The Force is Female

 So Kennedy is doubling down on the whole direction Star Wars is taking.

The problem is not that there are girls playing with our toys -Star Wars has always been inclusive, no matter what certain media organizations claim. Reeva, Rey, Rose, that purple-haired admiral, and the rest were not reviled because they were women and or black. There were plenty of women and non-white characters before and since who were absolutely adored by the very same toxic fans who hate the second-hand Inquisitor, Ms Mary Sue Skywalker and the rest. It has been talked about why the sequel trilogies were horrible, why the new series are trash (with the exception of the Mandalorian, which is mediocre, but enjoyable - although...) so that is not the point here.

The point is that falling profits from movie tickets, from merchandise, from theme parks matter not - they are pushing the same idiotic strategy to make sure Star Wars die completely. (Well, Mando, which was "the" successful show so far, is turning into a Bo-Katan show now, too, and viewership is falling...) 

Not sure what is going on, honestly. As with many things it seems like the inmates took over the asylum. The people who make decisions are absolutely distanced from the real world, they seem to have no idea about the franchise they are leading, and they do not seem to care about profits. There were so many squandered opportunities to create truly great shows, movies, whatever -and they conscientiously thrown everything into the gutter, and went with the "strong female character takes over from the incompetent original male character". Guess what. People do not like their beloved characters deconstructed, dragged into the mud so that new ones can "take over" without actually earning their place. We saw a Han Solo that reverted to his old scheningans becoming a deadbeat father, a failure in all fronts. Luke Skywalker became cynical pessimist who is ready to kill the son of his sister and his best friend because he had a bad dream, and then goes off sulking alone. (Don't worry, Rey will create that Jedi Academy for you, old man.) And so on and so forth. For some reason people do not like this, do not buy the tickets, the merchandise. Yes, a wider audience will go to the movies -but franchises are not sustained by casual viewers. They are sustained by those people Disney reviles -the fans.

This is truly puzzling because so far it seemed like these high level decision makers are perfectly fine with corrupting anything in the name of profit. But now they behave like full-blown activists - very much like the revolutionaries of old in the USSR and China who were full of great ideas and disregard of how the real world actually works. The results are usually catastrophic - in this case it merely leads to the death of a franchise and the lay-off of seven thousand (!) people. Obviously this number does not include those who are responsible for steering the ship into the rocks. Those people will not be fired; they will get a cushy bonus, and maybe a golden parachute, so they can try their hands on ruining another franchise in a different company.

So apparently men are to blame for the Mating Gap

 As an upcoming book states, there is a lack of eligible men for these women to have babies with. (There are so many gaps now - there is an opportunity for a dirty joke here for sure.)

Obviously. The author is a professor of anthropology at Yale, after all, so she must know.

Now before we go further I want you to imagine the following scenario (and I know it is going to be a controversial and strenuous analogy, but bear with me). A historian wants to understand the reasons of the collapse of the Third Reich, so what does he (or she) do? Read all the interviews, speeches, memoirs about what Hitler thought the reasons were, and then writes a book that "the Jews were behind it".

This is literally the methodology. As the author says, she gathered egg freezing stories from 150 American women and analyzed them. 

And obviously the results are (drum roll):

• Men who are reluctant to partner with high-achieving women, leaving these women single for many years.
• Men who are unready for marriage and children, often leading to relationship demise.
• Men who exhibit bad behavior, including infidelity and ageism, which often leads to relationship instability and rupture.

So, as we know, it is all men's fault. The first point is patently false -there are lots and lots of studies showing the opposite, as in women are reluctant to engage with men under their own status while the opposite is not true. Heck, even the Guardian (which was very enthusiastic about writing about this issue highlighted in the book) wrote about it. 

I am fairly certain if you ask incels why they can't get a partner you will get a similar list, but obviously those basement-dwelling jerks would be wrong. For some reason people tend to rationalize why they are not to blame. Who knew. So it is very striking to base your methodology on accepting anything your subjects say on face value. And also not correcting for the fact that egg freezing is something that is only a serious reality for about 1% of the population. This is the very definition of Grievance Studies at work -it is men who cheat, it is men who refuse to settle down, it is men who are ageist and refuse to date higher status/earning women. All of which is patently false, or ignores the current reality of how the "new" society (patterns in education, economics, etc.) -and feminism itself-  disenfranchised men, and made marriage less than attractive. Or simply ignores the fact that women seem to have unrealistic expectations.

There are other voices that provide explanation about the "death of marriage" -and it ain't those blasted men who refuse to grow up and cheat with everyone with a vagina. They come both from the left and right.

Now, there are three things to be mentioned here. 

One is that the patently anti-scientific grievance-based social "science" is still in the rage, even in the highest institutions. (Although the fact that George Bush managed to graduate from Yale puts a lie to the supposed high standards of this institution...) This does not bode well for the future as often these questionable "studies" form the basis of policies and provide an endless supply of angry, radicalized upper-middle class crowd, which, when they get into a position of power (which they do due to their privilege of having connections), they will go full into activism mode. We have seen this at Disney (crashing and burning popular franchises), but even (perhaps) in the banking sector. (Obviously a collapse this magnitude is not going to be a single-cause one, but it would not be surprising if we learned that the leaders were happily doing their little activism projects while their ship was sinking -due to their poor, activism-driven decisions...) I am very interested (well, desperate really) to see this sort of activism sweeping into the fields of "hard" sciences (which it already has begun), because when engineers, scientists and doctors are not chosen based on merit, you will have a catastrophe at your hands - as we have seen with ideologically-driven experiments, like Communism, Nazism, and so on and so forth. And you can't make a logical argument against identity-politics deciding who should become, say, a neurosurgeon. After all, you can't argue that it is fine to have crappy writers, politicians, economists, businessperson, etc. chosen based on their identity (the whole equity, diversity and inclusion stuff) but you can't have it with professions where it actually matters... It either matters everywhere or nowhere. So enjoy your diversity hire engineer designing the airplane you are sitting on. It seems like the inmates are taking over the asylum. 

So that is one big problem. The second issue is that these hacks completely discredit sciences. I know it is just social sciences, not hard sciences, but these obvious distortions coming from academia will tarnish every other fields of science -immunology and climatology included- giving fodder to the other group anti-intellectuals on the Right. (Because make no mistake: identity politics is by definition anti-intellectual.)

The third: if you want to help these very rich, powerful women, who find that there are very few richer and more powerful men for them to date, well, perhaps, you should not engage in misguided finger-pointing... Not surprisingly these powerful men tend to date  younger women (as in the case of DiCaprio, many of them sequentially), without a financial risk to the fruits of their hard work. It certainly makes you feel better about yourself, and you can imagine yourself as fighting the good fight (because actually fighting the good fight, for example for the women of Africa, the Middle East and the rest, would be hard), but it will not help those women you profess to be wanting to help. It will make them even more miserable.

So for the love of god, please stop lying. And do not tarnish sciences like this. 

No, Madonna, not everything is sexism and ageism

 So, apparently, when Madonna showed up looking like a nightmare from a horror movie, the criticism and mockery is obviously sexism and ageism.

It did not occur to her (well...) that maybe it is only directed at her, her person, and the choices she made about her face. No, obviously not. It was directed at all women by a Patriarchal system hell-bent on oppressing her. Of course.

I guess all the criticism of Leo's questionable choice of dating partners is also sexism and ageism, right? Right?

Let's be real: Madonna is trying to deflect any criticism by claiming it to be sexism. Apparently any and all criticism of a woman is sexism, any and all criticism of a person of color is racism -there cannot be other explanation. (Funnily it does not work the other way around...) 

It is the same as labelling all critics of certain movies racists and sexist pigs instead of, you know, accepting that the result is shit. (It is part of the fan baiting strategy by the way, and Disney, Marvel and Amazon Studios are very keen on it.) It may seem work to some extent, but only as long as the "high culture" (journalists, opinion makers, etc.) accepts it as fact. The problem is that it is increasingly clear for everyone else, who has no vested interest in taking part in this collective delusion,  that the emperor has no clothes. All it does is causing further divide between the "elite" and the "masses" - something an unscrupulous individual, like Trump, took advantage of. It does not work. You only lose credibility if you do it. 

Why be very careful when you are trying to address the "gender pay gap"

 So, it has been established that the Gender Pay Gap is not a result of some evil male-conspiracy to pay women less for the same amount of work, but mostly the result of lifestyle choices: women -in general- realizing they want families once they reach a certain age, and want to spend more time with their families, rather than spending 70+ hours at work.

Regardless, many activists, journalists, and people with bullhorns want to redress this situation in a way to "elevate" these women in the expense of those evil men who make more money.

There is one problem with this viewpoint: it looks at individuals rather than family units. Because if one partner has a lowered income due to childcare duties, you know what happens? The other will try to make up for this shortfall. He will put in more work. He will fight harder to progress his career and increase his earning potential. He will spend more time at work (which ironically means he will have less time to chip in around the house.) So if you somehow make it more difficult for men to earn money (or favor women in general with diversity quotas and other methods in hiring), you will make life really, really difficult for those women who are at home tending the children.

Now I understand that for a feminist this is no way for a woman to live (we only respect choices if they are the right choice), however, it is still the result. You make families (and hence women) worse off. Which is a textbook case of unintended consequences of poorly though-out policies. Trust me, these things end horribly almost always; I came from an ex-communist country - I should know.

Gwen Stefani and the contradictions of "the Woke"

  So Gwen Stefani said she felt she was Japanese.

Well, weird, but good for her. She feels close to Japanese culture, cudos and all. (I have a strong feeling she does not actually think she is an actual Japanese; she probably meant she feels closest to Japanese culture.)

But this landed her in some serious hot water, too, because apparently your cultural and genetic traits do not allow you to do so. Simply put if you do not have Japanese ancestry, you cannot declare yourself to be one. Cultural appropriation, privileged white woman and whatnot. Fair enough, I guess; you are what you are born to be. It is a bit too strict even for conservatives, but whatever. (Does it mean, for example, that a Chinese person cannot feel himself or herself to be English?)

Yet. Yet, if someone declares himself to be a woman (or herself a man), apparently it is fine. More than fine, it should be celebrated. Even though someone who is genetically a man declaring himself to be a woman did not experience of all the injustices and whatnot that women have to face in this patriarchal, racist society of ours (not to mention genetics, you know).

So which one is it going to be? I still do not understand the selective application of these lofty ideals, but Stefani's case highlights them pretty well. 

Who gets to play what

  Well, this is about actors. It seems that lately even the supposedly smart and wholesome actors fell victim of this trend of wanting only people from a particular identity group play characters who belong to that particular identity group. Tom Hanks said he would not do Philadelphia (but taking this line of thinking further, surely only a HIV positive gay actor would be eligible to play, no?), there were issues of non-Jewish actresses playing Jewish characters, and so on and so forth. In the same time, of course, we have the constant gender and race swapping, which is apparently fine with the very same people. More on that later. 

But what about Spanish actors? Is Banderas forgiven for playing a Mexican guitar player, or is he considered to be white? Where do the lines lie exactly? Can someone, who is bisexual, play a gay character? Can a gender fluid person play a gay character? Isn't the point of being an actor is to, you know, act? I saw a video of Luke Evans saying how proud he is about playing a straight character convincingly. I mean, yeah -this is your job, isn't it? It should not be such a big issue... I do not recall Arnold being proud to play a cyborg, or Benedict Cumberbatch being proud to play a dragon after all. (And the last I checked, he was NOT an actual dragon, either.)

The scary thing about this is that if you just give it one second to think about this idea, it leads to really, really weird (and stupid) places.

So if only gay people can play gay people, if only Jewish people can play Jewish people, and so on and so forth, that means you are forcing everyone into an ever decreasing box. That also means they cannot play any other characters. That means that Jewish people cannot play non-Jewish characters, and like it or not, there are more gay actors, than gay characters on screen -which means they would have severely limited opportunities if you apply this "rule". This only would only benefit those evil white actors who, being the "vanilla favor", could play almost any other character not falling into one of your pet categories. So identity politics -as usual- kind of shoots itself in the foot.

But what really scares me, is the fact that stupidity, like this, is being pushed by people in "high culture". It is being talked about in NYT, WaPo, whatever, as if it was a worthy ideal to live up to. It is one of those "the emperor is naked" cases, and if people can pretend that the simple and obvious flaws do not exist... well, what else are they pretending about? And even scarier yet: do they actually believe this? Is our "intellectual elite" really that limited intellectually? Are they really this stupid?

Rules for thee and not for me - the curious case of casting

  I have two contrasting cases for your consideration.

Exhibit A: Hungarian Opera dares to play Porgy and Bess with an all white cast. HOW DARE THEY DEFY THE AUTHORS' WISHES

Exibit B: A Becket play gets cancelled because the director did not want to defy the author's wishes, and auditioned for an all-male cast. (In an all-male play, but whatever.)

This kind of makes you think, doesn't it? What makes it OK in one case not to respect what the author wanted, but in the same time absolutely not accept when others choose to ignore these wishes in another case?

To make it a bit more interesting: how is an opera house of a Central European country supposed to show Porgy and Bess when the number of black people in the country -not opera singers, simply black people- would probably be just enough to fill up the cast, but even that is not a given? Hm? Are they to be denied of this opera because it is not America? Should they import black singers and teach them Hungarian? Who pays for the differences in wages? (And how would this go down with Trade Unions? And what about the whole progressive sensitivity of importing overpaid, privileged workforce to push out the indigenous, cheap labor? Isn't that a big no-no?) Why is it a problem that they adopted it to "modern audiences"? (It is about refugees in an unnamed country, not blacks in the US.) If it is, why it was NOT a problem when well-established stories are adopted (or rather abused) in a similar way?

And also: should we cancel all Vagina Monologues plays where men are excluded from the casting?

Confusing questions, aren't they, in these confusing times ruled by identity politics?

Or perhaps just a demonstration about how utterly stupid and idiotic the whole ideology is.