A discussion at According to Hoyt this last week developed from a long look the recent so-called “woman’s march”; an event which appeared to really be an open-air scream therapy session for a certain subset of the human population. They had the opportunity to mingle with others of their ilk, dress up in pink hats and vagina costumes and inform the rest of the world (yet again) of their acute unhappiness that Hillary, the Dowager Duchess of Chappaqua, formerly known as Her Inevitableness had not been able to win an election rigged in her favor, and that Donald Trump was currently the President of the United States. MS Hoyt speculated on what, exactly, the protesters were on about; what rights were imperiled, exactly? What did all the feel-good, content-free slogans have to do with anything in the lives of real, live women and men working for a living? And how did dressing up as an anatomically sort-of-correct vagina have to do with anything, in the real world. And in the long run, weren’t such pointless demonstrations of hysteria actually counter-productive, in that genuine misogynists would point to them as proof positive that women were too flighty, too emotional, too damn silly to manage anything, let alone their own lives.
Following on these ruminations, the comment thread wandered this way and that, as threads with three or four hundred comments (or even more) tend to do, until a regular commenter who goes by the nickname of “Kirk” posted:
“Go back and look at all the really base things which used to be said, and then compare that to the actual things going on today, and the behaviors endemic to many of the so-called minority groups. I swear to God, it’s like someone has sat down with a list, and said to their people “OK, we’re gonna make things look like those old-time racists and misogynists were absolutely right.”
In this bright, shiny, barely driven-off-the-car-lot new century, women are seen by the professional feminist class as easily-offended, fragile, put-upon delicate snowflakes, too fine, pure and noble to endure the rough and tumble of academia and the working world, and certainly too fragile to administer a withering rebuke when offended. Taking instant offense and cherishing grudges as if they were delicate orchids have been raised to a high art. This, if the women perpetuating this kind of thing stopped to consider the implications and possible outcome – will lead to nowhere good. (It likely already has led to nowhere good as far as the dating scene goes, for the girls who treat guys like dirt … and then complain there are no good men out there.) What intelligent person, male or female, will want to have anything beyond the bare minimum required to do with a hysterical, vengeful, grudge-nurturing woman in an academic or a business setting? Hire one of these women, or promote to a position of authority? Not if you are a sane business owner. As Kirk put it in another comment, “The feminists are trying to persuade the rest of us that women truly are too fragile and flighty to be out in public, and they can’t even grasp the final implications of their acts and goals.”
The professional feminist class mucking it up for women in general is bad enough, damaging enough, but the other part of what Kirk mentioned is something that I have wondered about for years; the racism angle. How damaging can it be for the African-American minority, that the black urban culture is everything that the most virulent 19th century racists accused Negroes of being: hyper-violent, sex-obsessed, ignorant, brutal, and incapable of being civilized. And here the same elements of violence, sex-obsession, willful ignorance, and brute force, are all glorified in contemporary black urban culture, in the name of ‘keeping it real.’ The KKK, or what is left of them, hardly have to bother with burning crosses or organizing lynch mobs any more, not when the urban black population has taken over donning their own chains. Your thoughts?
I guess I’d add that the pop culture celebs (media, entertainment and sports) are now also more openly donning the behaviors, dress and speech that we plain-folk used to suspect they indulged in behind the scenes (little of it uplifting, gracious, considerate, thoughtful or moral). It is getting more difficult to tell these groups apart based on their cultural distinctions (or lack thereof).
Race to the bottom anyone?
Death6
Consider how the “gay pride” parades down San Francisco’s Folsom Street, year after year, cemented the attitude that persons of a homosexual preference are not just differently oriented, but downright dangerously weird, perverse, and wanna-be violent.
It’s the Internet, which facilitate the formation of new connections and alliances between between like-minded individuals who might be anywhere in the world. This new connectedness isn’t always bad, indeed is often beneficial, but to some extent it comes at the expense of in-person connections, and it provides an easy means by which destructive people can stir up trouble. This recent Belmont Club post is relevant.
Another danger, beyond not wanting to hire, promote, or deal with in a personal life any college woman or identifiable feminist or Leftist woman [and yes there is almost 100% overlap in those categories]; and assuming that urban Black males are to be avoided and defended against just based on statistics, there is another matter. A government and society that not only defends such behavior by the Left, but actually promotes and forces victimization by those groups will lose legitimacy.
Eventually, it will be figured out by a critical mass of the people [not necessarily the majority] that those being defended and promoted by the government, along with the government, are really the enemy. When that happens, everybody’s dance card is going to be overfull.
*sigh* Not mad at CHICAGO BOYZ. Just getting resigned at moderation.
Subotai Bahadur
A while ago someone referred to, I think it was the Occupy movement, as “60s protest re-enactors.” IMO, that’s what’s really going on.
It may be wishful thinking, but I’m starting to smell real terror on the part of the left.
Sorry, SB – bizarrely, sometimes my own comments on my own posts wind up in moderation. I get to the moderation panel as soon as I am notified.
The enormous success of Jordan Peterson is an indicator that they are wrong.
I have a lovely daughter who is 37 and a lefty. She works for a wealthy artist (I never heard of) and is part of the Santa Monica art scene.
I sent her a copy of his book, wondering if her politics would allow her to read it.
She called me this morning to tell me how much she loves it.
Now, she wants his first book, published in 2002. I looked at Amazon and the hardcover version is $160.!!!
I’m sure a new edition will be out as quickly as the publishers can get it printed.
This is the reason I did not know if she would read it.
sometimes my own comments on my own posts wind up in moderation
Moderation in all things, including moderation.
This isn’t new among feminists, but it was less common until recently. People with personal issues will often seek to align themselves with groups which have more respectable claims, and as far back as college in the 1970’s I could just feel that some of the feminists saw their rejections or lack of success as stemming from discrimination, not themselves. It was sometimes true, or at least half-true. Many were sad cases, really, and my circle of friends had a high percentage of them. They were smart, but perhaps socially clumsy, or shy, or not conventionally attractive. (It is remarkable in retrospect how many of them were described by other women as “but she could be pretty, if she only tried.” At a southern school there was never a shortage of women who would love to take charge of that makeover and send Cinderella to the ball. Yet they couldn’t or wouldn’t somehow. Refused, sometimes contemptuously.) Others, however, were legitimately difficult, with characteristics just as objectionable when found in men. I catch snippets over the years how that has gone. Still bitter, and it leaks out in their politics.
But it seems to have exploded into some greater percentage of young feminists, enough that they steer the ship these days, whatever their actual numbers. Have some other resentments, such as student debt or a stagnant economy just fallen into the nearest open basket? Is this the repetition of the narratives of resentment repeated for so long that a solid culture change with real roots has been established? Has the entry of intersectionalism and even more, transgenderism into the victim sweepstakes proved too much of an overload? Dunno.
“People with personal issues will often seek to align themselves with groups which have more respectable claims…”
In addition to this there is the horrible —- the really disquieting —- prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
—George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (1936)
Spoke with my Niece’s best friend who is a very smart young lady.
She is attending UC at Berkeley as a math major, I asked her how school was…
She loves her classes at Berkeley but she hates Berkeley and California itself.
I asked why? her answer… “Dirty Hippies”
There is hope…
“Dirty Hippies”
You rang? How can I help?
This because in my part of the world, we do call a hippie, long before the cops. ;)
“her answer… “Dirty Hippies”
That reminds me: time to check and see if Zombie has posted another video.
My maternal grandparents homesteaded a ranch in central Montana. She nothing but contempt for “feminists:” not “feminism,” just “feminists.” Some examples:
Feminists are really strident — until the wolves come through the door, at which point they revert
to Daddy’s Little Girl.
Some women really should be kept barefoot in the kitchen, preferably not pregnant.
BTW, Grandma handled the wolves several times. By herself.
Yes, that’s the tiresome pattern, isn’t it, SD. I am woman, I can roar, I am invincable … until s*it comes through the door, and then it’s sobbing for help.
I’m pretty tired of that…
The behavior of “feminists” these days suggests that the “strong woman” is myth, at least on the left.
Wow. My daughter not really a feminist but you would not want to seriously anger her. She’ll drop you.
An unfortunate youth with my ex and some Tai Kwondo made her the wrong person to upset from an early age. Luckily our spats have been few and far between. Her daughter, a natural dancer, is doing very well and may be as tough. ;)