Quotulatiousness

September 27, 2019

A visual masterclass in trolling

Filed under: Media, Politics, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

For all that Donald Trump is known for trolling his opponents on Twitter, he’s certainly not the only one, as these makeshift posters in Massachusetts illustrate:

The locals are outraged, but as Alaa Al-Ameri describes, they’re not quite sure how to safely express their fury:

Think of Posie Parker’s billboards quoting the dictionary definition of the word “woman”. The power of such acts comes from two things. First, they acknowledge – usually with irreducible simplicity – that something that went without saying a moment ago has suddenly become unsayable. Secondly, the outrage they provoke does not come from any epithet, caricature or insult, but rather from having the nerve to draw the viewer’s attention to an act of cognitive dissonance that we are all engaging in, but would rather not acknowledge.

The result is that those who attempt to explain why the act is offensive end up simply tying themselves in knots, while revealing that they have never given a moment’s thought to the position they find themselves defending. This seems to generate even more anger, with the inevitable online mob quickly joined by politicians, journalists and other public figures, eager to see that the heretic is made an example of.

At their best, these acts of public disobedience are examples of real-life Winston Smiths pointing out to the rest of us that “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”. Their persecutors, like his, are those who know and fear the truth of Smith’s next sentence: “If that is granted, all else follows.”

The example of perfectly crafted dissent that I’d like to submit here appears in this video from Massachusetts local TV news, showing some reactions to the fly-posting of white sheets of paper bearing the statement “Islam is right about women”. The reactions are deeply revealing. Nobody can clearly point out why they object to the statement – indeed, nobody seems to object to the statement at all on its face. Yet most seem to express offence at it – if a little unconvincingly.

The reason for their dilemma is obvious enough to anyone who has been paying attention. Western society has managed to convince itself (at least in public) that any statement criticising any aspect of Islam is, by definition, bigotry. As a result, Western societies have effectively decided to enforce Islamic restrictions on blasphemy, and called it “tolerance”.

The strain of conforming to this lie is evident in the fumbling attempts by the interviewees to explain their objections. Do they believe that Islam is right about women? If so, why the objection? Do they believe that Islam is wrong about women? If so, in what sense is the statement an attack on Islam or Muslims? Do they believe that the author of the poster is saying that “Islam is right about women”, but doing so ironically? In which case, the objection can only be that the author is guilty of a thoughtcrime by stating that “two and two make five” with insufficient sincerity. Or do they worry that they are guilty of thoughtcrime for noticing the irony?

September 18, 2019

QotD: Debunking the notion of “peaceful” Vikings

Filed under: Europe, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Going through the Viking exhibit, for instance, we kept being told time after time how powerful women had been among the Vikings, and also there were things like treasure troves, which in one case they said “was a woman’s treasure trove, probably to honor women in her ancestry.” At which point I looked at the case enquiringly, because these idiots don’t seem to understand someone’s unearthed treasure trove is someone else’s panicked burial.

[…]

Which brings us to the next part. All through the exhibit, people told us over and over again that the Vikings were — contrary to legend — peaceful, peaceful I tell you. Most of the Vikings were, after all, farmers and householders.

I wasn’t buying it. Yeah, sure, most Vikings, if you count women, children, and people to old to go aViking, just stayed put. But no civilization where dying in bed gets you sent to Hel (which was cold rather than hot but much like our Hell) is a peaceful one. In the same way I didn’t buy the continuous reassurances there were as many women as men aboard those ships. Cooeeeeee! Really? The men saddled themselves with a liability likely to get pregnant, give birth, etc AND be weaker in battle? That’s … amazing. Oh, I forget. The idiots writing these cards think women are naturally as strong and physically as fast as men and that the “patriarchy” is a six-thousand-year-old conspiracy to hide this. Sure, there probably was the occasional female in a male role. Contrary to much bleating on the left, the patriarchy didn’t enforce strict gender roles, life generally did, and there are always outliers, and Helga the Ugly who could lift a pig under each arm, probably was allowed to join the guys in their expeditions. For one, who was going to tell her no? For another, no guy ever got drunk enough for her to be at risk.

Other than that, sure, there were as many women as men aboard Viking ships. Coming back from a raid. They called those women “slaves.”

[…]

But no, like the beliefs in powerful women Vikings, (who apparently can ONLY be powerful by pillaging and plundering. Being mistress of a farm is not enough), and in peaceful Vikings too they’re simply an upending of long-held beliefs about something. I.e. if Western culture has long believed something, progressives will believe the opposite, because that’s about as hard as any of them can reason, and congruent with their initial mission to topple civilization so perfect communism will emerge.

Sarah Hoyt, “I Aten’t Dead”, According to Hoyt, 2017-07-27.

September 11, 2019

QotD: Male versus female social structure

Filed under: Health, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Female social structure is completely different from male social structure. Men tend to organize in a hierarchy of sorts. There’s one guy at the top, a few guys he trusts underneath him, etc. downward until you reach the guys that are on the bottom of the pile. The structure makes sense. It’s efficient, everyone knows who’s in charge, and it’s largely based around the individual. Someone can rise or fall in this hierarchy based on any number of things, but their position is usually pretty clear from the outside looking in.

Female social structure is more fluid. It’s based more on group identity than on individual characteristics. You tend to have one woman who is kind of in charge, your queen bee as it were. Those in her favor circle around her, and the circles continue outward until you have the women who are not part of the group. They aren’t at the bottom of the pile, they pretty much don’t exist. At least, if they’re lucky they don’t. One’s position in the social hierarchy can change at any time, to include who the queen bee is. Remember the scene in Mean Girls where Regina tries to sit at the lunch table with the other plastics but isn’t wearing the right color clothes? She was just knocked out of her position in the social hierarchy.

In a social structure like this, there’s no room for difference of opinion or people who stand out too much. If an individual, even by noncompliance, threatens the group identity; she will gain the ire of the entire group. They will hunt her without mercy until she complies with the demands of the group, is removed from their reach by either death or physical distance (which is getting much harder with the internet), or manages to win enough females to her side to either form a new group around her or replace the existing leader. The last option allows her to push her standard on the group as a whole. There is no option to live and let live. In other words, female social structure is closer to the Borg than the complex world we currently enjoy.

I can already hear the cries of, “But women aren’t violent!” If you’re talking about direct violence, you’re mostly right. Women are not men, and we don’t hunt in the way that men do. Our weapons are usually words and emotions, not direct violence. Instead of a brawl in which two people fight it out and determine which is the strongest, you’re looking at extreme emotional abuse for anyone who is outside the group and unlucky enough to have their attention. Emotional abuse attacks a person in the most deeply personal of ways, and the scars it creates are more damaging than the physical scars of a beating. We wonder why girls who stand out grow so bitter, but if you’re a little too pretty or a little too different, other girls swarm on you and rip you apart with constant emotional abuse. They attack who you are at the base of your being, your very self-perception. This is why you see truly beautiful women who struggle to see their worth. Other girls have been ripping into them since the nursery, and it only gets worse as they get older. Boys court you and try in their awkward boyish way to get your attention, but you’re mostly convinced that it’s a cruel joke they’re playing on you, because of course you aren’t pretty or smart or special. The scars run deep and never fully heal.

“outofthedarkness”, guest posting at According to Hoyt, 2017-08-09.

September 4, 2019

QotD: Goth problems

Filed under: Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I’ve never actually seen an extremely beautiful goth girl myself — most of them seem to have weight problems, which has always struck me as strangely contradictory. From the neck up, the look cultivated by goth girls seems to say, “O, we despair of this world and long for the sweet embrace of death!” From the neck down, their look seems to say, “I’ll take the bacon cheeseburger, two orders of fries, and a Diet Coke, please.”

Dan Savage, The Onion A/V Club, 2004-08-04.

September 3, 2019

When “raising awareness” works too well

Filed under: Business, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Dylan Gibbons reports on a recent finding from the Harvard Business Review:

A new study published by the Harvard Business Review shows that in addition to men’s growing fears about women in the workforce and potentially being falsely accused, women are becoming more aware of the backlash and are actually less likely to hire certain women, specifically attractive women.

“Most of the reaction to #MeToo was celebratory; it assumed women were really going to benefit,” said Leanne Atwater, a management professor at the University of Houston. However, Atwater was skeptical. Rather than seeing an endless trail of steps forward before her, she and her colleagues forecasted a backlash.

“We said, ‘We aren’t sure this is going to go as positively as people think — there may be some fallout.'” And so, they tested their hypothesis.

The study began in early 2018. Two surveys were created, one for men and one for women. These surveys were then distributed to workers in various professional fields. In the end, they collected a large amount of data from 152 male and 303 female responders.

According to the study, 74% of women now say they are more willing now to speak out against harassment, while 77% of men anticipated being more careful about potentially inappropriate behaviour.

As for the idea that men do not know what constitutes harassment, the researchers found the opposite was true. Both genders appear to both know what constitutes harassment, and women may be more lenient with some of their own definitions of what constitutes harassment.

According to the report, “The surveys described 19 behaviors — for instance, continuing to ask a female subordinate out after she has said no, emailing sexual jokes to a female subordinate, and commenting on a female subordinate’s looks — and asked people whether they amounted to harassment.”

“Most men know what sexual harassment is, and most women know what it is,” Atwater says. “The idea that men don’t know their behavior is bad and that women are making a mountain out of a molehill is largely untrue. If anything, women are more lenient in defining harassment.”

Another recent action intended to increase the number of women in STEM subjects at an Australian university — by selectively lowering academic standards for admission — will almost certainly not achieve its stated goals, but will work to increase negative views of those women in the working world:

[A female engineer] also rightly points out that this lowering the bar for women is unfair to men losing the university places to women with lesser qualifications.

She points out that male students will notice that women are struggling more with the course material — the women allowed in because the bar was lowered.

She feels this is a net negative for women in the engineering sector in general, and I have to agree.

How, she asks, can employers be expected to see a woman’s engineering degree the same as a man’s if the employer knows the women got a break getting into the program?

She uses the term “positive discrimination” to describe the leg-up practices, and I really prefer that to “affirmative action” to describe it because the word “discrimination” is plain in it. And that’s exactly what it is. Discrimination against qualified people that will ultimately harm women who are qualified.

As she puts it, the only way to ensure that a woman’s qualifications mean as much as a man’s is to have equal hurdles for women.

I’m completely with her.

August 29, 2019

QotD: Imagining a world made up only of women

Filed under: Books, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

If enough women decide to mob on some unfortunate outside their group, they may well turn physically violent and the beating will not stop once the point is made. It will stop when the target of their wrath is dead or nearly dead. Women don’t really have much of an “off switch” when we move into physical violence out of anger.

So what would a world made up totally of women really be like? It would be tyrannical beyond belief. No one would be willing to speak against the accepted narrative unless they were willing to be unpersoned or killed. Think of a mix between 1984, the very worst social aspects of socialist regimes, and the Borg. There would be constant pushing for position, usually by starting whisper campaigns or setting someone above oneself up to be badly embarrassed. Look at the SJWs of today’s world and see how they operate. That’s what it would look like, writ large across the entire planet. They attack anyone outside the group who doesn’t comply with their demands, and if someone inside the group says a single word out of line according to the ever-shifting standards the entire group turns on them without mercy. The only way to get back in their good graces is to loudly proclaim your “sin” and accept their abuse until they get bored of you. Even afterward, you’ll forever be “tainted” with the sin of noncompliance.

When you write your books and send them out into the world, please stop writing women as soft, cuddly pacifists. We aren’t. Kipling was completely right about the female of the species being the more dangerous sex. He was also right about the price of letting women control society. If any thinking individualist finds themselves in a society run by women, may God have mercy on their souls because those women will have none at all.

“outofthedarkness”, guest posting at According to Hoyt, 2017-08-09.

August 26, 2019

QotD: Princesses

Filed under: Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[Princesses] think of themselves as Strong, Independent Women, even while saying “I like a man to open doors and pay for everything — and treat me like a princess!” No, dear, if a man opens doors for you he’s treating you like a simpleton and if he pays for everything, he’s treating you like a hooker. (The crossover between the princess look and the hooker look, as the late Barbara Cartland grotesquely illustrated, is considerable.) And it’s a man knowing that you can be bought with a dinner and a pair of shoes which leads to him so frequently mugging you off — royally — in favour of a better bargain. Back on the pink plastic shelf you go!

How do you spot a Princess? She’ll be keen on pampering to an extent which indicates to the casual onlooker that her natural self must be extraordinarily rank if it takes such effort and expense to keep in check. (Princesses shouldn’t be confused with Professional Beauties, most of whom retain a healthy contempt for the business of exchanging physical gifts for fiscal rewards, from Hedy Lamarr saying “Any girl can be glamorous — all you have to do is stand still and look stupid” to the catwalk models who invariably live in jeans and sneakers after shrugging off the stupid clothes which Princesses pine for.)

The Princess believes that retail therapy is the answer to everything, even though the rest of us avert our eyes from this most obvious manifestation of the essential hollowness of a life that an over-enthusiasm for clothes-shopping invariably indicates in anyone out of their teens. They’ll have long nails, ostensibly to show that they’re ladies of leisure, but signalling to the rest of us that they’re very likely parasites with low sex-drives. They like big weddings — and as a liking for big weddings often goes hand in hand with humourlessness, they often have very short marriages. They are in short practitioners of the Violet Elizabeth Bott school of feminism – less about equal rights and fulfilling one’s potential than about stamping your foot till you get what you want.

They dislike men, seeing them not as flesh-and-blood people so much as platinum-and-titanium meal-tickets, and they mistrust women, seeing them as competition. An ageing Princess is more than likely to end up lonely — and with no life of the mind to comfort her, this loneliness may make her mentally addled at a comparatively young age. Once the sheen is off her skin, the Princess has nothing that would make one seek her out; like a lot of people over-keen on spangles and glitter, they are at heart rather drab people — drains not radiators, personality-wise — who never make things happen or drive things forward but rather wait to be rescued. They tend to find themselves eternally in the passenger seat of their life’s journey, stranded on the hard shoulder with their souvenirs, waiting in vain for hunky help to arrive.

Julie Burchill, “The Princess generation needs to grow up”, The Spectator, 2017-07-18.

August 22, 2019

QotD: Stars of the silver screen

Filed under: History, Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

There have always been gold-diggers – considering the intellectual castration of women historically, it would have been lunacy for bright broads not to attempt to gain wealth by any means necessary. During the Golden Age of Hollywood, they were often the wittiest and warmest onscreen female role models around; ironically, the women who played them were grafters, rarely asking for anything during any of their multiple divorces. There’s a story about Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner going home early from a Hollywood party to be ready in time for the studio dawn call as a trio of expensive call girls sweep in just getting ready to get started on some serious fun. One of the sex goddesses remarks to the others: “We picked the wrong job!” Of course she was kidding – an ageing hooker has about as much prestige as an ageing racehorse. But there’s something admirably realistic about a gold-digger who knows she’s one.

Julie Burchill, “The Princess generation needs to grow up”, The Spectator, 2017-07-18.

August 15, 2019

QotD: Strong female characters in fiction

Filed under: Books, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

If you’d asked me at twelve, I’d have told you I had no idea why the story charmed me as it did. I only knew I liked re-reading it and it became one of my favorite books. It felt good and somehow “right” in a way that fairytales and romances didn’t.

Today, when I telling the kids about it, I realized why. It was because the character was a strong woman. Born with the ultimate disadvantage, the ultimate lack of support, she doesn’t – like fairytale princesses – either get rescued by a strong knight nor even by fate that reveals her to be a hidden princess. Also, she never complains; she never repines – she takes the situation she finds herself in and makes the best out of it, all the while looking out for those who are weaker or in more need than her. This last characteristic nets her the all-important recipe book (supposedly created by a medieval convent, which rings true for Portugal, and lost for centuries.) When her romance doesn’t work because her very conventional suitor wants a girl of suitable family, she doesn’t go into a decline, she just goes on with life.

She is, in fact, what editors so often say they want “a strong woman heroine, self sufficient, a good role model for growing girls.” Only, from my observation and reading, by this they usually mean mouthy, aggressive, foolhardy and complains a lot about men till one wonders if said character has an issue with being born female. There are exceptions, of course, but complaining about fate and men and being bitter seems to be obligatory.

And yet, it is true that this type of character is not only a great role model for young women, she is the type of role model we do need. Earth needs women (yes, and men, but we’re talking women here) who take care of the weak and helpless. Earth needs women who don’t whine. Earth needs women who cheerfully shoulder the burden of what needs to be done.

Earth does not need women who complain about men all the while neurotically obsessing on clothes and jewelry to attract said men and pursuing the highest-status males they can possibly get. There is nothing wrong with these activities, in moderation, but when they become the focus of existence they create a generation of infantile harpies. Now, I don’t think any women in real life are as bad as that, but almost all women characters in books and movies are just like that.

Young women who read/watch these characters end up feeling they must APPEAR like them or they’ll be thought weak. And this is wrong. Strength in women – and men – can be defined not as throwing weight around but in doing what must be done for oneself and those who depend on one.

Earth needs grown up women.

I very much hate to tell people what to do, much less what to be, but I wish we could set about writing – and living – role models for the women Earth needs.

Sarah Hoyt, “Earth Needs Women a blast from the past of November 2010”, According to Hoyt, 2017-07-13.

August 8, 2019

An excellent illustration of market segmentation

Filed under: Britain, Business — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Wikipedia entry for “market segmentation” defines it this way:

“BEER”by Jonnee is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Market segmentation is the activity of dividing a broad consumer or business market, normally consisting of existing and potential customers, into sub-groups of consumers (known as segments) based on some type of shared characteristics. In dividing or segmenting markets, researchers typically look for common characteristics such as shared needs, common interests, similar lifestyles or even similar demographic profiles.

No single product is going to be universally popular, and it’s generally a bad idea to present it that way. The producers of a new product ideally try to identify the groups of potential customers who are more likely to want to buy the new product, and tailor their advertising to those groups. The more accurately they can identify and communicate with these customer groups, the greater the chances that the product will be a success in the market.

Beer isn’t universally popular (Gasp! Shock! Horror!), so brewers try to identify different kinds of beer drinkers and market their brews to those sub-groups:

The point about a market being that you can put your stuff out there and see who buys it. The buyers will – they are rational beings after all – select from the varied offerings and their selections will be the ones which best increase their utility by their own measurements of that utility. Thus the Shagmenowbigboypint might get a bit more business toward closing time, who knows? Not necessarily entirely female business either.

And even to stop being puerile about it. We’ve only this one system that does provide multiple choices – that’s what a market is. But in order for ever finer meeting of utility it’s necessary for ever finer slices of the market to be addressed. That is, we need to have free market entry so we can find out what it is that actually meets peoples’ desires.

Banning something that appeals to some slice of that market is thus defeating the point and object of that very market’s existence. Sure, lots of women won’t buy a sexist beer. Some will, as will some men. The aim and art of the whole exercise being to allow those who won’t not to, those who will to.

Or, as we can put it, every beer being Shagmenowbigboypint is as bad as no beer being Shagmenowbigboypint.

July 29, 2019

Life and love aboard HMS Pacific Princess

Filed under: Britain, Media, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Sir Humphrey is not amused at the stories in the British press about pregnant Royal Navy sailors needing to be flown back to the UK from some of Her Majesty’s deployed ships:

Life in the Royal Navy is less about preparing for war, and more like spending time on the loveboat. That seems to be the gist of quite a few stories in the media today which breathlessly relate to the news that since 2005 35 women sailors from 18 different ships have been airlifted to shore as a result of becoming pregnant and discovering this while they were at sea.

This news has been met with shock and horror by some commentators online, some of whom give the distinct impression that they are not intimately familiar with the process by which babies are made. At least one Daily Mail reader suggested that Chasity belts should form part of naval uniform for female members of the naval service (presumably in the RN kit record book it would be recorded as a “Torpedo Protection Belt”?).

Is the nation being let down by a bunch of serial shaggers in uniform or is perhaps the truth of the matter a little more complex than originally conceived?

The specific FOI that was referred to in the article, which looks like it originated in the Daily Star (alongside another story suggesting that the 2003 Iraq war occurred due to Saddam possessing “stargate” technology and the US and allies wanting to prevent various aliens attacking the Earth) asked for the total number of females aeromedically evacuated between 2005 and 2019. Confusingly though there is also some suggestion that the Sun also got the story as an exclusive – to be honest, its rather hard to tell.

To start with, a sense of context is perhaps useful. This FOI is a well worn question which seems to have been asked quite a few times over the years. Humphrey has found similar articles from 2015 and 2017 and 2018, so its not exactly breaking news that the RN has had to occasionally return sailors ashore when they find out they are pregnant.

The numbers involved sound dramatic – a whole 35 women flown at public expense due to getting pregnant. In 2015 the number was 25, so in the last four years a whole 10 additional women sailors have discovered they were pregnant while onboard a ship.

Given that the Royal Navy consists of about 3,000 women at any one time (roughly 10% of the Naval Service) and that each year roughly 3000 people join the Royal Navy (lets assume 300 women based on the above figure), then in very big handfuls between 2005 and 2019 roughly 7500 women have served in the Royal Navy at different times. The figure is likely to be even higher still, but it’s a useful, albeit very rough, “guesstimate”.

This means that of the 7500 women, a total of 35 have discovered they were pregnant while at sea during this period. That works out at, roughly, 0.5% of the total force spread over 14 years. This doesn’t sound quite as dramatic as first made out to be.

June 27, 2019

QotD: “Misandropologies”

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… in the same manner that many white people who initially signed on to the whole “don’t be a racist” program because it seemed fair were eventually alienated by the escalating rhetoric of “justice won’t be achieved until the last evil melanoma-prone ice devil baby is smashed dead against a rock,” many men — and even women — who had no problem with ideas such as equal pay and female suffrage started to get grossly turned off by rhetoric and policies that viewed being born male as an original sin that demanded eternal punishment.

Even though black women live longer than white men in the USA … and even though women control more disposable wealth than men do … and even though women are snagging most of the college degrees these days … and even though the law and public sympathy heavily lean toward women in any dispute between the sexes … and even though the media portray men as either bumbling incompetents or bloodthirsty rape-monsters … and even though men are far more likely to commit suicide, die on the job, or be homeless than women … we’re still lectured by these bitter fat blobs and their testosterone-free male enablers that misandry isn’t real because men still benefit from certain mysterious “systemic” and “institutional” advantages that none of these assholes seem able to enumerate even when calmly asked to do so.

It’s a funny sort of “patriarchy” we inhabit.


To allege that women are capable of malice and violence and deception is only to allege that they’re human. To expect anything less of them would be dehumanizing and patronizing — which, ironically, shares a root word with “patriarchy.” When feminism ditched the “equity” rhetoric in favor of a menses-splattered pagan goddess religion that depicts men as irredeemable worker drones and women as innocent angels, men who weren’t entirely asleep or pussy-whipped realized that the rules had changed and that they were under attack. But even to notice that a lot of women openly exult in hating men gets you labeled a “woman-hater.”

Misandry is real, and those who seek to deny or justify it deserve a stern paddling. And even if you acknowledge that it’s real, don’t try to make excuses for it using some postmodern gobbledygook, because then you become a misandry apologist — a misandropologist. Just admit that women can be every bit as mean, nasty, horrid, foul, vile, shitty, and hateful as men. It’s part of the human condition.

Naïve as it may be, I envision an enlightened future where there is no longer any misogyny or misandry — only a beautiful, sweet, shared sense of misanthropy.

Jim Goad, “Confronting the Misandropologists”, Taki’s Magazine, 2017-05-08.

June 20, 2019

QotD: Elizabeth Warren

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Elizabeth Warren, a smug Harvard professor, is no populist. She doesn’t have an iota of Bernie Sanders’ authentic empathic populism — but Sanders will be too old to run next time around. I tried to take Warren seriously during the run-up to the primaries, but her outrageous silence about Sanders’ candidacy when he was battling the corrupt Hillary machine made me see Warren as the facile opportunist that she is. She craftily hid from sight throughout the primaries — until Hillary won the nomination. Then all of a sudden, there was bouncy, grinning Warren, popping in and out of Hillary’s Washington mansion as vice-presidential possibilities were being vetted. What an arrant hypocrite! Warren stands for nothing but Warren. My eye is on the new senator from California, Kamala Harris, who seems to have far more character and substance than Warren. I hope to vote for Harris in the next presidential primary.

Camille Paglia, “Prominent Democratic Feminist Camille Paglia Says Hillary Clinton ‘Exploits Feminism'”, Washington Free Beacon, 2017-05-15.

June 16, 2019

QotD: Critical gender studies

Filed under: Education, Health, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The first thing you must understand is that gender is a social construct. “Woman” and “man” are concepts arbitrarily invented by society. They have nothing to do with reality. A child is assigned one of these labels randomly at birth by primitive, backward-thinking doctors who, for no good or objective reason, have decided that a human child with a penis must be a boy and a human child with a vagina must be a girl. These words are all interchangeable, as are the body parts. None of it means anything, really.

But remember that the generic people we meaninglessly call “women” are beautiful and powerful and their arbitrary womanhood should be constantly celebrated. Women must band together and lift each other up. Women must be represented equally in all of our institutions. Women are truly wonderful, splendid, special creatures.

But there is nothing special about women. Literally anyone can be a woman. A woman is not anything in particular. A person with a penis can be a woman. A person with a vagina can be a woman. If a bucket of sand came to life and wanted to be a woman, it could be a woman. There is no aspect of womanhood that is ingrained or biological or inaccessible to males. And womanhood certainly has nothing at all to do with your body parts.

But if you don’t have a uterus then you shouldn’t be giving your opinion on women’s rights. No uterus, no opinion. That’s the motto. We’re tired of men making decisions about women’s bodies.

But there is no such thing as a woman’s body. Transwomen are women, too. A transwoman is just a much a woman as any other woman. There is absolutely no difference between the two and to suggest otherwise is the height of bigotry.

Matt Walsh, “Explaining Progressive Gender Theory To Right Wing Bigots”, The Daily Wire, 2019-05-14.

June 15, 2019

13-0

Filed under: Soccer, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The US Women’s national soccer team eviscerated Thailand by an unheard-of 13-0 score in the group stage of the FIFA Women’s World Cup. It was not a great day for sportsmanship, as the American women celebrated every goal as if they’d just broken a 0-0 tie in injury time of the final:

A screen capture from the highlight video at YouTube. Amusingly, if you try to watch this clip on the official FIFA Women’s World Cup site, you get an error saying “This video contains content from FIFA, who has blocked it from display on this website”

At American Thinker, Jonathan Keiler recounts the reaction to the game and the counter-reaction that followed:

On Tuesday the U.S. Women’s National (soccer) Team (WNT) obliterated a hapless Thailand squad in a 13-0 rout. That’s about 91-0 in football terms, but in a sense even worse, given soccer’s relative dearth of scoring. It would not be worth noting, except that many present and former WNT players recently sued the U.S. Soccer Federation claiming disparate treatment and pay, and to the general championing of all things female in a supposed age of “toxic masculinity.”

The game and the result might cause a reasonable observer to question popular progressive views on these issues, not because the U.S. women won, but how they did it.

[…]

This lack of competitive edge to the women’s game affects it at all levels, from youth leagues to international soccer. It’s not the individual players’ fault, but it’s a fact. I coached soccer for years (boys and girls.) On the women/girls side, routs like what happened on Tuesday are relatively commonplace in many leagues, up to and including high school — and obviously even after. And while this happens on the boys/men’s side too, it is less common and exaggerated.

So even leaving aside the issue of whether the men’s game is better in terms of speed/skill/aggression, the fact is generally the men’s game is more interesting and competitive more often. That puts additional fannies in seats, people watching on TV, and generates greater income, which is reflected in pay. Non-soccer aficionados may pooh-pooh the game’s rhythms and low scoring generally, but the fact is, first round games in the Men’s World Cup are far more interesting and exciting than the female version. So the WNT did themselves no favor in their legal case by making a major shortcoming of the women’s game painfully obvious.

They also did themselves no favors winning over international fans (and a lot of on-the-fence Americans) by their graceless destruction of the Thailand ladies. It’s not just that the WNT ran up the score, it’s that as they did so they acted as if they were heroes doing the impossible, rather than seasoned pros essentially carving up an amateur squad. They screamed, danced, ran around crazily, slid on the ground and the like, after every one of those thirteen goals. They didn’t act like children — they acted worse than children.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress