing doctor tells us many things. We begin, as is the custom, with a lengthy, somewhat tedious, confession of pallor, and therefore inherent wrongness:

I am racist. I would love to believe otherwise and can find evidence that I am not — my career dedicated to caring for underserved women of colour, my support of colleagues and trainees who are people of colour, my score on the implicit-association test.

That would be this test. The one in which the random positioning of a chair can be construed as damning evidence of racial antipathy.

Right, I’m taking a few days off. Call it a long weekend. A revitalising interlude. By all means amuse yourselves by sharing links and snippets in the comments and then bickering about them. I’ll leave you with some conversational possibilities, including an inadvisable solution; an activity for the weekend, the rules of which are somewhat unclear to me; some stop-motion cross-sections; a small boy’s sporting monologue; and, via Damian, how to spot a classy diner.

The reheated series and greatest hits are there to be poked at.

Performance artist Angeliki Chiado Tsoli is, we’re told, “interested in… contributing her knowledge as an artistic and pedagogical tool.” Her work, we learn, “explores the political, poetic and displaced body through actions in the public space, photography, video, sound, installation and experimental writing.” Further exploration is done “through a visual and mental poetic space.” If the magnitude of her labours is somehow unclear, we’re also informed,

Angeliki aims to… challenge the existence of social, economic, cultural, and class-based inequalities.

Do bear these things in mind as you thrill to the video embedded below, in which Ms Tsoli unleashes a fearless, selfless and terribly radical “intervention” at a crossing on Michigan Avenue, Chicago. Said intervention, titled Attempting to Reach Equilibrium in Times of Dystopia, is of course crammed with aesthetic value. A particular highlight occurs around 2:30 when a passing police car stops, resulting in a need to explain that what is happening is actually art. 

An open thread. In which to share links and bicker.

Oh, and via Dicentra, and in a shocking turn of events, here’s an intersectional feminist – pronouns she/her/hers – telling you what to do:

As you might imagine, she has some further thoughts.

A beginner’s guide to snake removal. || Just a little bit of give. || Bees want your tears. || Cobalt tarantula. || Lucille Ball demonstrates the Sonovox, 1939. || Backfire is a game. || Thug life. || Some very Guardian thinking. || Ping, pong and spin. || Step aside, puny humans. (h/t, Dicentra) || Opal uncovered. || When it’s too much effort to fold paper and throw. || “To prove their mousy worth, they’ll overthrow the Earth.” || Evaporating horse sweat. || Isle of Wight attraction of note. || Using wood. || Why cats don’t rule the Earth. || Always respect the media. || You don’t often see them. || Meanwhile, in sporting news. || Not cake. || And finally, via Damian, I’m not entirely sure what the protocol here is.

For newcomers, more items from the archives.

You Look Like You Need Some Art. 

In which we thrill to the creative eruptions of Ms Sandrine Schaefer.

The pretence of intellectual heft and critical discernment is quite funny, given the unspoken rules of pretend artists and their pretend art. Like practically all of her fellow hustlers, Ms Schaefer tells us that she “investigates” and “questions” things, and presumably interrogates them; but despite this allegedly relentless curiosity, I doubt that any specific insight or profundity is ever conveyed to her audience, such as it is, via the art, such as it is. And of course, we’re not supposed to notice this, or notice the comical mismatch of arch rhetoric and inept flummery. And so, in order to feign discernment, one has to not discern any number of really obvious things.

Don’t Oppress My People With Your Big Hooped Earrings. 

On the woes of radical accessorising at Pitzer College, Claremont, California.

It does, I think, take a particular chutzpah to publicly claim to be oppressed - by other people’s earrings – while spending more than the median household income at a glorified holiday resort.

Fashionable Malice. 

Woke educators attempt to inculcate dishonesty, bemoan pockets of resistance. 

“White fragility” is the unremarkable fact that people by and large don’t like being slandered as racists and then assigned with some pretentious collective guilt, the supposed atonement for which requires deference to actual racists and predatory hokum merchants.

Kathrine Jebsen Moore explores the high-passion minefield of intersectional knitting: 

She was even accused of being a neo-Nazi because she enjoys drinking Guinness. 

It’s the tale of a yarn enthusiast who mentions her excitement about the prospect of visiting India, a life-long dream. And who is promptly scolded by the woke knitting community – a thing that exists, apparently – for being a “coloniser,” for harming “non-white people,” and for being “racist.” A struggle session ensues.

For many readers, the world of knitting activism may be unfamiliar terrain; but the dynamics on display will, I think, be quite familiar.

Update, via the comments:

Having read the piece, TimT and others note, “This is awful behaviour.”

Well, yes. The pieties of the woke-lings are nakedly ill-intended. It’s a malevolent little drama. But then, being woke is the latest excuse for archetypal mean girl behaviour, which may explain why “social justice” posturing attracts so many women. It’s the fashionable, statusful way to be an utter bitch. Though instead of picking on someone for having unfashionable shoes or the wrong kind of bag, they’ve seized on someone’s enthusiasm, their moment of joy, and done their damnedest to sour it.

As we’ve seen many times, woke psychology is not what it pretends. Not even close.

Update 2: 

Paula adds, “I read the Quillette article and all the original post and still can’t see anything offensive. What are these people on?”

Viewed objectively, there isn’t anything to be offended by. Ms Templer describes her excitement and says that for her, a young woman with little experience of global travel, the opportunity to fly halfway around the planet is “like being offered a seat on a flight to Mars.” That’s it.

But for those inclined to recreational grievance-seeking, that’s the appeal. The less basis there is for indignation, the more pleasurable the scolding becomes. It’s a twisted power dynamic, a form of gaslighting. And for a certain kind of person, making someone anxious and confused, and then making them prostrate themselves in public – when there’s no reason to do so – is the sweetest triumph.

It’s a game for budding sociopaths.

Update 3:

And via Darleen, of course there’s more.