- Fatal Fat Shaming? How Weight Discrimination May Lead To Premature Death | CommonHealth I really wish they hadn’t started this article with an anecdote, which I suspect is going to cause people to argue about the anecdote while ignoring the study that the article is reporting on.
- Volunteering At An Abortion Clinic Made Me Lose Patience With The Abortion Debate
- Farewell to the Bigoted Bust | Laura J. Mixon The World Fantasy Award will no longer be shaped like a bust of H.P. Lovecraft. Looong past due. As you’d expect, some are apoplectic.
- The campaign to exonerate Tim Hunt for his sexist remarks in Seoul is built on myths, misinformation, and spin. Thanks to Mookie for this link.
- The Bernie Bros vs. the Hillarybots — The Cut
- A lot of folks have been arguing that this book cover image, from an anti-Clinton book but painted by a huge fan of Clinton, is misogynistic. I don’t agree.
- Sady Doyle (Not About Gender). Sady Doyle outlines reasons that have nothing to do with Clinton’s sex, for preferring Clinton over Sanders.
- A Sanders supporter who probably has a better netname than 1kidsentertainment, but I don’t see it anywhere, responds to Doyle.
- Sady Doyle (Not About Gender: 2 Fast 2 Gender) And Sady Doyle responds to 1kidsentertainment.
- On Supporting Bernie (But Feeling Like You’re Going to Vote for Hillary).
- I’m posting the above Hillary-vs-Bernie links because I think they’re all well-written and interesting reads, but not because I fully agree with any of them.
- Ryerson men’s issues group says students’ union shutting out male voices – The Globe and Mail Not allowing the men’s rights group is both appalling and censorious. But by saying that, I am not at all altering my opinion that Warren Farrell, who suggests that college shootings are caused by decisions like this one, is anything less than ludicrous.
- What’s Really Going On at Yale — Medium It’s not just about one Halloween email.
- Racism and Academic Freedom at Yale | The Academe Blog Like the previous link, this one adds a lot of useful context that’s missing in most of the discussions I’ve seen of goings-on at Yale, including some useful points about the position of “Master.” Like this author, I think that the (some) students who have said the Christakis’ should lose their Master positions are going too far. “Fire them” should not be the first-step response to speech we disagree with; the idea that people can and should be fired for their political speech is already far too common in the US, and on the whole is extraordinarily bad both for “free speech culture” and for workers.
- Reproducibility Crisis: The Plot Thickens – Neuroskeptic I think Ben posted this link in the previous open thread. Really worth at least clicking through for a quick skim and a look at the very impressive graph.
- John Oliver doing stand-up about Daily Show Slash Fic.
- Missouri Lawmaker Seeks To Block Students From Studying Restrictive Abortion Law. Instructive how little attention the mainstream media gives to right-wingers attempting to censor students, even though as censorship goes, we have far more to fear from the legislature than we do from student protesters.
- All Saints Day | Easily Distracted I agree with some but not all of this extremely well-written blog post, which is critical of the Yale protesters and of the way the concept of appropriation is (mis)used. There’s also some stuff worth reading in comments.
- When the campus PC police are conservative: why media ignored the free speech meltdown at William & Mary – Vox
- Support for a “No-Fly Zone” in Syria Should Be Disqualifying | The American Conservative Unfortunately, I think Rand Paul and (maybe?) Bernie Sanders are the only folks still in the race who oppose a no-fly zone, so oh well.
- University of Illinois Pays $875,000 to Settle Salaita Case | The Academe Blog I guess this is a censorship on campus story that has a happy ending? Although Salaita still doesn’t get his job back. $600,000 of that goes to Salaita, the rest to his attorneys.
- Hilarious anecdote about “The First Wives Club 2,” adolescence, and pay-per-view pornography.
- The Evolution of the Female Broadway Singing Voice (Part 1) | Musical Theatre Resources. I found this essay really interesting. Good to follow it up by listening to this video of examples of the same songs sung in original recordings and in recent revivals.
- Tell a science fiction story in six words. My entry: “Look, over there!” said my glasses.
- Flight of the Ruler by Gabrielle Bellot – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics An excellent longform essay by a trans woman who has immigrated to the U.S. from the Commonwealth of Dominica.
- First Amendment v. Privacy? | The Academe Blog Unless I missed something, I agree with everything in this blog post about the professor’s conflict with a student journalist at the University of Missouri. 1) Professor Click was in the wrong (she has apologized), and 2) It’s dubious to claim a right of privacy for your very public tent city set up in the middle of a public square, which was obviously set up at least in part to make a public political point.
- University of Missouri police arrest suspect in social media death threats – The Washington Post To be kept in mind anytime someone suggests that students on campus don’t actually face racism.
- On Welders and Philosophers | The Academe Blog
- In Missouri, the Downfall of a Business-Minded President – The Chronicle of Higher Education Probably best not to read the comments, (he writes, thereby guaranteeing that some of the folks here will read the comments.)
- Nobody can figure out what this 1000 pound machine is – Business Insider
- Netflix’s New Series ‘Master of None’ Is Aziz Ansari’s Best Work Yet – The Atlantic I really, really enjoyed “Master of None” (despite Ansari’s character being my least favorite part of “Parks and Recreation); if you have Netflix, I recommend watching this.
- What Bernie Sanders misses about a $15 minimum wage – Vox
- Michigan’s Proposed Second-Trimester Abortion Ban Advances
- This Is So Gay: Only I Get to Decide Which Criticisms of Me Are Valid
- Full Text Of TPP Released: And It’s Really, Really Bad | Techdirt
- Beepy Boopy Veronica — Gentlemen! Let’s play a little game. I call it “Creep or Normal Guy?”
- Class Action Lawsuit Charges Missouri Town With Turning Residents Into Revenue Stream
- First Grader Plays A Power Ranger With Imaginary Bow and Arrow . . . Ohio School Suspends Him For Three Days | JONATHAN TURLEY
- Eighth Grader in Florida Disciplined For Giving Hug To Friend At School | JONATHAN TURLEY
- It turns out that those spiffy Old Spice commercials were made (primarily, not entirely) with practical effects:
Barry’s BlueSky- Untitled April 26, 2024Thread [contains quote post or other embedded content]
- Untitled April 24, 2024And there's a written version! https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/24/zionism-seder-protest-new-york-gaza-israel [contains quote post or other embedded content]
- Untitled April 24, 2024Naomi Klein on how Zionism has become a false idol. https://youtu.be/U75KcMUjMyI?si=uZuV_UNZkWXNFYG3&t=198
- Untitled April 24, 2024The Leader of All Manhood has issued his ruling: It's gay for men to love sex with women. Guys: If you hate sex with women, you can do it and be straight. But if you love sex with women, that's gay. If you want to be straight, fuck men instead. Sorry, but that's the rule.
- Untitled April 26, 2024
Re the Henwood book cover mentioned in 6, the on-line burb reads, in part:
If that’s genuinely the gist of Henwood’s objections, coupling it with the image does look a touch misogynistic to me, in a very intra-left way that’s starting to become a pattern. “Broad fealty to the status quo” is part and parcel of nearly every presidential candidate’s platform; it’s a non-starter because it’s in no way exceptional, provided the candidate’s running to win rather than Shift the Party, provide A Moral Compass, or Make Shitloads of Money on Future Bookdeals and a Cushy Tour of Speaking Engagements. Excepting those self-styled “outsider” candidates who pinkyswear that they will gladly destroy or dismantle the federal government the moment they join (or just move up) its ranks, “experience” isn’t normally something to scoff about.
But “her / my turn” and “she’s a woman.” Those are pretty well-worn, paranoid dogwhistles, conjuring up her husband (‘together they’re creating a dynasty!!1!’) for whom she was always being accused of Lady-Macbething, while insinuating that her campaign is just quota-filling (much as Obama was dismissed as a token of white guilt).
The illustration lacks the soft, Edwardian pastels and Ascot millinery of anti-suffrage, kitten-laden postcard propaganda, but the effect is the same: spoiled, dangerous lady thinking she’s entitled to something.
Also, her existence is cramping the style of and polling numbers for the Great White Darling of certain not-so-left-wing ProgMen. If she weren’t being so selfish, we’d be feeling The Bern. (As though he’d have a chance in hell, no matter who in his party he was up against.)
Also, and I am mostly kidding, her earring looks like it has a swastika on it. And the whole gun thing. Etc. The artist, I know, thinks its “libidinal” and “sexy” and in keeping with her (admittedly sexist) ball-busting image.
Mookie:
I just wanted to express my admiration for this bit of writing, which I read aloud to my wife.
Grace
I don’t think a “no-fly zone” is supposed to apply to Russian military aircraft…
Master of None is deservedly getting praise for its more nuanced look at race, but I found the two most interesting episodes to be “Parents” and “Old People.” Older people don’t have a neat slot in identity politics, and their relative invisibility on the platforms we use to create intentional community has rendered them nearly invisible in a lot of debates.
It has been my experience that a lot of younger people are having a tougher time connecting with older people, even their own parents. Maybe this was always the case, but it seems that changes in communications and residential mobility mean the elderly are even more disconnected from the fabric of many people’s lives than ever before. Master of None nails this.
(except for on election day, apparently)
Mookie, you make a valid point, but I think you’re overlooking something. Henwood isn’t inventing that list of “reasons” for Clinton becoming President. (That’s presuming, of course, that this is an accurate account of what he said; having read some of Henwood’s other writings, I suspect it may be a simplistic and unfair reduction.) It is exactly what many of Clinton’s fans are saying, especially when confronted with substantive criticisms of Clinton’s record and expressed positions. (It’s also how many of Obama’s partisans react to substantive criticisms of his record and positions.) I don’t suppose this is necessarily or always a conscious, deliberate tactic to derail the discussion, but that is how it functions. But come on — why isn’t it time we had a Jewish President?
Duncan, I’m not sure that a blurb chosen by Henwood or by his publisher can really be called “unfair” as part of judging the book; it might be overly simplistic, but selling the book that way is a choice that either Henwood or his publisher made and approved of.
Did Obama’s fans, during his first run for president, really say Obama has the experience and it’s his turn? Considering how little experience he had, relative to others, I’d find that surprising.
Finally, I’ve seen several Bernie supporters say that it’s time we had a Jewish president.
This got “The Other Generation” from Flower Drum Song stuck in my head. Now you can all have it stuck in your heads, too.
Fantastic article on the concept of ‘safe spaces’ by Roxanne Gay, “The Seduction of Safety, on Campus and Beyond.”
There’s so much good in this article that it’s tempting to just blockquote it all, but I’ll try to grab a few relevant bits instead.
And
—Myca
Thank you, Grace!
Duncan,
I haven’t read the book, so that’s as may be, but the blurb was quoting him. Those are his words, and he’s used them in print more than once.
As you say, he’s certainly not the only one, but he’s nicely distilled and summarized the commoner arguments against her. The trouble is, if you are troubled by them, they’re mostly lousy and sexist and lazy, rather than substantive. And there’s certainly a substantive case to be made against her, as Doyle and Traister note (even if they’re not utterly swayed by it).
As for the suggestion that bona fide Clinton supporters literally think “it’s her turn,” and that that’s reason enough for the party to back her, I don’t know what to do with that. I’ve not encountered it. I’ve encountered people complaining that her career is a result of White Female Affirmative Action, but that’s not proof of anything (but that when women occupy positions of power, it’s because something rightfully belonging to a man was stolen from him by a female mob).
The two-fold nature of the It’s Their Turn model is that it does exist, has always existed, and has never troubled very many people, until it’s accidentally passed onto someone who isn’t male or white. Mediocre white men gamely but mostly quietly and ineptly taking their turn is nothing much to write home about; it’s not perceived as an “entitlement” when there’s no competition (everyone else is either legally barred from playing or, in more tolerant and recent years, just roundly discouraged unless blessed with extraordinary luck and privilege). It’s always somebody‘s turn — places and seats and titles won’t occupy themselves — but the turn is invisible until someone who appears subversive* comes to claim it. And then they’re a token rather than a placeholder, a bitch with a gun and a chip on her shoulder (and somewhere in the background, a husband who promised her her “turn”). And this deeply offends the meritocracy that supposedly exists. The meritocracy that provides people “turns.”
And the victim of this unfair turn-taking is, according to Henwood’s subtitle, not just us, but “the Presidency.” Clinton’s “targeting” it. When it’s obviously somebody else’s turn.
So, yes, the image coupled with this particular book’s thesis is rather sexist, in my estimation.
*ridiculous in this case, because she’s capital-E establishment through-and-through.
The John Oliver video and First Wives Club things were hilarious!
Some thoughts on the Clinton-Sanders stuff (7-10):
–I had an “aha” moment while reading 8–my feelings about Clinton are very, very similar to how I felt about Kerry in ’04. I doubt that large numbers of Sanders supporters who usually vote will really stay home if Clinton becomes the nominee, though.
–After reading 10, and especially after reading 8, I think there’s a case to be made that it makes sense to support Sanders if your positions more closely match his, even if you think Clinton would be a better president–he’s still a long shot to get the nomination, he can push both Clinton and the Overton window leftward, and if he can secure the nomination that’s a sign that he has a better general-election environment than we thought. The “everyone hates socialists, we shouldn’t elect Bernie because then they’ll hate socialists… more/for longer/more stubbornly” makes the opposite takeaway from what I would–people already hate socialists, I’m not sure that we risk losing much.
–Sady Doyle at one point in her essay describes the Bern Bros as “self-appointed”, but also says “don’t use sexists as your outreach wing”. My sister does some volunteering with the Sanders campaign (so it’s hard for me not to be defensive about this); one thing I’m pretty sure it doesn’t involve is reaching out to/sealioning people in response to them mentioning that they support Clinton, and telling them why they should support Sanders–not even in a nice way. Because there isn’t really a nice way to do that. People who actually are working under direction from campaigns–in pretty much every campaign, I believe, nothing specific to the Sanders campaign–are not instructed to do that, because it is a waste of volunteers’ time and probably hurts more than it helps, even if you’re being unfailingly polite. And it’s kind of a jerk thing to do. So if what you’re mainly seeing is people responding to you saying nice things about Clinton, you’re inevitably going to see the jerks. Short of an attempt to DOUBLE SEALION and yell at them for doing that, I’m not sure what can be done about it, though, as she points out, Sanders could make a statement about it. I suspect that in addition to the “don’t draw attention to it/don’t feed the trolls” problem, he’d take some political heat for looking unserious/unpresidential if he talked about how some people were being jerks on the internet. He should probably still do it. Probably if he wasn’t leading by example by being overall pretty respectful to Clinton, it would be even worse.
–“Again, this is something that even her detractors will admit to be true: If Hillary Clinton wants to get something accomplished, it would take an act of God to stop her from getting it done. She will walk over glass, through fire, wade through a lake of shit, but she will never, ever stop walking.”
I won’t admit it to be true. See that Conor Friedersdorf column from a previous open thread. I guess even Sady Doyle might admit that she’s being a bit hyperbolic in order to be poetical, but most prominently, Clinton really wanted to get universal health care accomplished, was unable to do so, and has given up on it as impractical. I’d like to see universal health care happen, but I’m not sure it’s a practical goal at this point either. Bernie still wants to fight for it, though.
I was going to say, Bernie’s also tenacious, so they’re similar there, but… come to think of it, Clinton actually changes her positions a fair amount. A lot of politicians, including Sanders, will change positions on stuff they’re less passionate about but stay consistent on their core issue. But I’m not really sure what Clinton’s core issue is.
–It seemed like kidsentertainment was saying that Sanders had more legislative experience and that would help him pass legislation, while mentioning executive experience in fairness/as something that could help some in passing legislation but not as much as legislative experience, and Doyle took that as kidsentertainment saying that Sanders was more experienced, period. (But maybe Doyle was segueing into a more general response to other people and it wasn’t meant as a response to kidsentertainment.) Clinton left the Senate for a better, higher-profile job–that’s great! And it gives her more foreign policy experience, something that Sanders is indeed weaker on! But it still means she has less legislative experience. BUT she still has 8 years legislative experience, how much more benefit would you get from additional years? Possibly a lot if it allows you to be on important committees, but she was already on several committees, but I’m not sure if all committees would be equally helpful for passing-difficult-legislation experience, so… I’m not sure how to evaluate that.
For what it’s worth, I slightly prefer Clinton to Sanders (not that it will matter: I’m not going to donate this primary cycle and my vote in the primary couldn’t be less relevant) because I think she’s one of the more skilled diplomats we’ve had in a generation, at a time when foreign relations are increasingly the most important thing on the menu for the US.
I don’t agree with her about a lot of foreign policy. But she’s actually paying attention, competent, and on the ball. Sanders gives the impression that he thinks that the only two countries in the world are the US and Denmark and, frankly, his record backs this up.
Also, I generally tend to believe that, for all elected office but particularly executive branch, competency is more important than policy positions that I agree with. Clinton seems like she’d be much more competent than Sanders at running the executive.
I like Bernie Sanders a lot. I think he was a great rep and he’s been a pretty good senator. But I don’t see a lot of executive talent in him, either. I could be wrong, of course. If he can run his campaign well enough to actually win in some non-northeastern primaries, I’ll reassess his leadership skills.
FWIW, I talked to my sister about this a bit and she did show me a powerpoint slide for phone volunteers that said “DON’T say anything negative if they are supporting a candidate other than Bernie” and “DON’T debate with them. The goal of your call is not to ‘convert’ them and you’re going to do more harm than good with that approach.” [full webinar]
She also said
“I don’t necessarily agree that “calling out” his most annoying supporters is a good use of Bernie Sanders’ time, especially since his campaign team actively works with the reddit moderators to try and “keep it clean” as a campaign.
(Indeed, this is one reason why despite its reputation, the Reddit group is one of the most civil Sanders spaces on the internet–as opposed to the comparably unenforceable world of Facebook and Twitter.)”
I do wonder, given that he already has support staff reaching out to people on this, whether a statement from Sanders himself would have any effect on the Bern Bros, or indeed be anything but a way to shield himself from criticism on this (while simultaneously opening him up to other types of criticism).
What’s the point? Sanders would draw attention to a complaint made by a very small subset of people who would never vote for him anyway. Sady Doyle has a shade over 10k Twitter followers, probably a few dozen of which are registered to vote in each early primary state. Sometimes, we forget that people who loom large in our little corner of the Internet are non-entities nearly everywhere else.
Besides, do you really think any action by the campaign and the candidate will be enough? What incentive would a Hillary supporter have to admit as much?
Ben Lehman:
“because I think [Clinton is] one of the more skilled diplomats we’ve had in a generation,”
Really? How did she show that she has such skills? What did she accomplish as Secretary of State?
Myca:
I read the link and was pleased to see I could agree with most of it. I have no problem at all with a group of like-minded people discussing a particular topic and sharing their experiences in a setting where people with opposing viewpoints are not welcome. However, I do have a problem with that when the setting is a public venue or when it is a classroom or other such place where people who may not share those viewpoints are required to be there but are required to be silent regarding their opinions.
A Holocaust denier responded to something I said on Twitter last night. He informed me that my grandfather’s parents and sister and aunts and uncles and cousins actually weren’t murdered. I just blocked him — not worth spending any energy on it, and I don’t really want to attract the attention of any of his friends — but I’m kind of wondering what he does think happened to them.
Also interacted with a couple of people who insist that the US never turned away any Jewish refugees during WWII. Again, not arguing, because it’s pointless to argue with people who reject facts, but kind of boggling at it. These ones weren’t obvious neo-Nazis or anything — they started off the conversation with stuff that I disagreed with, but that was within the bounds of reasonable discourse.
The biggest foreign policy accomplishment of Obama’s first term was securing loose nukes. I assume that, as secretary of state, Clinton was deeply involved in that. That also shows that she lent her weight to a vital cause which would give her relatively little return, in terms of acclaim.
So, two questions from that:
1) I’m not aware of what you’re citing. Can you expand?
2) That would be one thing. What else?
As first lady, she was instrumental in the negotiations with China over MFN status. This is a huge deal. It’s was one of the major drivers that kept China’s reform going through the 1990s and early 2000s, and it’s largely responsible for that the US and China have a favorable relationship at all.
In the US, this is largely forgotten, but in China, she’s one of the most respected western political figures.
Also interacted with a couple of people who insist that the US never turned away any Jewish refugees during WWII.
Related, happened to see this today: Polls Show Students Don’t Want Reich Refugees Here
***
I’ve seen some people refer to “Syrian refugees” who are potential or actual terrorists (in the case of some of the Paris attack ones). If they (or family they were traveling with) actually intended to flee from Syria at the time and later decided to participate in the Paris attack, they were refugees. If they were planning on plotting an attack all along, I’d say that technically, they were posing as refugees and were not actually refugees.
I have paperwork showing that my grandfather applied for a visa to come to the US, and for one to go to Palestine, and was rejected by the British and told to wait by the US. In the two years he was waiting, he was sent to Dachau. He survived. His parents and sister (and the vast majority of his aunts and uncles and cousins) did not. His niece was a hidden child, pretending to be the daughter of a Christian family.
Rachel Maddow did a summary of the program in April 2013.
The counties in which loose nukes had been secured at that time were Romania, Taiwan, Libya, Turkey, Chile, Serbia, Mexico, Sweden, Ukraine, Austria, and the Czech Republic, with Uzbekistan, Hungary, and Vietnam expected to be completed by the end of the year.
That is not “one thing” – it represents successful negotiations with over a dozen different countries, some of which we have very strained relationships with. Some of which have since descended into chaos. How much worse would the threat of ISIL be if there were still loose nukes in neighboring Turkey? In completely lawless Libya? Thankfully, we’ll never know for sure.
I find it hard to believe you’d be so dismissive of such an achievement if it had been accomplished by someone on your side of the aisle.
Clinton was also instrumental in changing US policy towards Burma from one of isolation and sanctions to one of active engagement, and that change in role probably played a major part in the military government allowing the transition to representative government to actually happen (so far).
I hadn’t realized Clinton was instrumental in the Burma shift. That’s a huge deal, and that alone is a lifetime’s level diplomatic achievement.
I can confirm that Hilary Clinton is known and respected in Bulgaria and Serbia as an American politician that at least appears knowledgeable and prepared for her job, i.e. one that deserves the name of stateswoman.
I would also say that the Bulgarian press is delighted in making fun of the more ‘colorful’ GOP candidates, although it does not seem to understand that Trump and Carson can be viewed as serious contenders, not just a throwaway joke. I see it as wishful thinking – many Europeans find most of the Republican candidates so far right of what they consider rational that they cannot comprehend how they get elected, and prefer to think that it cannot happen.
My sister also tells me that in China, Clinton is the one people talk about and wish would get elected.
I would say that Americans do not know about Clinton’s foreign policy successes only because Americans do not care about foreign policy. On the other hand, everyone else cares about American foreign policy… for obvious reasons.
Call Her Out, But Call Her Cait
***
@Kate et al–thanks for that information, some of it was new to me.
Whichever candidate gets the Democratic nomination, I’d like to see the other play a role in their administration.
***
@LTL FTC:
I’d still like him to speak up not as a matter of political strategy but as the right thing to, IF I thought it would have a significant effect on people’s behavior (rather than an ineffective gesture that establishes his moral purity). Lower-level campaign staff are already making an effort. Either the “Bern Bros” don’t know about it because they have no involvement in actually trying to help the campaign–yet they’re passionate enough to pick fights with Clinton supporters–or they don’t care what the campaign says, they’re going to “help”. I think this is a good sign that Doyle is right–the people who are interacting with her in this way are much more anti-Clinton than pro-Sanders.
***
I sometimes see sentiments like “If women were rulers, there would be no wars” or similar essentialist/benevolent sexism aphorisms, but haven’t been hearing those WRT Clinton, really. Maybe because Clinton’s doesn’t fit them well (hawkish foreign policy). But I’m still a little surprised that I haven’t seen more of that. I guess there’s Clinton’s very non-specific “My administration would be different from Obama’s because I’m a woman.”
***
Don’t worry, ladies! You’ll still get some condescendingly sexist comments about why you support your candidate if you support Sanders, including from people who should know better.
[This post has been moved from another thread to the open thread. No criticism of Wissig is intended by moving the comment; thread drift happens. –Amp]
“Except that a lot of women have experienced a pattern of male strangers approaching them in an hostile and intrusive way.”
______________
Men and women are different. Women can be just as nasty, but in other ways. I don’t understand the focus on men engaging in a man-typical behavior, simultaneously saying that “women don’t do that so much”, and then completely ignoring the ways that women are douchebags.
In murder, men shoot and stab, women poison and manipulate a man into doing it. Following the principle here, and also in the “male privilege checklist”, women don’t shoot and stab as much. Period. We aren’t going to look at poisoning or manipulating other people into doing it, because that’s not how men typically do it.
On another level, men try to talk to women on the street and catcall them, women manipulate in family court issues.
*****************
“Except that a lot of women have experienced a pattern of male strangers approaching them in an hostile and intrusive way.”
*****************
And a lot of men have experienced a pattern of female persons known or unknown to them manipulating them, getting money out of them and making false accusations. It’s just as ugly, frankly, as catcalling, and doesn’t have to rise to the level of Jodi Arias or someone like that. Stereotype? – yup, but just like the stereotype that most men are catcallers. And people like Crystal Mangum really exist.
Hey, Amp,
Any word from Robert lately? I seem to recall he had some improvement coming as of a few months ago – parole or some lightening of confinement, can’t remember which – and it’s been radio silence since then. Have you heard any updates?
Re: Misandry/Misogyny and trust
I’d draw a distinction between trust expressed as an external attribute and trust expressed as an internal reaction. That is, there’s a difference between “women/men are untrustworthy” and “I don’t trust women/men.”
I think that we have to leave room for people’s traumatic experiences and reactions, but that’s different from making claims about the inherent trustworthiness of men or women.
Also, Wissig wrote:
You are making a claim about external reality. Do you have a citation to back it up?
Wissig:
“A lot” is sort of a weasel phrase here, but it seems like you’re making a claim about external reality here too – that manipulation for financial purposes and ‘false accusations’ (of what?) are things women are particularly prone to.
Is this a claim you’re making?
—Myca
Robert is out of prison. I’m not sure exactly what his living situation is now – that is, I’m not sure if he’s living independently of the system or in some sort of halfway house. But in any case, he has a home and a job and seems pretty cheerful in his facebook updates.
I did let him know he’d be welcome to return to “Alas,” but he said that although he appreciated the invite, he’s trying to put his energy in other directions.
Amp,
Thanks for sharing the update! I hope things are going better for him.
Well, be sure to tell Robert that we’re asking about him and wish him well.
Ally Fog – Why I am done arguing about International Men’s Day
That was a great post. Thanks for the link.
Am I the only person here who has never heard of “International Men’s Day” before? (Is it better known in the UK and I’m just being provincial?)
I’d never heard of it either, but it seems like every time I hear of a National Day of Blah it’s something I’ve never heard of, so I may not be great example.
And yes, that’s a great post of Ally Fogg’s. Good link, Desipis.
—Myca
I’ve been aware of it for the last few years. It tends to get eclipsed somewhat by Movember, which now seems to have pretty wide participation here in Australia. The emphasis seems to be very much on men’s health though, other social issues tend to get brushed aside.
On a separate point, I think the opposition to it at the University of York is emblematic of why many people see hating men as being part of feminism.
I’m unfamiliar with the controversy (as I am unfamiliar with the day itself, I suppose I’d have to be unfamiliar with the controversy). Do you have a link to a viewpoint-neutral summary?
—Myca
There’s this guardian article.
That doesn’t cover things in chronological order. So to explain, the key points are:
1) The University of York planned to “mark” the day, listing points it felt were important to consider. I haven’t seen any indication there was anything actual events planned, just merely an statement to raise awareness of the issues.
2) Around 200 staff, students and alumni wrote an open letter protesting the fact the University is marking the day.
3) As a result, the university cancelled the event.
The problem is the letter basically claim that gender equality is a zero sum game: “A day that celebrates men’s issues – especially those outlined in the University’s statement – does not combat inequality, but merely amplifies existing, structurally imposed, inequalities.”
They also insist that all men’s issues must be framed as really being just side effects of the structural oppression of women’s issues. They are essentially opposing an attempt to draw attention to issues like male suicide because it’s not being framed in a way that paints women as the real victims. If the issues that men face can’t be framed as being as a result of the patriarchy, they don’t care, and they don’t want the issues addressed.
They’re dehumanising men to the point where their ideology is seen as more important than preventing male suffering and saving men’s lives. That’s why I think the descriptor of “hates men” is applicable.
Barry: I think I’ve wished you a happy International Men’s Day every year that we’ve lived together. I guess it didn’t make much of an impression!
Regardless, happy International Men’s Day to you and to all the men out there, as well as anyone who cares about them.
yrs–
–Ben
Myca sez:
“You are making a claim about external reality. Do you have a citation to back it up?”
_________________________
Sure, just go to the thread that Ampersand moved me from, then go to veronica d’s statement that I was partially responding to, and it’s right in her link that she provided supporting her statement:
veronica d
“I prefer to say “Schrödinger’s douchebag,” cuz there are so many ways that strange men can be deeply unpleasant, but that are not rape.”
Go to her link that supports her claim; my support is right on the bottom right-hand side of that link.
Wissig: veronica d didn’t post a link in that thread. Please don’t be opaque. Just provide a link of your own.
Yeah, what Ben said. I’m not talking to Veronica right now, I’m talking to you.
—Myca
That’s awesome news about Robert! (Not that he’s not going to come back here – I’d love to see him post again. But that he’s out of prison and doing well.)
Regarding link #18, I read that teacher’s letter and I had this sudden vision of a good progressive parent telling their kid, “No, honey, you can’t be Mulan for Halloween, she’s Chinese and you’re white, choose a white princess instead.”
The thought alarms me.
There’s this very bad tendency in left wing circles to play games of “Who’s got the privilege” where the person with the least privilege wins, and their opinion gets the most weight.
So when a white woman criticizes a black man, is she punching up or down? By the way, she’s a lesbian stay at home mom, but her wife makes six figures. He’s a straight working man with no children, in the lower middle class.
The answer is that people just start working backwards. Instead of “Because this speech is coming from a marginalized person, it needs to be nurtured, protected and acquiesced to,” you get “Because I want people to listen to this, it must be coming from a non privileged person,” and the more dangerous “Because I hate this speech, the person saying it must be privileged.”
Because of intersectionality, almost anybody can be spun as a privileged dick. It becomes easy to say that the murder victims at Charlie Hebdo were punching down at their marginalized and helpless murderers, or that your racist aunt on Facebook can marginalize the President by posting birther memes.
On a white girl wearing a Mulan costume, I’d say there’s OK and not-OK ways to do it. Just the costume? Sure. Costume plus wig? Getting iffy. Makeup to make her eyes look more “Chinese”? Hell no. Other people might draw the line in different places.
In your Mulan example, it’s the white parent making decisions. Mulan doesn’t exist, and there are no Chinese people present. By presenting the example, you’ve nicely demonstrated how easy it is for privileged people to work out what’s racist without (god forbid) having to listen to figurative underprivileged bogeys (Jeremy Clarkson’s mythical black Muslim lesbian who ticks all the right boxes, etc.)
The goal is not to decide who’s wrong or a dick — nobody has to be, of course — when one considers and evaluates a course of action (or a political idea, etc.) through intersectional lenses. Anticipating and trying to ensure that you do not intentionally hurt other people (particularly people with whom you yourself do not align on a specific axis and whom, therefore, you are not likely to automatically consider, because their experiences are different, in some ways, from your own) is not a malicious act. Neither is malicious to ask other people to do the same.
This is a misrepresentation of the pushback against racist and sexist Halloween costumes. The costumes exist, they are not made up, this is well-documented; reacting to them and critiquing them doesn’t involve working backwards at all. Reminding people, in advance of the holiday, that insensitive costumes and grotesque caricatures and black/brown/yellowface are not welcome is not a plot to smite one’s enemies by indirect means. It’s perfectly fine if you disagree that blackface is racist, but pretending that people are acting in bad faith because they report feeling pained or marginalized by it (or acknowledge that some people will) does not constitute thought-policing of white people. No one’s speech is being strangled because people are allowed to honestly divulge what they do and don’t find racist.
I’m find personally with a wig, especially if it’s a wig that’s specifically styled to look like Mulan’s hair, and not just generic. Although depends on how old the girl is, really. A nine year old cosplaying her favorite princess is not going to get much side-eye about much from me if her favorite princess happens to be Mulan and she is doing her best to wear what she can in her budget and personal artistic means out of love. (About much. Not about makeup to make eyes look “more Chinese.” That’s pretty far out, and some adult should have been smart enough to catch it.)
There’s a big difference between dressing as a specific character and dressing as “a Chinese person”, though. The latter necessarily means you have to make judgments about what defines a person as Chinese, which is where the racism usually comes in. With the former, you just replicate a specific person, so there’s no assumption of generality.
It’s not free of possible sources of racism, of course–including makeup to alter yourself to look “more Chinese” or whatever, as Ruchama and Mookie and Mandolin say. And I think it’s probably also possible to choose a character racist enough that even a completely accurate costume would end up being a problem. But in a general sense, I think specific characters carry many fewer potential problems than e.g. “generic black guy” does.
My nephew went to school as Nicki Minaj a couple of years ago. In blackface. I had no problem with him going as Nicki Minaj, but blackface was a big problem. My sister didn’t see why it was an issue for me.
I have a friend of a friend who dressed as Vanessa Huxtable for Halloween one year, when she was about seven. Her parents knew that the dark makeup she wanted to use was problematic, but they apparently decided that it was easier to explain to all their neighbors why their daughter was in blackface than to explain to their daughter why she shouldn’t wear it.
Blackface, and the use of makeup to look like another race in general, reference very specific parts of the USA’s racist history; those connotations are inescapable, and to me are the crux of why it’s an offensive practice.
There’s a reason why nobody cared that Uma Thurman darkened her hair in Pulp Fiction, but they would have cared quite a lot if she had had her skin darkened.
Speaking of:
Reminding people, in advance of the holiday, that insensitive costumes and grotesque caricatures and black/brown/yellowface are not welcome is not a plot to smite one’s enemies by indirect means.
I have become increasingly skeptical of what people call PC culture because I feel like it is a culture that doesn’t listen to me.
And I dread the moment I say that, and the moment after that where I’m told that feeling is imaginary, and the moment after that when people demand examples of PC culture not listening or being frighteningly hostile, and the moment after I provide those examples when I’m told that those examples are just isolated incidents and that I should be focusing on important issues instead of trivialities like a Muslim student having his home vandalized.
Does this process sound familiar to anybody?
Here’s the thing: I do find blackface offensive and I don’t think that conflicts with anything I said above, so I feel unfairly judged when you say, “well, maybe you don’t find blackface offensive.”
The second thing is, Christakis says in her letter that some students expressed frustration with the guidelines to her. She expressed what I think are well reasoned and calm reservations, and is now the target of protests and demands for her to lose her job. Luckily, I can express these thoughts because I don’t have a job, but how could somebody who has unformed or conflicted ideas about these issues feel comfortable talking them out, when carefully explained objections aee grounds to be targeted by protests and demands that you lose your job?
Smite is a loaded word. Nobody, I assume, is demanding that Christakis be struck down by god. Those gentle reminders, though, did turn out to be a prelude to demand that she be excluded from her community because of that disagreement.
In link 13 up there, Aaron Z. Lewis argues that,
“Some news outlets have tried to turn this into a debate about what exactly happened at the door of SAE on Halloween. But that’s not the point. For students of color, the incident is a symbol of the kind of racism that they deal with far too often on this campus. [UPDATE: The truth about what happened at SAE is certainly important, but the frat party is not at all the focus of students’ protests.]”
In other words, while of course it’s important what actually happened, the anger stems from something real and lived in, which doesn’t depend on one incidence.
I don’t think this is wrong, and I work constantly to be less dismissive of people’s feelings, but I feel like that work is, outside the comments section of this blog, rarely reciprocated.
In fact, I find that people will actively argue that it SHOULDN’T be reciprocated, because my position as a poor white male on the poverty line makes me a privileged person too used to always getting my way.
That, and the comments at Easily Distracted, are why I brought up those thoughts on privilege above.
I have some reservations about Christakis’ letter – it was very calm and reasonable in tone, but it seemed to veer close to strawman. For example, being against blackface is substantively different from being against white children wearing Mulan costumes, and it’s frustrating that she chose to address a much weaker argument rather than addressing the actual argument at issue. I also think there’s a substantive difference between a “please think twice before wearing blackface or similar costumes” message, and a “we the university are ordering you not to do this” message, which Christakis’ email ignored.
On the whole, Christakis’ email read to me as if Christakis had some long-simmering opinions that she took the opportunity to get off her chest, rather than being genuinely responsive in a thoughtful way to the letter she was allegedly commenting on.
In addition, I think it’s reasonable to question if Christakis using her house Master position to argue her political positions in a one-way dialog (that is, as a Master she could broadcast her thoughts on that email system, but the students she sent her email to didn’t couldn’t respond except by going outside the system) was a proper use of her position. It also seems hypocritical for her to use such a top-down approach in order to complain about other university officials using a top-down approach.
But with all that said, the response to her email – and most especially, the calls for her to lose her position as an associate house master – are incredibly disproportionate and wrongheaded. Calling for people to be fired for stating a political opinion is almost always wrong. Job loss shouldn’t be used as tools for punishing speech, except in a few very particular situations. Normalizing the idea that it’s legitimate to threaten someone with job loss for stating a political opinion, is regressive and bad for workers in particular.
(I feel like adding that the most popular student response to Christakis – the open letter to her, which had 700+ signatures, iirc – did not call for her to lose her position. Part of the problem may be that the minority of students who respond in the most disproportionate ways, receive far more attention than the majority who make a more proportionate response.)
Experts consider what the protests over racial tensions mean | Inside Higher Ed
I really enjoyed the #18/All Saints Day link.
Christopher/Mookie:
The answer is that people just start working backwards.
I think this does often happen. Not the way it should happen–even, probably, according to the people who do it–but the way it sometimes plays out in practice.
This is a misrepresentation of the pushback against racist and sexist Halloween costumes.
I didn’t read that as being specific to Halloween costumes, or being specific to the clearly out-of-line [e.g. blackface] Halloween costumes.
Thinking about a Mulan costume–my gut reaction is that a wig is OK, partly because wigs are so widely used in cosplay and Halloween costumes… but somehow I have a different gut feeling about wearing an Afro wig? Maybe because of the more problematic history with black hair being looked down on?
desipis:
They also insist that all men’s issues must be framed as really being just side effects of the structural oppression of women’s issues. They are essentially opposing an attempt to draw attention to issues like male suicide because it’s not being framed in a way that paints women as the real victims. If the issues that men face can’t be framed as being as a result of the patriarchy, they don’t care, and they don’t want the issues addressed.
Something can be the result of the patriarchy without women being “the real victims” on that particular issue. It’s too bad that they see it in zero-sum terms.
[kind of going on a tangent from the above:]
You could roughly categorize sexism into two types: gender essentialism and femmephobia/androcentrism. Second-wave feminism made a lot of progress in fighting gender essentialism for women, but not as much in fighting femmephobia or gender essentialism for men. Gender essentialism and femmephobia are opposing forces for tomboyish/gender-nonconforming women–they lose approval for not being how a woman is “supposed to be”, but gain it for being interested in more “worthwhile”, “serious”, etc stuff. They’re synergistic forces for gender-nonconforming men–they’re hit with disapproval both for not liking what they’re “supposed to” like, and for having “inferior” interests. Gender conforming women, again, are dealing with opposing forces–they benefit from gender essentialism but are hurt by femmephobia. Gender conforming men, again, are dealing with synergistic forces–they get approval both because they are interested in what they’re “supposed to”, and because they have interests that are valued more in general. BUT a confining box doesn’t become less confining just because you’re rewarded for fitting yourself into the box.
Not all men benefit equally from the patriarchy, and the more men are read as feminine–or the higher the personal cost to not be read as feminine, to fit into the masculinity box–the more they are hurt by patriarchy.
International Men’s Day has never been a big deal with the people I know, but someone did post this link about men and mental illness for international men’s day. She’s at least as much of a “SJW” as I am, FWIW.
I just thought of an example I experienced of the “working backwards” phenomenon–a particularly blatant one.
A friend on facebook was talking about a couple old women behaving horribly to retail workers, and referred to them as “wrinkled old prunes” or some such thing. I wrote something like, “I agree with all of this except the ‘wrinkled old prunes’ bit–can we not make it about their age/appearance?” Well, friend and I had pretty much agreed to disagree, then a bunch of her friends that didn’t know me jumped in and started speculating that I must never have worked retail (not true, and their only ‘evidence’ was that I disagreed with them on this). (To her credit, friend shut down the discussion once it devolved into personal attacks.)
Closet Puritan:
That’s a recapitulation of Serrano’s theory of oppositional sexism and misogyny. She gets into it in her book Whipping Girl.
yrs–
–Ben
@Ben–I’ve never read that specifically, but I’ve read about it, and yeah, none of it is meant to be revolutionary.
A free yoga class at a Canadian university was canceled because cultural appropriation.
From the article:
[The article notes that there are also Hindus who are not offended.]
A free class can hardly be part of the “mass commercialization” of yoga, can it? But to the extent that it’s about the meaning/philosophy/purpose of yoga being lost, the teacher’s proposed alteration was exactly the wrong direction to go. And to me, one of the ways that cultural appropriation becomes bad cultural appropriation is by taking credit (on your own behalf or as part of a larger group) for something that came from another culture, so from my point of view it was also the wrong direction to go. But I think the teacher did not understand the criticism and thought that the criticism was that she was imposing Hindu spiritual views/mysticism/etc. on others:
I thought this part of her reaction was great, though:
And in this week on “Neo Nazi or SJW” we have this quote directed at a Jewish member of the UC Santa Cruz student government:
Source.
It seems some members of the Black Lives Matter movement have managed to get themselves shot.
Why do I say “get themselves shot”? Well according to this video a group of them decided they didn’t like the look of three members of the public who were video taping them, decided that mob violence was the appropriate response, and punched and chased the three people down the street until apparently at least one of the three decided that escalating the violence to firearms was appropriate.
More on the yoga thing:
they didn’t like the look of three members of the public
Note that according to the video, which describes it as “profiling”, they didn’t like the fact that they were wearing masks, and seemed to be trying to record people’s faces at the demonstration. The shooters allegedly continued shooting after the people chasing/herding them had turned around. It’s possible that this was due to the delay between people turning around and the shooters being able to process and react to that, but otherwise it is unjustifiable.
It’s definitely scary to be chased by people, and certainly the one guy who threw a punch shouldn’t have done that, but it also doesn’t sound as if the shooters made any attempt to warn off the people chasing them before they started shooting. The fact that they brought guns and bulletproof vests make me wonder if they were hoping to provoke a confrontation.
I wasn’t clear from the video whether the people interviewed were saying that the shooters were trying to go to a place with no cameras, or the protesters were trying to herd them there. That might be a clue to their motives.
Kindergarten Teacher Bans Legos For Boys Citing ‘Gender Equity’
And more info on how Black Lives Matter got themselves shot.
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If you haven’t already seen this, I thought people here might be interested in this post on Faith, Valiant Comics’ new heroine.
I really liked this piece, which traces the construction of a narrative about “outrage” from some tweets that were more or less eye rolls. I thought it had some good points about figuring out if a controversy is actually a controversy or just something ginned up by people looking for clicks.
And here’s how the four racist terrorists got themselves charged in Minneapolis for assault and riot. Close observers will note the planning that went into the plot to harm fellow citizens, and the videos and correspondence among them that substantiate both the planning and the motive.
@Harlequin, that was really interesting! I liked the “outraged about outrage culture” angle, too.
Yeah, I’ve definitely seen the “outraged about outrage culture” thing happening. There are a lot of “Why are people so upset about this thing?” rants.
And, on another note, over Thanksgiving, I was informed that some of my relatives are concerned about me because I have too much sympathy for “the Muslims.” Also, that I sometimes (often) criticize Netanyahu, and that means that they have failed in raising me to love Israel. And also that my aunt’s friend’s son is still single. So, yeah. Thanksgiving.
closetpuritan: The “yoga thing” is not a thing; it’s the outrage machine doing what it does.
The public reaction to this class being cancelled isn’t about yoga at all. It’s about white insecurity.
“The class was cancelled for a number of reasons. One of the main ones was that no one was coming to the class. U of O actually still has a yoga class, it was the student federation that cancelled their yoga class, not the university. So no, yoga has not been banned from the university. And the class has not been permanently cancelled, it’s just under review til next semester, which starts in a couple weeks. And as Liz rightfully points out, the decision to keep or cancel the class is really about how the student union, and specifically the Center For Students with Disabilities who was hosting the class, seeks to meet student need….
“People are not getting upset about this because of yoga. They are getting upset about this yoga class because it is making them think about their whiteness. And more broadly it is making them think about racism. And thinking about racism makes white people uncomfortable. Like really uncomfortable.”
I would say also that [some, largely white] people are getting “upset” about this because it serves their agenda to paint cultural sensitivity as extremist, laughable, and beneath consideration. Hence “upset” in ironic quotes, because many of the sources circulating this distorted story are not “how DARE they take my yoga!” but “Haw haw, SJW, haw haw!”
Elusis:
I would say also that [some, largely white] people are getting “upset” about this because it serves their agenda to paint cultural sensitivity as extremist, laughable, and beneath consideration. Hence “upset” in ironic quotes, because many of the sources circulating this distorted story are not “how DARE they take my yoga!” but “Haw haw, SJW, haw haw!”
That I can easily believe/had kinda assumed. The “coddled/extremist millenials” stuff doesn’t come exclusively from social conservatives, but they seem to be strongly represented, and I would guess not so strongly represented among yoga class attendees.
I’m not sure if the part you quoted from your link was meant to respond specifically to me/my links or not, but both of my links make clear that it’s student-driven, not a top-down university ban. They don’t make clear that the cancellation isn’t finalized, though.
The “yoga thing” is not a thing; it’s the outrage machine doing what it does.
I think your link, and the blog that it links to as a source, show that broadly speaking, it IS a thing. You’ve got two different white ladies disapproving of other white people appropriating yoga. Andi Grace links to a “Why I Quit Teaching [Yoga]” piece she wrote earlier that seems to advocate everyone stick to their proper culture (the culture of thousands-years-distant ancestors counts as culture it’s okay to steal from, as long as they’re your ancestors), and is clear that you should definitely not make any changes to other people’s cultures (ie Westernized forms of yoga are right out).
As far as whether it’s a thing in this particular case–the source that the source you linked to cites says:
This seems to indicate that she agrees that cultural appropriation was an issue here. If the murkygreenwaters post is at least somewhat accurate, the media is downplaying the role of other factors, but to say that it’s “not a thing”, to me, implies that it played no real role. In my WaPo link, after the yoga teacher offers to do the class for free, she is told by a student representative from the Centre for Students With Disabilities that that would not solve the issue, and the article quotes from the email she received from the student representative, including this:
Now, it’s possible that she made up that entire quote (and the other paragraphs quoted in the WaPo article). But a blog post by a former student representative that dismisses everything from the yoga teacher’s account with “An initial news report in right-wing tabloid Sun News reported on it over the weekend, almost entirely from the point of view of the “shocked” teacher of the class (obviously probably upset because she was laid off),” isn’t enough evidence for me. [Why is ‘shocked’ in quotes?] [Note that the Washington Post conducted its own interview with Scharf and did not simply base their article off the Sun News’ story.]
Yoga is not banned. Yoga is not going to be banned. Yoga is still happening. White people can still get their yoga. White people can still teach yoga. I could throw a rock from my home and hit probably five yoga “studios.” No one is coming for anyone’s yoga videos.
The only agenda served by “OMG BANNING YOGA SJW” is the right wing reactionary’s.
Elusis: If you haven’t seen people blanket declaring that no non-Indian people should practice yoga, and that all that do practice yoga are racists, you must run in very different circles than I do. It’s not an uncommon American leftist view.
You may think it’s a great thing to say, and agree with it. But it’s weird to deny that people are saying that, or acting on it.
yrs–
–Ben
edit: changed “commonplace” to “not uncommon”
A couple days ago, the actor Misha Collins (from Supernatural) posted a photo on his Facebook page of his kids (ages 6 and 3 or so) dressed in Chinese outfits that a fan in Hong Kong had given him. There ensued a huge debate in the comments section about whether or not this was cultural appropriation. (My feeling was that, if people from the culture had given them the clothes, then it was clearly not appropriation, no matter whether or not it would be if their white parents had bought them the clothes.) But what I found most interesting about the discussion, and I’ve seen this in several similar discussions before, was that most Chinese people who actually live in China or in neighboring countries with similar clothing thought it was fine, and some even thought it was really cool that little kids on the other side of the world (and the kids of their favorite actor) were wearing what they thought of as their clothes, while people who identified themselves as Chinese-American were much more likely to say it was appropriation, and usually had reasoning like, “When I was a kid and my parents dressed me like that for holidays, white people insulted us, but now white kids put on those same clothes and everyone thinks it’s adorable?”
If you haven’t seen people blanket declaring that no non-Indian people should practice yoga, and that all that do practice yoga are racists, you must run in very different circles than I do. It’s not an uncommon American leftist view.
You changed “common place” to “not uncommon.” I’d say “extremely fringe and very marginal.”
Unless you have some hard data to back up your assertion.
Surprising no one, neither I nor anyone else has hard data on yoga opinions.
I am boggled that you’ve never run into this before, though. I believe that you haven’t. But, wow. We have very different social circles.
yrs–
–Ben
I think the whole “cultural appropriation” position is absurd. Different cultures have been borrowing from each other since different cultures first encountered each other. To say that you have to be born to a particular culture in order to use elements of it is ridiculous. Do symphony orchestras in Japan have to stop playing Beethoven? We all have every right to borrow from different cultures as we see fit. If someone born to that culture finds that offensive, too bad.
Yoga is not banned. Yoga is not going to be banned.
Are you talking about “Yoga has not been banned at that university, it’s been [temporarily?] suspended”? Or “the practice of yoga in general will not be banned”? If the latter, the main reason I was interested in it was the stuff I was talking about in my first comment about it, how the proposed solution to people objecting to religious content, if it doesn’t take into account cultural appropriation concerns, could lead to the type of cultural appropriation that I actually agree is bad. If the former, as I said, neither I nor the two articles I linked to claimed that yoga had been banned by the university; they both described it as being canceled by a student organization.
Popularity of “don’t do yoga, or at least not Western-style yoga; it’s cultural appropriation” opinions–no idea. I do know that s.e. smith was the first person I heard about to endorse that idea, and I think of her as decently well-known/respected, and the blogger Elusis linked to also endorsed it.
Two things:
Firstly, it’s my understanding that s.e. smith identifies as genderqueer and uses “ou” pronouns, not she/her/hers pronouns.
Secondly, everyone should check out an awesome science fiction short story a friend of mine wrote, which has recently been published in Third Order, a “literary webzine created to engage with issues of faith and religion through mainstream, traditional, experimental and speculative short fiction.” Here’s a link to the story: “The Weight Of Years”. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did : )
No. I’m talking about “yoga is not banned or even suspended at that university.”
One class was cancelled, a class that was under-attended. Part of the decision to cancel it was its lack of attendance. Perhaps the lack of attendance was due to a discussion of cultural considerations by the people it was aimed at; hard to tell given the roaring of the outrage machine, but possible. THE UNIVERSITY CONTINUES TO OFFER YOGA. LOTS OF YOGA.
No one is coming with their brown shirts for your yoga videos or yoga mats or yoga pants or yoga blocks or yoga bags or yoga smoothies. This is NOT a thing. One class was cancelled due to lack of attendance and there was some conversation about cultural issues among the people involved in offering it. Everyone can go home and do as much yoga as your little heart desires. Are you a disabled student at the University of Ottawa who wishes the class wasn’t cancelled? Then you may have some skin in this game. Otherwise? It’s NOT A THING. Everybody keep calm and downward dog.
Elusis: Is anyone, here, in this thread, saying that?
I don’t see it.
I have certainly seen right-wing people claim that that’s about to happen, on other parts of the internet. But not here.
I agree with you, that those people are wrong. They’re also not here.
yrs–
–Ben
No. I’m talking about “yoga is not banned or even suspended at that university.”
I agree with you, that those people are wrong. They’re also not here.
AGAIN, I did not say that, and my links did not say that, my interest in the story WAS NOT “OMG they’re coming for my yoga,” so I don’t know why you keep repeating this response.
Sorry about referring to s.e. smith as “her”, though.
Or, looking at your quote again, they did say “suspended”. I don’t think the meaning of “suspended” is functionally different than “on hiatus”, but I don’t want to have a dictionary argument.
Related to both the yoga thing and the white people dressing in Asian outfits thing:
In the comments of the s.e. smith article, you can find things like, “I was getting really annoyed at people in the comments here comparing practicing religious rituals from a religion you are not a part of to eating food from different cultures (HELLO religion is sacred food is not)”.
And then a few years later, we had this article. It doesn’t actually say that people shouldn’t eat traditional Chinese foods if they’re not Chinese, but it makes a similar point to what Ruchama mentioned, that it’s hurtful that stuff from their culture that they were mocked for doing was later done by white people and the white people thought it was cool. I really think the ones who are doing wrong are the ones who initially mocked people for doing things traditional to their culture, not the white people not from that culture who later also did it, or the bystanders who didn’t mock the white people for doing traditional culture things. (Also, it’s pretty funny to me that he implies stock/bone broth is particular to Chinese culture, rather than multi-continental. I guess oppressed minorities aren’t immune to cultural chauvinism.)
Ben Lehmann, I have absolutely never heard of anyone saying anything about there being a problem with non-Indians practicing yoga. But then, while I do hang out here and do have some quite liberal friends (I belong to an Episcopal Church parish and perform classical music and the occasional musical theater piece), I also have a number of conservative friends and my workplace generally leans conservative (with notable exceptions, such as my boss).
There are also some Christians saying that Christians shouldn’t do yoga, because it’s a Hindu spiritual practice and Christians shouldn’t be doing stuff from other religions. There have been a couple of elementary schools that tried to institute yoga classes where parents objected for that reason. (And I know of a couple of Jews who won’t do yoga for that same reason. There used to be someone offering classes in “Jewish Yoga” in DC, that was pretty much the same movements as regular (Western) yoga but avoided terminology that could be seen as religious, and substituted some Hebrew words for a few things.)
So, on the topics of free speech, safe spaces and campus environments, now comes Chapman University, which seems to have a better understanding of what academic freedom, true diversity and the First Amendment that other far more prestigious institutions do.
From the Chapman University Statement on Free Speech:
Would that Harvard, Yale, the University of Missouri et. al. adopt such a statement – and back it up with enforcement.
There are also some Christians saying that Christians shouldn’t do yoga, because it’s a Hindu spiritual practice and Christians shouldn’t be doing stuff from other religions.
Yes. That seems to be what Scharf originally assumed was the problem, hence her suggestion to call it “mindful stretching”, etc. The s.e. smith article also used one of those controversies as a hook/springboard.
Leaving aside for the moment the actual topic of discussion, I had to laugh at this bit:
Or, counting from after “is”, well, thirty-six words. Actually. Thirty-seven if “wrong-headed” counts for two.
Grace
Yeah, Grace, I caught that as well! “In summary” might have been a better choice. The rest of it seems rather well written, though.
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