What is white privilege if you are poor?

 Well, have a read. This chap has the galls to explain a poor white guy why he is privileged by his skin. Quite an interesting little mental gymnastics laced with condescension. (Not to mention weird little jumps in logic, but who am I to criticize him, right? I should just check my privilege.)

I guess this is how you get the race war going... you, as a privileged, rich guy explaining away to a poor person why he is privileged over, let's say, a black lawyer who makes more money than his whole extended family combined. (Perhaps it is April fool's day? It did feel really surreal reading the article.)

Why should we not erect statues of living people?

      Well, in recent years, toppling of statues have been very much at rage -after all, why not judge historical people based on contemporary standards? It makes perfect sense, so off with those long-dead evil white men!

Also, why not erect statues of living people just to show how virtuous we are? For example, Greta Thunberg?

Let's forget about Greta herself - it is not about her per se. But can anyone spot what the problem is with this?

Well, I will help. First, it is very strange that living people get statues. That is just... wrong.

Second, and this is more important: how do you know she will not say or do something tomorrow, next year, two decades from now for which you will want to cancel her immediately? Then what? Are you going to remove her statue immediately? Are statues now just temporary political statements? In this case paper mache would be a better medium.

Hm? Nobody thought about this? Are everyone so involved with identity politics that they can only think of the present? Some sort of goldfish-mentality this is as Yoda would say)

(Bonus questions... Shall we periodically topple statues of everyone because they failed -or will fail- to live up to our future's standards?)

Cancel culture eating itself (The curious case of Hemal Jhaveri)

 There are plenty of reasons to criticize about the "mainstream media" as it is today; it is pandering to the lowest common denominator, it is permeated by ideology, it has becoame an outrage machine, and it essentially killed journalism...

Well, and it is also very happy to silence any voices that go against the cultural zeitgeist -which is mostly a very much leftist, and very much based on identity-politics. BBC, CNN, NYT, WaPo, The Guardian, Huffpost... etc. are not interested in journalism any more - these media outlets are only interested in finding facts (or distorting them) that fit their agenda. Which is a problem. A serious one. 

Cancel culture is a part of this -although it is not an exclusive weapon of the Left, it has to be said. But it is a bit bigger problem there, I would argue. Getting banned from Hollywood, like Gina Carano was, or from the "mainstream" if you "misspeak" carries a bit more weight than getting kicked out from a right-wing media outlet.

Anyhow, normally, when something horrendous happens that resembles a terrorist attack, certain people will jump the gun, and usually rush to conclude that it must have been Muslims before the facts are clear. These people are rightly condemned by certain other people (usually from the Left), that they use a tragedy to further their own agenda, and usually this agenda is quite racist.

It is interesting to see, however, that when a mass-shooting happens, these Left-leaning people suddenly forget these -very much laudable- principles, and jump the gun to blame white men before the facts are clear, and the victims are still warm. And there were a lot of them -an issue on which the above mentioned news outlets kept very silent about, and about which right-wing media outlets had a field day of gotcha's. Both are toxic both are unhelpful. (Although you can't blame Fox News for cheering, to be honest. Finally they can point fingers at the evil liberals victimizing them...)

This time a woman actually lost her job because of her racist tweet. What is more, she keeps playing the victim, going on the usual narrative built on privilege and permanent victimhood. (A "mistake", obviously. Ask Gina about mistakes; her tweet was not even that controversial, although, like any tweet making comparisons with anything and Nazi Germany, it was really stupid.) It is worth reading her ramblings trying to justify herself.

What is a hopeful sign, however, is that perhaps the grasp of identity politics on our everyday life is loosening. I don't think she would have been fired even two years ago due to her being a not-white not-male person and this causing considerable anxiety in the senior management. Maybe common sense will slowly sweep back into the public discourse.

Antisemitism in Hungary

 When you read about antisemitism in Europe, Hungary always comes up in online conversations: the accepted wisdom (for whatever reason...) is that Hungary is a very antisemitic country. The fact that there are hardly any incidents (-and none of them were violent, compared to the "non-antisemitic" UK), does not really matter.

Interestingly, certain rabbis have a very opposing view to this narrative. Perhaps we should listen to them.

Female hunters and how to claim victory over the Patriarchy

 

Apparently women can hunt. Who would have thought? Seriously, here we are, sitting in our male privilege, telling women to go to the kitchen, and boom, a news like this happens.

Damn. It is a good thing that all these popular science portals present it in an easy-to-digest way, already positioned for fitting into the narrative of identity politics so popular nowdays, posted on their facebook pages with short tags, like "sexist scientists". Or with "The idea that men always hunted and women gathered in ancient hunter-gatherer societies is a myth."

Well, of course it is a fucking myth. It is a myth you just made up, because a cursory glance at the academic papers and wikipedia will tell you that the whole issue of sexual division of labor was not viewed in this simplistic, "Patriarchic" manner by all those sexist, white male scientist people. Let's also ignore the fact that present hunter-gatherer societies (you know, what researchers used as the closest available to model how early humans lived) also very much have gender roles present (as the author of the original paper admits). Let's also ignore the fact that it is not actually a clear-cut evidence, and 'a few female hunters' does not equal to the sweeping generalizations even the study's authors are making (which is kind of telling about their findings... somehow I do not believe they can be partial when they say things like this: "Labor practices among recent hunter-gatherer societies are highly gendered, which might lead some to believe that sexist inequalities in things like pay or rank are somehow ‘natural.’ But it’s now clear that sexual division of labor was fundamentally different — likely more equitable — in our species’ deep hunter-gatherer past". This sounds like some activism mixed with science to me. I would also like to get an explanation how this "genderization" happened in all known stone-age level societies present on this globe.) To be honest, even some common sense thinking would tell you not to expect strict gender roles in a society that is balancing on the edge of survival: whomever can, will hunt. Nobody will tell a female hunter not to hunt when she brings home an elk.

But this, of course is beside the point. Let's ignore the decades-long scientific discussion. What we need is articles showing how we stick it to the Patriarchy, so people who have absolutely no fucking clue what science is can happily share it on their facebook, generate clicks, and, as a side-effect fight the gender wars which are only deepening the fissures in our societies. (Just reading those posts will melt your brain, by the way. People did find a way to inject some anti-European -anty white under a more palpatable name- sentiments there as well if the whole male-female discussion was not enough for you.)

Finding your backbone

So apparently White House reporters now started to ask difficult questions from the President. Like why he was lying during Trump's presidency. (Sorry for the belayed post, life and all takes precedence.)

 Which is all nice and everything, however, where were these very same reporters in 2002 when a different president (who was then looking like an absolute dolt, but compared to this one he was an intellectual giant) was lying about the reasons of a war of aggression - you know, something international law recognizes as a war crime. Only a comedian had enough balls to say uncomfortable things in front of the president.

There has been a really pathological interplay between politicians and the journalists who were supposed to keep them on their toes: in exchange for access, they agreed not to ask them difficult questions. This abandonment of their duty, this perversion of everything what journalism stands for had a major role in the rise of Trump.

So I guess congratulations, Huffpost reporter, you are awesome, but don't suck your own dick just yet. Your whole profession has failed in their one role that mattered (and no, it was not "make money for investors"). You are about fourty years too late.

 

When negative stereotypes are OK

 This has really been bothering me for a while. You keep reading how stereotypes are bad (even good ones), now D&D has done the right thing (depending on your point of view) and removed negative race ability score modifiers  (whatever they might be -but what is important to be more inclusive and not to hurt our Orc and  goblin player's feelings)…

But every time you read an article about abuse -physical or mental- it is almost guaranteed the photos will show a female victim and a male abuser.

Just do a search:

This article has links to further articles which all show female victims, and if shown, male perpetrators. IKEA? But of course!

The Guardian is  obviously following this trend -how could they not? Psychology Today?  Of course Always… 

Foundations? Obviously

There was one exception I found in this non-representative search. One.

This article does not even try… it flat out uses the male pronoun.

Why is this a problem? Well, apart from the usual "stereotyping hurts, it is bad, you should not do it" any time it comes up with anyone who is not white and male (but any time you complain when it is about white males, you get the "you are such a snowflake" comments), it does help pushing a false narrative of male perpetrators and female victims. (Even when it is about male victims, it is somehow the Patriarchy's fault...) This has real-world consequences on how society relates to male victims (or men accused of being perpetrators) - as it was  many times discussed even on these pages. 

But apparently this does not really ring the alarm bells the same way as stereotyping Orcs or Sand People does.