#people only tend to use this modern thinking logic when it comes to feminism

[asharaxofstarfall]

i think that one of the biggest fandom flops when it comes to asoiaf is the justification of wrong doings because "its standard in westoros". we are not supposed to look at this society and world and approve of the their customs. yeah, people would not have thought that rhaegar x lyanna was too bad in terms of age gap, but we know that a married man in his twenties shouldn't abandon his wife and kids to run off with a teenage girl. as the readers, we're supposed to look at these events through a modern lense. sieging isn't too awful in universe but we can obviously use our critical thinking and come to the conclusion that it's disgusting and wrong. hoster might have been "just a normal father" by westorosi standards, but we've learned time and time again that westorosi standards are very low. we are meant to criticise these books!!!

[omoi-no-hoka]

Problematic Language Gender Divide in Japanese

Today I stumbled across a very interesting article about the language gender divide in Japanese and how it impacts women in the Japanese workplace.

Here is the link to the full article.

This article touches on a lot of things I have felt living in Japan as a woman, so I thought I’d share it with everyone.

“This is not just a matter of linguistics: these gender-specific forms, with their different levels of assertiveness and politeness, and the societal expectations behind them, put women at a huge disadvantage against men, in life and particularly in the workplace.

Beyond specific words, gender language differences in Japanese are evident in how and what women say. Women are softer spoken and use more euphemisms. Unwritten rules around women's language reflect the acceptable features of women in Japan: never direct, always respectful.”

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to conduct a business negotiation while remaining “indirect” and unassertive? 

This article touches on a point that has ALWAYS ground my gears not related to the workplace.

“Interestingly, Nakamura observes that the Japanese female language is most prominently represented in the Japanese translation of women's remarks in Western literature. For example, Hermione in the Harry Potter wizarding novels sounds much more ladylike in Japanese than a girl her age in Japan today would. In fact, Hermione speaks as briskly as her male peers in the original English.

But the translation sends a subliminal message that all women, even Western ones, should be speaking demurely. Intellectually we know that this is not true. Western professional women are much more outspoken, but they are not any less charming for that.”

This feels like hyperbole to type, but I would honestly say that 100% of the Western female characters I’ve seen translated into Japanese have been hyper-feminized. Hermione’s character is built upon her independence and her self-assertion. It feels wrong to translate her dialogue into such demure speech. 

Has Japanese Always Been Genderized?

Contrary to what Japanese people are taught in their Japanese classes at school, onnna kotoba (female speech) and otoko kotoba (male speech) has not always been delineated. 

Many Japanese people are taught in school that Japanese has been genderized since the 4th Century AD, with court ladies, Buddhist nuns, and geisha speaking differently. Sounds so romantic and beautiful, that this historic, refined way of speech is preserved and upheld by women to this day!

HOWEVER, that is blatantly untrue. The delineation actually took place in the late 1800′s!

A linguist named Orie Endo was one of the first people to demonstrate this. He did it by comparing two literary works, one from 1813 (“Ukiyoburo”) and the other from 1909 (“Sanshiro”). The truth is that before 1887, when people started noticing feminine language, males and females spoke the same; differences in speech patterns were based on social status, not gender. Endo found that males and females used the same sentence-enders in “Ukiyoburo,” but these were split between men and women in “Sanshiro” (just 96 years later). The sentence-enders ぞ (zo), だぜ (da-ze) and ぜ (ze), for example, were used by both males and females in “Ukiyoburo�� but only by men in “Sanshiro.”

This excerpt was taken from an older but fascinating article from The Japan Times that you can read here.

How/why did this change take place?

The Meiji Era (1868-1912) was the catalyst. Feminine language was initially frowned on by male intellectuals. The sentence-enders てよ (teyo), のよ (noyo), and だわ (dawa), in particular, got a lot of attention. This “vulgar language” (now considered a long-lasting and beautiful tradition) was blamed on hicks and lower-class Japanese.

Two big things helped feminine language go from vulgar to accepted tradition. The first was the philosophy of ryōsai kenbo (good wife, wise mother). This was encouraged by the government and showed up in a lot of women’s magazines — written by women who spoke in the new feminine form. This type of woman was shown as a member of the ideal middle class. As a result, other women emulated them. Feminine language became widespread, and necessary — if you wanted to be well-educated, happy and all the things a woman “should” want to be.

The other big transformation that helped embed gendered language in Japanese was the rapid modernization and Westernization of the Meiji Era. Change was occurring so quickly that it seemed as though Japanese culture was disappearing — that Japaneseness was being lost. People began seeking out traditions they could hold on to. One such “tradition” was feminine language; to be Japanese — and, more importantly, to be unique from Western cultures — meant speaking in a gendered language. This was just one of many “traditions” that sprang from times of rapid transformation (it happened again post-World War II, during the Allied Occupation, with the Nihonjinron (theories about the Japanese studies).

Do You Need to Conform to These Norms as a Non-Native Speaker?

This is entirely my own opinion and experience as a foreign woman in Japan. What I believe may not be what you believe, and that’s okay. 

I use feminine speech in Japanese. My pronoun is “watashi,” and I do end sentences in “dawa” or “nano” like a Japanese woman would. It would feel downright weird or wrong to change my pronoun to a masculine one like “boku” or “ore.” I do use masculine “zo” or “ze” to end sentences when I’m kinda joking around or fired up about something.

However, I have long been aware of the inherent deference that lies in the polite “watashi” and the lack of assertion hidden within “nano,” etc., and I am not a demure or unassertive person by nature. 

It’s for this reason and a couple others that I often temper my demure feminine Japanese by using more casual Japanese instead of desu/masu. I’m not going up to the client and speaking to them like they’re my bros, of course. For them I always use desu/masu and observe all societal norms. But around my coworkers and people that know me, I will use casual Japanese. 

By using casual Japanese, I do the following things:

I attempt to show, “I think of you as on the same level as me.”

I attempt to express the camaraderie and warmth I have for the person I am talking to. (In English, a more warm and casual way of talking is seen as friendly and polite, and I consciously hold that mentality when speaking Japanese, despite knowing Japanese doesn’t operate under the same logic. I’ve also explained that mentality to my Japanese coworkers.)

I attempt to show that...hmm. For lack of a better word, I’m not gonna take any shit from anyone. haha.

Caveat 1: Even though I tend to speak more casual Japanese, I still ALWAYS put -san at the end of every coworker’s name. Without fail. Not adding -san would be very rude and putting them beneath me, which I do not want to do under any circumstance.

Caveat 2: While I do speak mostly in casual Japanese, I do everything in my power to say things directly and honestly but with tact.

A regular Japanese person maybe couldn’t get away with this casual Japanese in the workplace. But since I’m a gaijin, I get a sort of pass. “Ah, she’s an American and they speak their minds.” Or “Ah, Americans do that thing where they speak casually to people they are comfortable with.” 

I believe that this strategy has worked in my favor. Nearly everyone in the project comes to me for advice on...well. Damn near anything, at one point or another. Things I’m not even remotely related to. I think they do this because they know I’ll give their question a hard think and a genuine answer. This could be reflected in my personality, but a large part of our personality is illustrated by the way we speak.

Just some food for thoughts. How do you feel about the distinction between feminine and masculine speech in Japanese? How do you use it?

[mirandalinotto]

Why I hate the CAOS video essay that came out a week ago

Did anyone else get extremely angry at the way Friendly Space Ninja discussed all of the female characters in CAOS? like, don't get me wrong... I understand most of the points he's making, and agree with a lot of what he says in the video essay (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: A Frustrating Waste of Potential), but when he speaks about Zelda, Lilith, Prudence, and Rosalind, I don't know... i just get a bad vibe. It's like he's doing a "bad faith” analysis, and it bothers me, because CAOS has so many parts to validly criticize, and yet he missed the mark more often than he hit it, in my humble opinion.

He basically says the same thing over and over again: that the actors were good, but the characters were bad, because they were all boring, shallow, and one-note, or whatever... and it's like... dude? of all the things you could say (especially about Zelda and Lilith in particular), the characters being “boring" isn't really the biggest criticism one ought to have of this show...?!? and it isn't even accurate?

Like why aren't you criticizing the trauma porn? Why aren't you criticizing the butchering of Lilith's mythology? Why are you ignoring all of the character development that does happen (particularly with regard to Zelda, whom he actively seems to hate) in favor of insisting none of these characters have an arc? It’s not beneficial to anyone if you’re going to criticize a show’s characters by actively misrepresenting them!

Which brings me to my next point: one of the things that bothered me the most was just how surface-level his analysis was. You could tell he hadn’t watched the show in a while, and clearly wasn’t interested in celebrating any part of it—which is okay, if you just want to roast Roberto for an hour, be my guest—but why does it feel like this video essay was the YouTube video equivalent of writing a book report on a novel you only skimmed…? He made a lot of generalizations that made it seem like he only watched the first season, and then paid no attention to the rest.

For example, some of his arguments are just so random and insignificant? Like why does he make shallow observations the basis of whole arguments about characters, such as when he goes on about how Zelda says 'Praise Satan' too much and “it got old"...?!?! Like what kind of bullshit analysis is that...? How is that even close to being something worthy of talking about in a video essay that is an hour and twenty minutes long...? Why are you taking such a trivial aspect of her character and making it a talking point in a video that is already much longer than it needs to be?

And while I agree with what he said about Lilith's motivations being inconsistent/unclear at times, and that Zelda's character growth wasn't as linear or developed as it could be, it really feels like he didn't even try to understand these characters at all. I realize I'm biased, because all I do is try to understand them and explain their motivations... but still! If you're making a video about the wasted potential of CAOS, why do you immediately dismiss almost the entire female cast, pretty much out of hand, when they're the foundation of the show...? They ARE the potential?! The good parts about them ought to have been given some credit? Like why does he fail to acknowledge all of the trauma these female characters went through that very much informs their decisions, and instead makes it sound like nothing the characters do make sense? While I might not always agree with every choice these characters made, there usually is something driving them to do whatever it is they’re doing, and particularly in the case of Lilith and Zelda, it’s not that hard to understand why they make irrational decisions sometimes, when they’re literally surrounded by abusers and everything is constantly blowing up in their faces.

Also, something smaller that really pisses me off is that he includes Zelda sending Blackwood out of the room during the birth of the twins as an example of the show's misandry and "bad feminism," but that's literally not what that moment is about? If he stopped to think about it for a moment, the moment is perfectly logical. Zelda is a midwife, who was most likely trained in the 1800s, when men literally weren't meant to be around when the the birth happened, so how is she being a misandrist just by doing what she’s been taught, especially when they’re all in a crisis situation? Men not being allowed in the room is an established part of the history of women’s health/childbirth, and it isn’t exactly obscure knowledge! Men used to be forced/asked to sit in the waiting room during labor, and before that, when home births were the status quo, midwives definitely wouldn’t allow men in the room as a matter of course. In fact, it wasn't until the 1970s that men being in the delivery room became a more normalized practice. So, men being present/witnessing a birth is a far more "modern" thing than I think people realize, and the exclusion of them from the delivery room has absolutely NOTHING to do with women hating men...? like fuck off with that “misandry” argument, in this instance. do some research before you start reaching that far, so as to act like Zelda was being hateful for simply following “industry standards,” if you want to call it that. There are medical articles that still come out to this very day that argue that no one should be in the delivery room besides the person giving birth and the doctors and nurses, because the husband/partner often gets in the way and distracts the medical team at critical moments. (Also men tend to faint or get sick at the sight of the birth, which then forces the team to split their focus in order to see to the unconscious man on the floor.)

And don't get me started on the anti-Zelda rant he goes on towards the end!! While I agree very much that Zelda is a flawed character, he uses an example of her degrading Hilda that isn't even something she actually did?! It's from a dream sequence!?!?!? like dude, did you even watch these episodes/scenes before you talked about them?!? He uses the example of dream-Zelda criticizing Hilda's appearance as a reason why Zelda is such a bitch, and I'm like... seriously? that literally wasn't her? just because Zelda said it in Hilda's nightmare, doesn't mean Zelda said it in real life, and should be criticized for it...?!

But yes, Zelda is abusive to her sister, and classist, and rude, and many of the things that he says--but when he tries to argue that because she's a woman, nobody cares that she's like that, and it’s a problem, because that’s evidence of more misandry… that’s where he loses me. He sees it as yet another issue with Roberto's writing—that he gives qualities that would be condemned in a male character to a female character, and allows that woman to be one of the "good guys" ...but yet again, dude... you're completely missing the point?!? Women are allowed to be flawed, without you seeing it as some gross failure of feminism?

He also at one point claims that Zelda resents Ambrose, and hates having him around, when I would argue Zelda actually really values Ambrose and has a close relationship to him...? Like did we even watch the same show?

I didn't expect to get this heated about a video essay that made a lot of other points that I agreed with (mainly the dragging of Roberto parts). But in my opinion, this guy got really offended by Roberto's fake feminism (which is valid), but then proceeded to tear down all of the female characters for an hour and twenty minutes straight...?! All he did was talk about how they're all misandrists and shallow characters and therefore the show isn't worth watching? like okay... but here's the thing... plenty of women have made it through shows that have misogyny at their very core, and have still managed to find the good points...? Game of Thrones is like the most popular show of all time, even though there's misogyny in every aspect of it, for historical “realism" purposes (*rolls eyes*). Zelda and Lilith's defining qualities aren't solely related to hating men, so it really pisses me off that he made it seem like that's all that shapes them, and that every time they insult or manipulate a man, it’s completely unjustified.

idk. I feel like I just watched an 83-minute roast on a show I love despite it's flaws, and that roast wasn’t mostly focused on all of the biggest flaws that I would’ve brought up, but rather on how all of the female characters are terrible and their misandry makes the show unwatchable.

So let me get this straight: you're hating on the female characters... in order to show how much of a feminist YOU are, as opposed to Roberto...?

Wow. Much feminism. Very enlightened analysis.

[giftofshewbread]

Tribulation Fodder

 By David Hitt    Published on: August 3, 2021

It seems to be a cruel pejorative, but “Tribulation fodder” describes pretty well the destiny of those people who will march like lemmings into the Tribulation without a second thought. While many will find themselves in the Tribulation because they discounted their need for salvation and the Gospel’s provision for them, Tribulation fodder are in conscious, open rebellion against God. Given their insanity, a surprising number of them are actually looking forward to the Tribulation, whether they know it or not.

The Apostle Paul described these people well: “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (1 Timothy 3:1-5a, KJV).

Any attempt to improve Paul’s words of wisdom to Timothy would be a fool’s errand. However, it is useful to frame the characteristics he expressed in a more modern context. So without further ado (as they say), here is a list of various characteristics – traits, behaviors, and worldviews – exhibited by those directly steering into the teeth of God’s wrath and their own destruction:

Substitute morality – They are “Woke.” Woke is a worldview, a sanctimonious stew of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, LGBTQ celebration, militant feminism, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, radical environmentalism, globalism, scientism, political correctness, “equality” (not of opportunity, but of outcome), and “diversity/inclusion” (except, of course, with respect to a Biblical worldview). They have perverted the definitions of “truth,” “opinion,” “kindness,” “tolerance,” “love,” “hate,” the cross, the rainbow, and so many other words and symbols that would otherwise frustrate them, to the degree that their original meaning is lost. In so many ways, their woke worldview stands in polar opposition to God’s law.

Spirituality – They espouse an amorphous hodgepodge of various Eastern, pagan, and New Age works-based religions without any meaningful standards, form, accountability, duty, or theology. They flatter themselves as being good and becoming increasingly perfect and, despite all evidence to the contrary, exude the “light and love” their religion asks of them.

Conformity – They have a pack mentality. When they do voice an original or nonconformal thought, it necessarily involves a trivial topic, such as a favorite sports team, wine, or vacation spot. They derive their existential worth by being part of movements (no matter how specious), appropriating the virtue of the movement as their own. Their need for conformity leads them to rationalize authoritarianism, even entertain totalitarianism.

Cancel culture – As they take conformity to its logical extreme, they embrace cancel culture. History that offends them, even if they could allow it to educate them, must be eradicated. No matter how positive someone’s life has been, that person is fair game to doxxed, bullied, protested, deprived of a career, and physically harmed if he has ever in his life said or done anything, even privately or in jest, that now offends these self-appointed thought police. The message from these people is clear: they will destroy you with their light and love if you dare invade their safe space. Their end justifies their means.

Lack of critical thinking – Their first instinct is to obey without question, particularly when their peers are complying. They seem incapable of rigorous analysis and are inept at identifying false premises, baseless arguments, logical inconsistencies, and unsupported conclusions. They parrot without reflection the instructions government, news, academic, and health authorities give them, so often because their “teachers” rewarded them more for obedience than sound thought.

Virtue signaling – They not only pride themselves as being virtuous (as they conveniently define virtues to be), they constantly display the virtues they so admire in themselves so others can join in the adoration. They tend to spew their opinions indiscriminately, even when nobody asked for them. In an ever-growing phenomenon, they overtly wear their values and identities on their sleeves in the form of tattoos and clothing and jewelry designed to convey messages about themselves.

Psychological projection – They lack perception and the disciplines of self-restraint and introspection. Without any sense of irony, they baselessly attribute their own moral failings to others. Lacking any truth for the accusations they make, they are relegated to ad hominem attacks, and they defend themselves by expressing hurt feelings and tantrums.

Narcissism – They are relentlessly self-absorbed and crave the attention of others. They lack empathy, and often even sympathy. Social media and other kinds of superficial, inconsequential social interaction are critical to their self-esteem and desire to be heard, accepted, and celebrated as the singular person they believe themselves to be. They seek to be “influencers” to their “followers” and “friends.” Lacking any internal reward mechanism, they need constant external affirmation of their worth. They crave “likes,” “views,” and “subscribes.” They presume, without evidence, that all reasonable people would agree with them and that anyone questioning their opinion is hateful or in need of reeducation. Often, they dehumanize those holding contrary views.

Epicurean consumerism – They obsess over the perceived quality and authenticity of the food, drink, exercise, leisure activity, books, sports, TV shows, movies, clothes, cars, and homes they consume. The experiences they’ve had or things they own define who they are. Rather than seeking a life, they seek a lifestyle. They value recreation and pleasure over work and service to others. For this reason, they have trouble committing to one another. For them, “love” is the result of personal fulfillment, not sacrifice, and marriages are mechanisms of temporary convenience.

Exhibitionism – Their narcissism and perceived conformity to accepted social norms and virtues, aggravated by their lack of critical thinking skills, cause them to place little value on privacy. They gladly put their lives on display without contemplating the evil ends to which their personal data may be put. They fail to understand a key lesson of history: authoritarianism arises when citizens willingly surrender liberty to gain comfort.

Technology – They adopt new technologies because they ease life and increase happiness, even when those technologies generate profound control and privacy issues. They are fixated on novelty and fashion and so often want the latest technology just to make themselves look good to others. As with so many other things, they are blind to the ramifications of surrounding themselves with devices capable of tracking them, listening to them, and watching them.

Every one of these characteristics plays into the hands of the coming New World Order government, religion and economy. Enabled by the Internet and 5G networks and Smartphone, camera, biometric, digital currency, robotic, artificial intelligence, pharmaceutical, and genetic engineering technology, the New World Order will be empowered by the very people they control. If these poor souls ever manage to understand their dire circumstance, it will be a miracle. In fact, nothing less than the miracle of salvation will deliver these people from certain destruction.

[shalebridge-cradle]

Bisclavret Round-Up

Unholy took about three months to write. Fairy Tale took five. Hindsight took six.

Bisclavret took nineteen, and that should be the biggest indicator to you that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

This was my first venture into another fandom, and out of my comfort zone (though not entirely – supernatural elements for life). I’m not sure whether or not I did the source material and its characters justice, however, especially with the supernatural element I went with (Wolves are believed to have gone extinct in England in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century), but I will try to explain my reasoning behind some of my decisions here.

The Characters

My main concern.

We get a good view of Monty’s thought process throughout the show, through the framing device of writing his memoirs and views of his private affairs. Phoebe and Sibella, on the other hand, are characters we don’t get much of in the way of examination – we only see them through Monty’s eyes until the very end, where they reveal themselves as more than that.

Sibella is a bit self-centred, and extremely practical when it comes to how she sees her place in society, which implies some self-confidence issues. Phoebe is more idealistic, and independent, but still hopes for a match fit for a storybook. But, towards the end, Sibella demonstrates she is more than a vain god-digger, afraid of losing the man she loves and willing to potentially compromise her image to save him, while Phoebe shows that she is not nearly as innocent or naive as the people around her consider her to be.

I interpreted the two women’s characterisations as thus; Sibella believes she is bound by society’s view of her. Phoebe does not. This, I believed, needed to be the focus.

Which is where we introduce…

The Whole Werewolf Thing

“[Post-modern Gothic] warns us to be suspicious of monster hunters, monster makers, and above all, discourses invested in purity and innocence. The monster always represents the disruption of categories, the destruction of boundaries, and the presence of impurities and so we need monsters and we need to recognize and celebrate our own monstrosities.”  - J Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters

I gave a number of possible causes of the D’Ysquith ‘family curse’, if it is one – the actions of the first countess, Gregory D’Ysquith burning down a monastery (divine punishment is a possible cause), but I never gave a specific answer. I think I might be operating on the logic of the original Bisclavret – it’s irrelevant.

The reason there isn’t is because I intended it as a metaphor – which I think I’ve made clear with my chapter updates here (though you don’t have to read it that way, Death of the Author and all that), but I never quite decided and what it was a metaphor for. In terms of this particular narrative, it can be read as a metaphor for feminism, and/or a metaphor for same-sex attraction.

Feminism

Edwardian Era England, where A Gentleman’s Guide takes place, is not overly-represented in fiction. Not surprising, considering it’s a pretty short time period between the surprisingly long Victorian era and the world-changing events of World War One. However, when you think of that time period, a certain group tends to come to mind – the suffragettes.

(Just a note. Agatha D’Ascoyne, the character from Kind Hearts and Coronets who inspired Hyacinth D’Ysquith in the musical, was a suffragette. She has no lines, apart from “Shush!” – Deeds, Not Words.)

We know what these people wanted – Votes for Women. They were not prepared to wait for society to change to get it, and when peaceful protest was ignored, they began to act out. They refused to fit into their role of quiet, demure, loyal wives, and for some groups, this was seen as threatening. Anti-suffragette cartoons of the time often depicted these women as old, ugly and/or selfish for wanting similar rights to men instead of accepting their place as a ‘lesser being’.

The point I am trying to make is, being in defiance of the role you are expected to play – which Sibella is afraid to show – was seen by many to be ugly. Beastly.

Phoebe runs Henry’s country estate for him. Phoebe flaunts societal expectations by proposing to Monty, instead of waiting for him to propose, the ‘proper’ way to do things. While she is feminine, she does not fit the idea of what a woman ‘should be’.

Sibella makes a point to meet her obligations as a wife, though she does surreptitiously carry on an affair. She sacrifices her own happiness to get what she wants in a socially acceptable way. She has no intention of leaving Lionel in the source material, but she convinces herself that a rich, good-looking, polite man – what society thinks of as the ideal male – is what she wants, and realises on her wedding day that it isn’t.

And goes through with it anyway.

When she can no longer fit that mould, when she refuses to go along with Lionel’s plan to leech off the countess, when she undermines and argues with her husband, that’s when things start happening. Indeed, her ‘beastly’ outbursts manifest as standing up for herself. She ends the story as a much happier and self-assured person than she was at the beginning, and attempts to bring justice to other women.

Same-Sex Attraction

This is a bit more straightforward. We’re coming right off the back of the Victorian era here, where Oscar Wilde and others like him got their lives ruined. Same-sex relationships aren’t viewed in a positive light at all at this time – you like the same gender? Off to prison with you, deviant!

As people that were (and often still are) villainised, misunderstood and attacked for the crime of existing, some members of the LGBT community reclaim monsters such as vampires, werewolves and the Babadook as their own as a means of subverting their image in a heteronormative society. Being ‘monstrous’ is not bad. Being different is fine. You may feel malformed and wrong, but you are not. You and your quirks are accepted.

For some, the ones to fear are those who appear in the daylight.

Sibella, for all her talk of being a monster, only fights back when threatened. Morton has a heart attack when put in the position of his victims, subverting the formula he’s used to. Lionel, fearing that Sibella will leave him and damage his image, resorts to violence against Sibella and several other women he sees as substitutes for her. Mary attempts to murder Sibella for getting in the way of a monogamous man-woman relationship. In her eyes, Sibella is an irredeemable villain, but Phoebe can be ‘fixed’.

If you want to look deeper into this link between horror and the LGBT community, here’s a video essay discussing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender representation in horror films.

There are only a few non-metaphorical references to werewolves. The wolf head in Eugenia’s dower house is a family member – as previously mentioned, wolves went extinct in England during the reign of Henry VII. St Hubert’s Key is a charm that more often than not looks like a nail, and was supposed to be able to rid the body of disease caused by a dog or wolf bite. There is some science behind this – the metal was heated before being pressed to the wound, and, if the subject was at risk of contracting rabies from the injury, the heat would likely sterilise and cauterise the potential infection site.

Not the First Murder-y Heir

There are a couple of characters named or directly taken from Israel Rank – Autobiography of a Criminal, the inspiration for Kind Hearts and Coronets and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. I’ve compared these works before, so I’ll just go over those that appear here.

Esther (Lane) – The third object of Israel Rank’s affections, and a governess. Knows more than she’s letting on in Israel Rank, and in this story as well.

James “Jim” Morton – Appears for about a page to explain Israel’s disillusionment with the ideal male – while Morton seems great to some, he really isn’t. Since Jim only appears as a child in the book, his characterisation here is drastically different.

Lord and Lady Pebworth – Almost directly lifted from the book, with Lady Pebworth being a bad singer and Lord Pebworth an older gentleman who lets his wife get away with a lot. The difference here is that Israel introduces the Hollands to the Pebworths, while the Pebworths are hoping the Hollands introduce them to Lord and Lady Navarro.

Sir Anthony Cross – Quiet, very well-off, slightly older gentleman who is quite taken by Sibella, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Acquaintance of the Pebworths. Pretty much the same guy.

Ethel D’Ysquith (Gascoyne) – An ancestor Israel is quite taken with, not only due to the resemblance between the two. He’s made the 3rd Earl of Highhurst because I didn’t feel like making an imaginary preceding title (Monty is only the 9th Earl, while the 10th Earl Gascoyne is about five generations before Israel – Ethel was the 6th Earl) and the 2nd Earl, Roland, had already been named in the musical. Phoebe’s description of him is meant to heavily imply he was also a werewolf. If I had read the book before fleshing out the D’Ysquith family tree, he would have taken the role that the first countess plays in the narrative’s events (Ethel Gascoyne hid in a tower with an Italian magician for 20 years).

Kate Falconer – The character who would later be known as ‘Boat Girl’ in Kind Hearts and Coronets and Evangeline Barley in A Gentleman’s Guide. Her great crime is to go on holiday with her boyfriend, and gets poisoned for her troubles. She survives here, and I used her to try a formatting technique (while she speaks, none of her dialogue is in quotes: in a way, she is voiceless).

(Sir) Cheveley Drummond, (Lady) Enid Branksome, and Catherine Goodsall – only mentioned briefly. Drummond is described as handsome and ‘interesting’ by Israel, Lady Enid is a young woman from a penniless but aristocratic family, and Catherine Goodsall in an actress whose abusive husband was beaten so badly by a Gascoyne he joined the navy and never came back to land.

In addition, Lionel’s later characterisation comes directly from Kind Hearts and Coronets, since he gets  almost none in the musical. His breakdown in Chapter 11 follows his emotional journey when asking for a loan – affability, begging, threatening suicide, insults and physical violence.

Literary References:

Not always relevant, but there is a wide enough variety that I’m collecting them.

Every chapter title, and the tagline of the work, comes from Manners and Social Usages by Mary Elizabeth (Mrs. John) Sherwood. It’s a bit out of date by the time of this story (written in 1884), but Sherwood does have some great phrases in her etiquette handbook.

Ruddigore is mentioned in chapter 2, only because it is a musical theatre production (opera) where ancestors play a role and family expectations are subverted.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Hamlet. It’s Hamlet.

When in the chronicle of wasted time, I see descriptions of the fairest wights, and beauty making beautiful old rhyme in praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights...  Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Number 106.

I desire, and I crave… Fragment from Sappho’s poetry.

The countess closes her book; something by a George Reynolds. George W. M. Reynolds wrote Wagner the Wher-Wolf (with that spelling) in 1857.

I met a lady in the meads, full beautiful, a faery’s child: Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild. La Belle Dame sans Merci (The beautiful lady without mercy) by John Keats.

Sibella also briefly mentions Algernon Blackwood, a supernatural fiction writer who wrote a short story about a werewolf (portrayed quite differently here) that a character in 1909 could have possibly read (the story was first published in 1908).

In addition, the whole story is named after a very early depiction of a sympathetic werewolf, Bisclavret by Marie de France (and the most direct I think I’ve ever been with a title). It depicts, naturally, a werewolf (who is also a knight, because not being human doesn’t disqualify you from doing that – cutting social commentary for the 12th century) who is trapped in his wolf form after being tricked by his wife and her lover. Through chivalric behaviour to the king on a hunt, he works himself back into the royal court and, when his former wife pays a visit, bites off her nose. The king thinks the sudden aggressive behaviour from his pet prompts further investigation, the wife reveals all, and the knight is restored to human form. Also, all of the wife’s children are born without noses from then on. Lionel getting his nose bitten off is a reference to this poem.

Uncategorised Trivia

This work was written with the UK spellings of certain words, because it takes place in England. Previous works all took place in the US, and so used US spelling.

Les Patineurs Valse is French for The Skater’s Waltz. Reference to Asquith Jr. and Evangeline Barley.

All of the racehorse names Sibella finds are either variations, anagrams or synonyms of actual racehorses in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Sir Hugh is Sir Huon, Gil Owen is Neil Gow, Irish Lass is Irish Lad, Supervision is Oversight and Pinnacle is Meridian.

Lionel was right to be concerned about Phoebe’s flower arrangement. Red begonias represent love, lavender-coloured heathers represent admiration and loneliness (and are a reference to another fandom I write for), tuberoses are symbolic of wild or forbidden passion (and was commonly used as a funeral flower), and verbena is reference to romance and sweet memories. The dead foliage is meant to mean sadness. Overall, the intended meaning is I miss you, my love.

[innuendostudios]

The next video in my series on Alt-Right rhetorical strategies. You can help this series come out regularly, as well as support my other work, by backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, there's this feminist media critic whose work you respect. Being an internet-savvy human in the information age, you sometimes share your opinions of her work on your various social media platforms. And you've noticed, whenever you speak positively of her, many different people come out to yell the same handful of things at you.

It usually starts with, "How can you support that conwoman after she stole thousands of dollars from people?"

And you say, "No, she didn't steal anything, she ran a crowdfunding campaign that people contributed willingly to, and overwhelmingly those people seem satisfied with their donations."

And they say, "Yeah, she asked for a hundred thousand dollars for a shitty little project."

And you say, "No, she got a hundred thousand, because people got excited about her work and gave her more than she asked for, but the original pitch was only 10k. Also, how many times have you given that number to people without looking it up?"

And they say, "Yeah, she asked for 10k and then never finished anything."

And you say, "No, she finished the project earlier this year. Of course it took longer than it was originally pitched, you get ten times what you ask for you’re kind of obligated to make a bigger project, because, if you didn't, that would be running away with ninety grand..."

Now, by this time you’ve noticed your interlocutor's position has changed from "she stole from people" to "she asked too much to begin with" to "she took too long to deliver" as though these are all the same argument. You also notice the pattern of the conversation: he says something short, quippy, and wrong, you give a detailed correction, he says something else short, quippy, wrong, and only tangentially related to his last point, and the cycle repeats itself. This goes on and on.

And it's not, you've noticed, just this discussion; you find this manner of argument often whenever you express left-of-center beliefs. You talk about the election, someone says you vote Democrat because you must have a conservative father you hate; you talk about polyamory, someone says if you have more than one female partner you must be a sexist; or they just say you're faking a non-regional accent. (I don’t understand that one, either.)

The running theme here is all these people who ostensibly want a frank exchange of ideas spend a lot more time making accusations than asking questions. Because, why ask what you believe when they can tell you what you believe and make you correct them? And if you ever don’t correct them, must be because they’re right.

And you're not naive; you see what's going on here. This isn't about conversation, it's about boxes. When you say something cogent that they don't agree with, and they get the sinking feeling that you might start making sense, they need a reason not to listen to you. So they reach for a box to stick you in: dishonest feminism, fake progressivism, daddy-issue liberalism. No one in those boxes is worth listening to, which means, as long as they've got you in one, they're not at risk of having their minds changed. This isn’t even an argument with you, not really; their presenting themselves with arguments for why they don't have to listen to you.

So your first reflex is to defy their expectations. "Actually, my dad was a draft-dodging hippie who told me he loved me every day." "And I never said what genders my partners are but I promise they're all feminists." "As for my accent- actually, I don't know what to do with the accent thing." But the point is, “I refuse to fit in your box.” And if they can't put you in one, if they can't dismiss you outright, they'll have to engage with your argument.

But if you've spent any time arguing with angry dudes online you know what I'm about to say: They don’t. This accusatory, condescending attitude never falters. Because a technique that has permeated anti-progressivism is to Never Play Defense.

Now don't get me wrong, what I said about the Right fitting the Left into simplified boxes as a way of preserving their own egos, I do think that's a thing, at least for many people much of the time. And I think the reassurance it brings is why the technique stays so popular. But that framing is about how individual people are feeling in isolated moments, and leaves out the larger game that's being played. Because there is a long-term strategic value to never playing defense, and it's less to do with arguments than with attitude.

From your perspective, this debate about the feminist is a joke. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about, he comes in hot without confirming any of his assumptions, the whole conversation is you repeatedly schooling an ignorant dipshit. But that's only if you’re the fool who listens to what’s actually being said. Never Play Defense is a strategy that looks past language to posture; the tone, word choice, even the expressions on your faces. If you half-focus your eyes and look not at the words but the flow of the conversation, you can see the dynamic at play:

He says his short, quippy statement, and you give your detailed rebuttal. He then picks a single point from your response and attacks that as the new subject. Now, to an onlooker, the logical brain would register that he's leaving 90% of your argument on the table, and that, by changing positions, he's conceding he lost the first round. But the lizard brain notices that he's always making the accusations, always in the dominant position, that he's always acting and you're always reacting. Regardless of what is said, he displays all the outward signs of winning. So, on a purely emotional level, he leaves the impression of being right.

I have never had an argument look like this that wasn’t in public. This is a technique that means speaking not so much to the other person as to the people watching. Liberals tend to operate as though voters are beings of pure reason, and neglect that rational people still have emotions, and those emotions factor into what they believe. And that long after this argument is over, when people only half-remember what was said, what lingers on is what impressions the speakers made.

Ronald Reagan coined the phrase, "If you're explaining, you're losing." The trick is, if he's always accusing, then you're always explaining.

This technique of winning by looking like you’re winning is not new, and, historically, it's been used by both parties. But modern liberals seem especially susceptible to it because it plays on one of their big weaknesses, which is - and I say this with love - the liberal fantasy of putting someone in their place.

Any time a free speech warrior gets the Bill of Rights quoted to them, when a racist gets "historical accuracy" explained by an actual historian, liberals take screencaps. We put it on Storify. We pass that shit around like theater popcorn. We live for the day an ignorant prick gets dunked on.

I remind you: this was the central conceit of an entire TV show. [West Wing clip.]

But let me ask you: in all these scenarios, who's doing all the explaining?

The reason scenes like this are so satisfying is precisely because they activate the emotions. Everyone wants to be Joseph Welch telling off McCarthy, where an appeal to reason looks like winning. But the Right has learned that, if you never look like you’re losing, you can convince a lot of people that you’re not. And, if you keep your statements short and punchy, people will remember what you said better than they remember the long explanation of why it’s untrue. If done correctly, you might even convince yourself you know what you’re talking about.

Now, again, this is not exclusive to the Right - this is how most teenagers argue regardless of their politics, where it’s less important to be right than it is to be better than someone. But mixed with Control the Conversation - see previous video - the Right has a full-bodied cocktail for manipulating how the Left argues.

But where it gets dangerous is in how the Alt-Right has capitalized on this.

This argument isn’t just about sticking a woman in the Lying Feminism box so she doesn’t have to be listened to, it’s also signaling to anyone watching what box they should stick her in. Even if an onlooker recognizes that she literally did not con anyone out of their money, the idea that how much she asked for and how long she took to deliver are relevant to her credibility is still planted in their heads. It subtly suggests that, the next time they feel threatened by a female media critic, maybe they should look at how much money she makes, how long her work takes to produce; maybe they don’t have to listen to her, because they’ve got this handy box.

So what’s most valuable to the Alt-Right is not who wins or loses any individual argument, it’s the mechanics of the argument itself; it’s the boxes. Over the last several years the far Right has pushed hard on a number of reductive categories: the Cultural Marxism box, the Reverse Racism box, even terms like “beta” and “mangina” are just shorthands for the Failed Masculinity box. The Alt-Right is a box factory, putting huge swaths of Leftist rhetoric, most especially that that would rebut their core positions, into categories where they can be summarily ignored.

These myths have power if and only if they are immediately recognizable to a lot of people. One function of this aggressive posturing is that they want to provoke an argument, to be so pompous that you’re itching to publicly take this asshole down, which gives that asshole access to your followers. It’s about them introducing a myth to your audience and reinforcing that myth for theirs. And that myth gets spread even when you feel like you’re winning.

I can’t tell you the best way to deal with this, but I do know one way, which is to keep control of your own story. When someone comes out the gate with accusations, it’s a big red flag that they are not arguing in good faith. You are not required to argue with them. When someone says something untrue, you can just tell your audience what the truth is without acknowledging the lie or the one repeating it. A detailed explanation lands a lot better when it’s not being contrasted with a sound bite. Decide for yourself how your audience gets acquainted with a popular fiction, and never be too proud to delete a comment.

In this political climate, these debates have real impact on real people’s lives. They’re not, in fact, a game of football. So if someone tries to force you to play defense, you don’t have to play.

[alexaped-blog]

http://content.ebscohost.com/ContentServer.asp?T=P&P=AN&K=113204411&S=R&D=a9h&EbscoContent=dGJyMNHr7ESep7U4zOX0OLCmr1Gep7VSsqy4TLKWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGut1GurLBOuePfgeyx44Dt6fIA

In this entry, I will examine the critical questions: What gender/sexuality norm is constructed or undone in this artifact, how is it rhetorically done, and/or how does it promote a dominant ideology over a marginalized group or push back against the ideology or gender norms? Is it productive/unproductive (ethical/unethical)? 

 To investigate these questions, I examined a cover story from a finance magazine about ‘women’s approach to investing.’ The Secret of Women Investors uses rhetoric to perpetuate a gender norm which shapes women into being a certain type of investor. This gender norm has some complexities relating to ethics. This article is ethical because it gives credit to women for their success in the stock market and is grounded in logical, sound ideas. Yet, at the same time, it is also unethical because it advances a certain version of ‘women’ which is grounded in heteronormative gender stereotypes. 

  The Secret of Women Investors is a cover story for a popular finance magazine. The author, Kathy Kristoff, is trying to pinpoint women’s approach to investing. The article is filled with many insightful statistics, facts, and general information regarding female investors. While this article has positive implications for female investors, it is important to acknowledge the way that rhetoric, along with statistics, shape and perpetuate a certain version of womanhood which many women want to deviate from anyway. 

 Judith Butler, a well-known philosopher and gender theorist, has written very influential works on Queer Theory, gender, etc. She believes that gender is performative, and that gender exists through a style of repitized acts. She argues that through gender regulations, a gendered subject emerges (Butler, 41). Butler destabilizes the categories of ‘men’ and ‘women,’ by explaining the many ways that those categories are not as static as we would like to think. Women, as a unifying term, has long been used to advance the rights and representation of certain, very specific groups of people on a political level, but as Butler wisely pointed out “politics and representation are controversial terms” (Butler, 3). Who, more specifically, benefits from using ‘women’ as a stable, unifying term? While Butler’s ideas/theories destabilizes notions about gender, we still exists in a world where gender matters very much. Gender norms are rooted in gendered systems of oppression with very real implications on our everyday lives. Gender is something that all people must navigate and work through in order to function with ease in society. With that being said, the rhetoric we use regarding gender also matters very much. It can perpetuate gender norms, or it can break them. 

 The Secret of Women Investors rests entirely on the assumption that women share qualities relating to safety, qualities which are entirely distinct from men. The title alone, The Secret of Women Investors, implies that women have some kind of  private, occult agenda when it comes to investing.This article reiterates the same fundamental idea over and over again: women approach risk differently than men do. Women do more research, trade less, and remain calmer (Kristoff, 44). The problem here is that qualities pertaining to ‘safety’ are not a fixed, essential characteristics that women universally identify with or even want to identify with. Some women hate the idea of being characterized as having the qualities that come along with safety, and other women simply don’t find that kind of rhetoric relatable. 

  Take for example, the characteristic of being calm, a characteristic which often goes hand in hand with the idea of safety. Being calm, like almost all other identifying characteristics used to categorize gendered bodies, is a fluid, flexible, variant phenomenon. Sure, a women may feel calm in a certain specific settings, like during a market upheaval. This same woman, who feels different emotions in different situations, may not feel calm when her child is being bullied at school or when a new job promotion presents itself. Investment rhetoric implies that women are intrinsically passive, which is a gross oversimplification and a heteronormative generalization. Investment rhetoric is not only shaping how women invest, it is also shaping the idea of what ‘women’ is.   

 The Secret of Women Investors is packed with a myriad of statistics. One example being, “studies show that men are more inclined to behave like baseball sluggers, who swing for the fences, even if it means running the risk of striking out far more often. Women, by contrast, are more like contact hitters, who are satisfied with a string of singles” (Kristof, 46). Another statistic says that, “Openfolio’s data show that in 2015, men traded an average of 7.4 times, while women traded an average of 5.1 times” (Kristoff, 47). It is important to acknowledge that these statistics speak to some version of reality, rooted in systems of oppression pertaining to gender. Yes, individuals who self-identify as women, statistically speaking, tend to play the market ‘safer’ than individuals who self-identify as men. With that being said, it is important to acknowledge another, consequential reality: modern day investment rhetoric advances a certain type of womanhood, one which makes women define themselves as ‘safe’ investors. 

 Ian Hacking, a Canadian philosopher who specializes in the philosophy of science, has written multiple works regarding statistical analysis and the classification of people. In one of his shorter works, Making up People, he touches on the subjects which scientists study, saying that, “We think of these kinds of people as definite classes defined by definite properties. As we get to know more about these properties, we will be able to control, help, change, or emulate them better. But it’s not quite like that. They are moving targets because our investigations interact with them, and change them.” In other words, as the title of his essay suggests, our statistics, in essence, are Making up People. In the case of investment rhetoric, statistical analysis are shaping a certain category of women through investment rhetoric. And by studying people in this way, scientists are entirely missing the point because they aren’t studying women. Instead they are studying, and thereby creating, a version of women in which many women think they have to or should fit into. 

 There are both advantages and disadvantages to the narrative about women that this article is promoting. One advantage here, is that this article gives credit where credit is due. It acknowledges the success that women have had in the stock market, and is grounded in many logical facts/ideas. The big problem here, the major disadvantage, is that articles, statistics, investment rhetoric, etc, perpetuate existing stereotypes about women and shape women into believing that if they want to invest, they have to fit a certain mold. In other words, it’s a give and take. The words we use about gender are inherently problematic, so how do we write about gendered issues without perpetuating those problematic ideas? The answer: very carefully. Investment rhetoric needs constant, continual critical evaluation and critiquing knowing the limitations of the discourse. 

 At the end of the day, articles like The Secret of Women Investors, and statistics about female investors in general, while grounded in good intentions, inevitably end up shaping a certain version or category of people. In the case of investment rhetoric, the language used shapes women into believing that they are a certain type of investor. Is it bad that women will be shaped to do more research, be more careful, and trade less? Certainly not, but it is important to acknowledge that these characteristics are grounded in heteronormative gender stereotypes which can and should be destabilized long-term. 

 References

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 2015.

Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. Routledge, 2009.

Hacking , Ian. “LRB · Ian Hacking · Making Up People: Clinical Classifications.” London Review of Books, 2006, www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n16/ian-hacking/making-up-people.

KRISTOF, K. (2016). THE SECRETS OF WOMEN INVESTORS. (Cover story). Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, 70(4), 44–50. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=113204411&site=ehost-live

[evilelitest2]

Lets talk about @dismantlexsjwsxfeminist

So for the last few days, I’ve been getting into an argument with @dismantlexsjwsxfeminism, a man who claims to understand feminism but can’t name any of their terms.  Long time viewers know that I tend to do that....a lot, every month or so, I get into a multi post rambling argument with some moron who earnestly believes a 1930 group of film nerds secretly control the world.  Most of you have asked me at some point “Why bother, why engage with the literal worse of human nature”.  @archpaladin​ @chaotic-good-milk-hotel​ @doctorstarky​ @ailedhoo​

 @that-spaz-chick​ seems to find it fun actually, badass

But the point is, all of you have asked me at some point or another, “Why bother with these people, like you aren’t going to change their mind, you aren’t going to alter the conversation, why are you spending so much time on this?

Well, I turns out dear friends, there is a reason.  I am a vindictive bitter human being...wait no, two reasons.  Think of this like recon, I’m learning. Every conversation, no matter how long and weird and strangely repetitive (seriously these people will not answer simple questions) brings me more information.   And now I think I have enough to make my point.   And i’m going to use @dismantlexsjwxfeminism as an example here, I think we should really talk about who he is as a person and how he thinks, because it isn’t all that different from any other of these fucking degenerates think.  

  Because if you’ve interacted with them (@zennistrad understands what i’m talking about) they might seem like people who are trying their best to become cartoon bad guys from a hackneyed cartoon show and...well they are but there is a method to their madness.  

   See, the funny thing about MRAs/Gamergaters/Alt Right folks is that they can come off as interchangeable.   Like, they vary a little bit in terms of how many times they use the word Cuck and which issue they use, but at a certain point they are basically all the same terrible person.  Every argument with them tends to follow the same pattern, and I’ve seen this behavior before.  Talking to cultists, and talking to members of hate groups, they always have this weird, cyclical way of talking, and I want to use them today as an object lesson of how not to behave.  ;

        Step 1: Pretend to be reasonable.  

First they take an argument that looks semi reasonable if you don’t know the details and squint at it funny while drunk.   These usually involve either an individual feminist group or person doing something shitty (which we all know, damns the entire movement because that is how fucking logic work) or a legitimate issue that men actually face and they pretend that feminists are somehow responsible for running the US justice system (because clearly an overwhelmingly male organization is run entirely by women

The Lesson: Get into specifics, don’t deal in vague words, clarify your terminology

   Step 2: Muddle the Issues

If pressed on these issue by offering context, he will immediately phase himself as a defender of the oppressed and do a weird facsimile of a SJW even as he hates SJWs.  He is fighting for the rights of the oppressed and talks a great deal about the ways in which men suffer in the modern world.  Expect a massive list of links copy/pasted from one of the 5 redpill forums that are always on about this, but no context or knowledge within those links (most of which are either out of context, delibearely misleading, or flat out wrong, because you know..alternative facts).  Its like he is imitating progressives in terms of behavior, but here is the critical difference, he doesn’t actually care.  Like he will talk a lot about lack of male abuse shelters or how men get sentenced twice as long or male suicide rates, but if you ask him about that in more detail or talk about major contributors to those problems (like say, toxic masculinity), he will just kinda slink away or move on, or simply say that it’s “The feminists” and not address it.  And that is the core of MRAs, they don’t actually care about men’s issue, just like the Alt Right doesn’t really care about the plight of the working class or the Republican Party doesn’t really care about the Kurds, its sympathy bigotry, intolerance masking itself as simply a form of the oppressed.  

This is what @dismantlexsjwfeminismx is trying to spin, at least to himself, that MRAs are just another facade of progressive politics, just like groups that advocate Gay Rights sometimes run across groups advocating for women’s rights, so too does he imagine himself as another element of said movement except of course more and more intersectionality is becoming in vogue, GMS advocates and feminists learning to address underlying issues in each other’s camps and finding common ground.  And this is actually what @dismantlexsjwxfeminism is the most afraid of.  

  He lives in a status quo that benefits him tremendously, and whenever groups challenge that status quo, they often fall into infighting rather than pool their efforts to challenge him directly.  This is happening less, one of the values of the internet is that various marginalized people are starting to take up each other’s cause as a common unifier, feminists realizing that BLM is something worth supporting and BLM is coming to the aid of muslim Americans.  I mean take this recent trans ban that Trump proposed on twitter (and I have no idea if anything will come of it), considering how small a group trans people are in this country and how much negative associates there are with them, I am honestly shocked by how universally strong the backlash was.  It might not seem this way because Trump is president, Brexit happened and the world is an awful terrible place, but progressivism is growing stronger and becoming more organized because at long last they have figured out the key to their dilemma, getting desperate oppressed groups to find common ground.

  The only one they haven't truly solved is the biggest of them all, getting advocates of racial equality, gender equality, and above all class equality to come together and work as a common unit.  Once that is solved, it is the effective end of conservatism.  

    And in a way, @dismantlexsjwsxfeminism knows this.  He knows that progressives talking to each other will bring an end to the social order he supports.  So he is adapting the guise of a marginalized person to undermine it from within.  Its ironic because clearly the current social order is also hurting him, we should view @dismantlexsjwxfeminism as something of a victim, he is clearly miserable, and  based upon the few bits of personal information he mentions on his tumblr, doesn’t seem to have very stable relationships, in fact his main friend group literally is a bunch of reactionary pricks.  He is basically in a gang, a really sad gang with no street cred who don’t make loads of money or get ton of chicks, but the mentality is the same, he is in a gang.  

And here is the real trick of his little scheme here.  By pretending to be a supporter of men’s issue, he is trying to attack feminism directly, but he is also trying to make feminists distrustful of anybody supporting men’s issues, which will make it less likely for more men to realize how feminism directly helps them.  He is poisoning the well on men’s issues, and it is especially noticeable, because he doesn’t actually care about men’s issue, he is basically an alien to anything involving compassion.  

See, he will cry crocodile tears at male victims of rape or abuse, but he will show absolutely no empathy for any other victims of any other context because...he doesn’t actually have any empathy for other people, including the male victims.  

So you see him post this shit and I don’t normally bother with trigger warnings but seriously, this might be a good time for it.

THank you to @doublecrimes​ for bringing this to my attention

So we have a person who is talking about how much rape hurts men and how little feminists care for the pain of men and yet...he is posting shit that basically says “Fuck you victims”  And that is pretty much a hallmark of MRAs, they basically mimics of compassion but show none of the follow through.  WHich is why for all of their talk of “Men get longer sentences” they don’t actually do shit to solve that, after all, feminists don’t run the justice department, they don’t have shit to do with men getting longer sentences, that was happening back in the 1500s when feminism didn’t exist yet. Because it’s not actually about helping men, or helping anyone for that matter, it’s the paper thin excuse that @dismantlexsjwxfeminism wears like a skin mask to justify to himself how awful of a person he is, anything he does is acceptable if he can pretend its for a cause.

The thing you need to understand about most reactionaries, is that they are generally miserable awful people who are in a lot of pain, for whatever reason, they aren’t happy with their lives right now, instead they are generally a pretty unhappy lot.  And the thing about being in pain, be it pain due to circumstances, or pain due to them fucking up, it doesn’t matter, people in pain can justify almost any behavior very easily. “I’m hurting, therefore i’m the victim” even as they do increasingly horrible things to other people, “I’m in pain, i’m the one who needs to be helped”.  You see this everywhere, from real life gang members, to terrorist members, and war criminals, it’s the same psychology ‘I suffered, so I’m always the victim, nobody else ever gets to be the victim”  

Lesson time: Don’t let MRAs poison the well on men’s issues, if you can address those problems, you can get a lot of men interested in feminism, the MRA movement is an elaborate trap.  

Step Three Conspiracy Theories

After you call them on it, they make broad generalizations about how much power feminists, have, how they all have a singular unified goal of destroying men, but they will resolutely not answer questions, clarify terms or narrow in on specifics.   They talk about feminists the way people who believe in Aliens talk about “The Government” it’s this force of evil that is simultaneously all powerful and deeply incompetent at the same, time, and it doesn’t really have motivations.  Like its evil effectively for its own sake, or because of some long term plan to oppress all men because reasons.  

And thats the thing about @dismantlexsjwfeminismx as a person, he lives in a world where everything is fundamentally simple.  Whatever problems exist in his life that cause him to spend massive amounts of time online trying to debunk feminism (and feel free to speculate), he feels like he has found the root of life’s ills, feminism.  For what ever reason, he has created this imaginary boogieman of a conspiracy called feminism which controls large swaths of the world but also never seems to get its goals accomplished.  I mean if feminists actually controlled the US government wouldn’t it be at least 50% women?  These questions are never addressed by @dismantlexsjwxfeminism and in fact he avoids questions like these entirely, he isn’t much of a questioning type, because remember, for him this isn’t really really about feminism, he is obsessed with fighting feminism but he can’t even name like, 4 prominent feminists who aren’t Anita Sarkeesian, he hasn’t read any feminists texts (and if you press him on it he will say he doesn’t have too….cause that makes sense…

No, he just need something to blame, some large force to say “THis is what is responsible for everything wrong in my life”  It could be feminism, it could be the Jewish conspiracy, it could be undertale fanboys, it doesn’t matter, @dismantlexsjwxfeminism doesn’t actually care about feminism except in how it provides him with a single force to blame for a complicated, uncertain, and chaotic world.  And this is basically why he is going to be miserable for a very long time, because the only way you can move on from pain is by processing it, and you can’t proncess it if you are externalizing it in a real life movement forever.

This is also why he likes Trump btw, its not because of Trumps policies or even because Trump is going to help him in any way, its because he can project his own desire to be a powerful aggressive rich person unto Trump.  Yes, @dismantlexsjwxfeminism is such a miserable person that he thinks Trump is strong, the most thin skinned person in the world, because at his core, @dismantlexsjwxfeminism is also thin skinned.  Also he is like, extremely sensitive about his intelligence, he is really really insecure about how little he knows and so a President who takes his own ignorance and weaponizes it appeals strongly to him.

And here is my last warning, there are going to be pole like @dismantlexsjwxfeminism living among progressive group, people who attach themselves to legitimate issues as an excuse to exorcise their own demons and we need to watch out for that, and to try to discourage that behavior.  

[whovianfeminism]

Whovian Feminism Reviews “Thin Ice”

Who gets to travel in time and space?

Doctor Who would probably answer that question with an enthusiastic “Anyone!” Perhaps not everyone should travel with the Doctor. But anyone* who has an open mind, a hunger for adventure, and the will to fight the most terrible things the universe can throw at you could travel with the Doctor.

But some fans have always been aware of the asterisk that comes after anyone*. Perhaps anyone could travel with the Doctor, but not everyone would be accepted wherever the Doctor goes. And Bill Potts -- our second black companion, our first (main) queer companion, and a woman -- is especially aware of the risks of traveling to the past. And she’s still not very sure of the man who’s leading her into danger with a cheshire cat grin.

Sarah Dollard’s astounding second episode for Doctor Who tackles both the personal and the political. “Thin Ice” addresses the risks of traveling through time when you’re from a historically oppressed group, delivers a pointed critique of modern pop-culture whitewashing, and also delivers a compelling character piece between the Doctor and Bill as she discovers what kind of person you have to be to travel with the Doctor.

Doctor Who has tried to explore the discrimination and oppression the companions could face while traveling in the past, but the results have often been lackluster. “Thin Ice” makes a deliberate call back to one notable conversation from the “The Shakespeare Code,” where Martha flags the danger she might be in while walking around Elizabethan England.

“I’m not going to get carted off as a slave, am I?” she asked the Doctor.

“Why would they do that?” he replied with clear shock and distress, as if he couldn’t fathom a reason why someone would do that to his Black companion. At best, this comes off as a type of well-meaning (yet still insulting) color blindness, as if the Doctor just doesn’t recognize why Martha would be concerned for her safety because he “doesn’t see” Martha’s race. At worst, this feels like a curious and dangerous blind spot in the Doctor’s encyclopedic knowledge of human history. Rather than engaging with the subject, it feels like "The Shakespeare Code” was trying to hand-wave it away and dismiss Martha’s concerns.

When Martha points out she’s not white, the Doctor’s response is hardly reassuring. “I’m not even human,” replies the alien who happens to look shockingly like a white man. He follows up with “Just walk about like you own the place, works for me.” Of course, that absolutely wouldn’t work for anyone who didn’t look like a white guy. It’s remarkably tone-deaf and dangerous to tell marginalized people to walk around with a sense of entitlement to avoid harassment. In my experience, that approach tends to lead to worse harassment.

"Thin Ice” approaches this conversation with much more respect for Bill’s fears. The Doctor doesn’t immediately put two-and-two together and realize that Bill’s discomfort with wandering Regency England has to do with her being black. But once he understands, he doesn’t try to invalidate her feelings. He acknowledges there may be trouble and lets Bill decide what she’ll do.

In “The Shakespeare Code,” the Doctor tries to put Martha’s fears to rest by pointing out two black woman walking ahead of them and saying, “Besides, you’d be surprised. Elizabethan England, not so different from your time.” It’s a another hand-wavey moment to dismiss Martha’s fears, but it’s also the only time we see black women at all. They vanish within seconds, unnamed and without a single line. The remainder of the story is dominated by white characters. 

In “Thin Ice,” black women and people of color are a prominent, powerful presence. Kitty leads her band of street urchins and has a huge role to play in pushing the plot forward. If there was a Bechdel-style test for whether two women of color talk to each other without mentioning a white man, Bill and Kitty would pass. People of color are also prominently visible in the background of Regency London, and Dollard uses that as a way to make a critique of whitewashing in our modern pop culture. History has always been more diverse than our movies and TV shows have cared to admit. 

In the midst of all this, the Doctor and Bill are wrestling with their evolving relationship from professor and pupil to Doctor and companion. And as Bill learns more about just how alien the Doctor is, their morals and values come into conflict as well.

The Doctor seems to be finding it difficult to step back from his role as a lecturer. Throughout “Thin Ice,” he treats every conflict with Bill as another opportunity to teach her a lesson. When she’s disturbed by the death of Spider, he treats her like she’s throwing a tantrum and tells her that he’s “never had time for the luxury of outrage.” When they are about to confront Lord Sutcliffe, the Doctor orders Bill to be quiet while he interrogates Sutcliffe and lectures her about her temper, confidently saying that “Passion fights, but reason wins.” But Bill’s not here for the Doctor’s lectures or for his posturing about reason vs. passion. 

Which brings us to the truly incredible moment that the Doctor punches Lord Sutcliffe.

Narratively, this moment is absolutely earned. Viewers know that the Doctor is absolutely full of it when he says he’s never had the luxury of outrage. As Bill later says, he’s never had time for anything else! This moment puts that false choice between logic and passion in sharp relief. One is not inherently better than the other, and there are just some situations in which logic cannot win. There’s no reasoning with someone who’s that deeply, confidently racist. At a certain point, they just need to face the consequences of their actions and then be silenced.

“Thin Ice” was written and filmed long before Richard Spencer was punched at Donald Trump’s Inauguration, and yet it has managed to land squarely in the middle of the “Is It Okay To Punch Racist Assholes” conversation. The Doctor seems to fall firmly in the “YES” column. But the punch definitely seemed to touch a nerve with some. One troll on Twitter went so far as to say the episode was anti-white and that Doctor Who had been taken over by “SJWs.”


First of all, if this is the first episode in which you think that Doctor Who is advocating for social justice, I have to wonder if we’ve been watching the same show. Second, I find the assertion that the episode is “anti-white” for portraying an accurate -- even relatively muted -- racist attitude by a white person is truly ridiculous. But I did find his discomfort with showing white people’s racism to be interesting.

Science fiction fans love their allegorical or metaphorical racists. Stormtroopers and Daleks are some of our most popular and enduring pop culture characters, and both are based to some degree on Nazis. But we like our villains to be larger than life figures obscured in costumes, and our heroes facing these villains to be overwhelmingly white. The evils these villains represent can then be a few steps removed from the real world. But there’s something to be said for pulling the racist out from behind the plastic mask or metal suit. Lord Sutcliffe’s racism is very human; it’s practically banal. Our TV shows shouldn’t just address racism allegorically or metaphorically, they should show the actual perpetrators and victims in our own world.

And, for the record, I’m totally in favor of the punch. If Daleks and Cybermen and all the rest should fear the Oncoming Storm and the Destroyer of Worlds if they attempt to harm others, then racists should be afraid that an angry Scottish man with attack eyebrows will punch them in the face if they spew their venom at anyone else. 

Ultimately, this episode comes down to the value we place on human life. Lord Sutcliffe is the obvious villain because he places no value on any life besides his own. But for most of “Thin Ice,” Bill isn’t sure how much value the Doctor places on human life either.

Twice in “Thin Ice” the Doctor fails to look even remotely disturbed when people are killed right in front of him. His focus is more on retrieving his sonic screwdriver than saving their lives. And when he’s confronted by Bill he confesses that he can’t remember how many people he’s seen die -- or how many people he’s killed. Emotionally, this feels like the inverse to the moment in “Smile” where Bill realizes that the Doctor is the man who saves people. In “Thin Ice,” he’s the man who doesn’t always save everybody. Sometimes, he’s the man who kills them. He’s the man who makes the hard choices about who to save and who to sacrifice. And it’s his casual attitude towards the lives he can’t save that disturbs Bill more than anything. 

But Bill and the Doctor find their equilibrium when they come together to solve the problem. The Doctor invites Bill to participate in his deliberations rather than telling her how to think, and leaves the final decision up to her. Logic and reason are both invoked. Risks are analyzed, lives are weighed, and a judgement is made on the value Bill and the Doctor place on all the lives at stake. They both make each other stronger when they work in tandem, a pattern I hope carries through the rest of the season.

[pip-personalispolitical]

GROUPIE LOVE.

I am a self-proclaimed witch, part-time poet and groupie. I say that with a meta affectation; the pretension lies in my self-awareness as opposed to my actions. For those of you that know me, you probably know I enjoy sleeping with musicians. Musicians to me are - without fail - the most interesting people I sleep with  and nine times out of ten are really good in bed. They tend to think outside of the monogamous, penetrative box of heterosexual sex. And while interesting isn't always a good thing, sleeping with musicians gives me an experience I otherwise would never have access to. It’s an insight into a world just out of reach.

In this essay I explore the concept of a groupie and what is given to both parties in an exchange that is ultimately one based on sexuality and erotic capitol. I will examine what I think groupies really do, sociologically, personally and sexually. I also address that this particular definition of being a groupie is one of sleeping with musicians, rather than being a dedicated fan of one. This follows the definition outlined by Pamela Des Barres (the worlds most famous groupie) who states that a groupie is someone who is simply “with the group” or “with the band.”

What we do.

From the perspective of a female groupie to that of a male band, I believe that groupies have historically provided performers with validation. This validation comes in the reaffirmation of their heterosexuality, masculinity and success. If they're not playing for the women, who are they playing for? The men in a homosocial context, or a homosexual one? They deflect the objectified performers’ anxieties of being under  another male gaze - groupies deflect emasculation (Crawford: 2014: 50). Thereby, they validate the performers sexuality and masculinity by existing within a context where they are desired and viewed as a sign of success. Why else would we turn up to your shows if we didn’t think you were talented and beautiful?

That being said, this validation lies within the grounds of heteronormativity and the heterosexual matrix (Butler:  2007: 4, 8). It is therefore assumptive and reductive to those outside of this sphere. The majority of the music industry is a tiresome ground of patriarchy and misogyny, so those who aim to strike bargains with it must do so within those means provided; while I believe this isn’t a bargain with patriarchy due to the context, it is a bargain nonetheless. This exchange is a confirmation of masculinity and femininity within the heterosexual matrix - a bargain well struck.

The Erotic Capital.

This exchange employs the erotic capital, as defined by Catherine Hakim wherein attractive women use their looks and sex appeal to their advantage for financial, political or personal gain; it is a “fourth asset very different from economic, social, and cultural capitol”  that is rising in social importance and gives women an advantage where they otherwise may not have had it (2010: 512). While this is not exclusive to the phenomenon of groupies, it is an important concept I believe is employed in modern ideology of the groupie. As Hakim explains it may have more significance with regards to the entertainment industry and requires a set of social skills based on initial talent and ability (2010: 512). That is to say, groupies already possess or acquire a level of charisma or appeal that makes them desirable to musicians.

Breaking monogamy, sexual assertion and self-awareness.

While groupies provide confirmation within rock ’n’ roll and heterosexuality, they also break the institution of monogamy: groupies exist as a sexually assertive and liberated woman that follows strands of the second wave of feminism (Crawford: 2014: 50).  Being a groupie, then, aligns with the movement of sex positivity. Again, with reference to Hakim, the moral ideologies of society tend to discourage women from “exploiting their erotic capital” (2010: 499). The groupie does not shy away from this, the groupie disregards such stigmas in favour of attaining the poet/god/rockstar.

On this note, Crawford argues that groupies take the phallus worship that lies within the heart of rock ’n’ roll (which could be extended to most genres of music, I think) to it’s logical conclusion by sleeping with the artists (2014: 49-50). As Courtney Love (I know, she’s problematic but she has a point here) once said “we invented rock n’ roll to sexualise men.” What is the height of this sexualisation other than sleeping with them?

“Such savviness provokes hostility,” Crawford notes, “women aren’t supposed to plan for and pursue sexual activity” - more to the point they’re not supposed to know how to do it either (2014: 49-50). As a groupie you play to or adhere to the mood of the music, you dress to be a part of the scene to add to your desirability. It is unsettling for musicians to think that a woman can be so cunning - yet so desired and necessary to their personal masculinity, and, by extension, the reputation of the band.

This brings me to my next point, that some groupies possess a level of self-awareness in regards to their actions, both personally and socially; to be labelled as such is to know your power as well as to be aware of the potential downsides. There is power in the namer; when reclaiming the term - akin to the word slut - acknowledges the connotations of the trope. It demonstrates passion, ambition and desire to occupy a pragmatic standpoint within a situation that is ultimately boiled down to one of a sexual exchange. If both parties enjoy the exchange where both have something to offer, it can be beneficial in terms of personal gain and satisfaction. This, it could be argued, is where the concept of the erotic capitol is epitomised.

I am very aware of this exchange, I have what you want and I know that even if you don’t choose to have sex with me, I am a form of validation that is crucial. I add credibility to their band simply by turning up. Perhaps, this sentiment is epitomised in Lana Del Rey’s song Groupie Love. She coo’s “every time that you look up, I know what you’re thinking of, you want my groupie love,” and she’s right. Groupies want to be desired and they are. The question is, does being a groupie in a modern context require a self-awareness and political connotations of these actions to make them effective in their result, or can the liberal morals of the 60’s still be applicable in a modern context?

Misogyny, power dynamics and exploitation.

One of the main issues is that groupies, to directly quote Crawford, give the musician a means to “connect with a male audience through the objectification and denigration of women,” (2014: 50). The position of a groupie is one amidst a field of misogyny: the groupie sits on a thin fence of second wave, choice feminism. You can play up to these images or utilise them, bargain with patriarchal tropes and power structures, but ultimately do these choices not just further patriarchal and misogynistic tropes within institutions?

Moreover, from my positionality (that of a white, cis-gender, able-bodied female) it serves my purpose and my purpose only; I am running in a playground that stinks of choice feminism and out-dated liberal morals reminiscent of the 60s sexual revolution.

Additionally, I believe that due to the fact that groupies are also caught up in a web of sexual liberation, repression and the long standing virgin/whore dichotomy we are easy targets to be labelled as “too obsessive” or “insane”, we are easily dismissed as objects, tropes, not as human beings. Further manipulation or attempt to disband this adds to such a label and your power is all at once lost to the trope.

Perhaps in a modern context, personal gain requires more rigid and well-analysed political intention - however, that is not to say it cannot be a mutually satisfying interaction. Using my education and personal feelings towards sexuality, I feel as though its more of an exchange - I have no doubt that is due to my positionality. Being a groupie lies in a strange river of dynamics on an interpersonal level and a larger, structural level.

The power dynamics of a musician to that of a groupie are, to say the least, troubling: exploitation is likely, particularly with younger or more naive fans. Lori Maddix is a prime example of this, being one of the most desired within the “baby groupies”; she was only thirteen when she became involved with musicians. This is nothing less than statutory rape despite the fact that Maddix gave consent (Tolentino: 2016). The problematic history of groupies and their rockstar lovers can’t be ignored. I can't defend these actions, nor should I. I’m trying to argue for choice feminism and sexual liberation; the fault lies with the men in rock ’n’ roll who abuse their power. Moreover, sexuality in girlhood isn’t anything to be ashamed of and should be explored - they just happened to explore it with rockstars.

Returning to my main point, in regards to second wave feminism and sexual liberation: to what extent is the exchange about liberation or empowerment? Is this not simply an exchange or a play on the erotic capitol? Can this not simply be a consensual, mutual hook up based on sexuality and satisfaction? Furthermore, empowerment  and liberation are two highly subjective concepts (as I've previously stated in other essays) what is empowering or liberating to one woman may not be to another.

Conclusion.

It is clear that female sexuality is still widely policed and politicised, widely held accountable and impaled on a fence of second wave feminism - it seems we can never win. That being said the groupie validates masculinities and femininities, they offer a break from monogamy and disregard any morals implemented on sexuality; the groupie is a savvy, sex positive, self-aware agent.

Additionally, in analysing the phenomenon historically it’s problematic elements weigh heavy on its positive potential. I feel that we are, however, utilising feminist discourses and sexual liberation to some gain, be it personal, political or economical. And even if groupies aren’t, isn't it still an expression of sexuality that shouldn't be policed? In the earlier concept the positionality of a groupie allowed for the sexuality of girlhood to experience liberation and exploration.

Being a groupie also holds greater potential to gain a foothold into a notoriously misogynistic industry. Given the interaction stays within the laws and age of legal consent, the erotic capital - if acknowledged by the groupie or not - is still at play and in that sense it is effective.

Not to sound like Penny Lane but I’m here for the music, man. I’m here to gain insight into a creative world just outside of my reach, I want to see how you do it, what inspires you. The fact that you have access to members’ only clubs and D-minor celebrities is a bonus.

I revel in the debauchery and hedonism of rock ’n’ roll; I enjoy seeing and being seen, I enjoy the connection to another creative individual - particularly in a way I’ve never been or haven't had the means to be. Mostly, I enjoy knowing that I have something they want, I enjoy knowing that I am desired - particularly by rockstars.

References. 

Butler, Judith (2007): “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire“. In: Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. pp. 4, 8.   Crawford, Anwen (2014). Hole's Live Through This . London: Bloomsbury . 49, 50. Hakim, Catherine . (2010). Erotic Capitol . European Sociological Review. 26 (5), pp. 512. Kandiyoti, D. (1988). Bargaining with Patriarchy. Gender and Society. 2 (3). 
 Nina De Koning. (2017). VHS1'S LETS SPEND THE NIGHT TOGETHER. [Online Video]. 20 May 2013. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnViqstGsYs&t=311s. [Accessed: 4 October 2017]. Tolentino, Jia. (2016). What Should We Say About David Bowie and Lori Maddox?. Available: https://jezebel.com/what-should-we-say-about-david-bowie-and-lori-maddox-1754533894. Last accessed 2/10/2017.

[theconservativebrief]

Anti-semitism is on the rise.

On Saturday, 11 Jews were killed in a Pittsburgh synagogue, shot by a gunman who has been charged with federal hate crimes, a man with a documented history of posting anti-Semitic rants and conspiracy theories on far-right social networking website Gab.

While law enforcement has not confirmed the motive for this shooting, the assailant had concentrated his energy on one particular set of conspiracy theories. According to reports of his Gab account, he echoed conspiracy claims from extremists that George Soros, the Jewish billionaire philanthropist, was secretly funding a caravan of an estimated 4,000 Honduran migrants making its way to the United States-Mexico border.

The Pittsburgh attack was the deadliest known attack on Jewish people on American soil according to advocacy organization Anti-Defamation League (ADL). But it was also one in a long line of anti-Semitic incidents, which are on the rise in the US. In 2017, the most recent year for which complete data is available, the ADL found that incidents of anti-Semitic hate (including vandalism as well as violent crime) had increased a staggering 57 percent from 2016, the highest increase on record.

The rhetoric surrounding the gunman’s stated reason for his attack — including conspiracy theories around Soros — is rooted in a much older, wider-spread narrative of bigotry.

Last week, before the attack, writer and researcher for progressive media watchdog Media Matters Talia Lavin argued in a Washington Post editorial anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Soros — and the toxic trope that Jews or “globalists” are “puppet masters” controlling world affairs — have a long and insidious history within European discourse. And it’s resurging in the age of Trump.

I spoke with Lavin on Monday to talk about the Pittsburgh gunman, anti-Semitism, the dangers of YouTube, and more. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tara Isabella Burton

Let’s start by talking about the history of the idea of the “globalist” in anti-Semitic discourse — namely, the idea that Jews are “puppet masters” of the political and economic world order, something that, in turn, gives rise to conspiracy. What is the genesis and history of that idea?

Talia Lavin

In modern history, the idea of Jew as a puppet master, without loyalty to his country of origin — you can really trace that back to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, published in Russia in 1903. It was a piece of work — proven to be a forgery almost immediately — purporting to be the meeting minutes of the leaders of the Jewish people, basically speaking like cartoon villains about their designs over the global financial system, subverting the morals of Gentiles, upturning the social fabric of moral culture.

It’s had a really long afterlife — it’s sort of the original fake news, in a sense. A really good case study in how impossible a visceral notion can be to dislodge, even when it’s been comprehensively debunked.

You can trace the idea’s origins in America to none other than [entrepreneur] Henry Ford, who not only made cars but was a humongous anti-Semite. He distributed 500,000 copies of the Protocols, including at Ford dealerships. He also produced a four-volume anti-Semitic booklet called The International Jew, which explores similar themes: Jewish world domination plans. Anti-Semitism has been part of the fabric of American society.

Tara Isabella Burton

So, let’s talk more specifically about your work at Media Matters, and in particular the way in which you’ve witnessed contemporary anti-Semitism proliferate through the internet. How does that process work? Are people explicitly seeking out anti-Semitic content, or are they getting radicalized by other means?

Talia Lavin

A big part of it is YouTube. They sort of get a pass — people don’t think of them as a big repository of hate. But YouTube’s algorithm is pretty biased toward extreme content that engages you for longer because you’re like, “Whoa, this is crazy.”

There are a lot of white nationalists, anti-Semites, and extremists who have YouTube channels. And there’s a ton of conspiracy theories that flourish on YouTube. And thanks to the recommendation algorithm, once you’ve watched one piece of extremist content — maybe you’re curious about the “real deal” with 9/11 — it’s really easy to fall down a rabbit hole and you wind up watching more and more extreme content.

I don’t know specifically if that was the case with Robert Bowers [the Pittsburgh gunman] but it’s true of a lot of people. You start out searching “vaccine” and five clicks later you’re fully in the anti-vax world. If you Google almost anything that has a conspiracy apparatus, even remotely attached to it, YouTube prioritizes extremist content.

The other part is the world of men’s rights activists and pickup artists. These tend to be young men who can’t get a girlfriend who tend to gravitate toward these forums. And they’re a really fertile ground for white nationalists. Once you’re at a point where you say, “whatever they’re saying about feminism is fake, I’m not politically correct,” it’s really easy to make the leap to, “What about race? What about Jews?”

You have these overlapping worlds — 4chan, 8chan, Gab, Voat, some of the shadier communities on Reddit — where people go to find out more, wind up having these concepts reinforced, finding a community of like-minded people, and things build and build and build that way.

Tara Isabella Burton

It seems like a lot of these tropes have crossed over from the “fringe” into mainstream political discourse. We’ve had, for example, someone like Paul Nehman, the alt-right-endorsed candidate running in the Republican primary for Paul Ryan’s House seat in Wisconsin, openly tweeting himself reading George MacDonald’s incredibly controversial The Culture of Critique — a book beloved by neo-Nazis that openly blames Jews for bringing anti-Semitism on themselves. Are we seeing these ideas bleed into mainstream discourse more broadly?

Talia Lavin

Yes, we are seeing a whitewashing and blurring of the lines between the extreme and mainstream right, for sure. One big example is Tucker Carlson at Fox News. He often echoes themes that circulate on the extreme right. He did a segment about “white genocide,” the baseless conspiracy theory that immigration and [rising] nonwhite birthrates constitute a form of genocide by making whites a minority in the United States, who will then be wiped out by “evil scheming Jews” puppet-mastering nonwhite people. Tucker did a segment winkingly referencing white genocide.

I think that people don’t understand the degree to which anti-Semitism is both vital to and inextricable from white supremacy in the US. In the same way that the white genocide theory applies to pretty much the entirety of the extremist worldview, the world that they envision, the one that they believe they inhabit, is one in which Jews create nefarious schemes for nonwhite people to carry out as their puppets in order to support and destroy the white race.

The enemy is the Jew. The Jew is the puppet-master. Jews and anti-Semitism are absolutely front and center in every hate movement in the United States, and that’s something people don’t fully appreciate.

Tara Isabella Burton

I want to flag a word in your answer up above — “winkingly.” I’m struck by the way in which irony and humor are often used to mask anti-Semitism in plain sight.

On Twitter, you’ll see a lot of, “It’s just a joke, it’s just trolling.” You yourself have written about the toxicity of even well-meaning liberals spreading the joke meme of “Soros checks,” or the idea that Soros is paying protestors and activists to destabilize democracy.

Can you talk about the relationship between (so-called) humor and hatred when it comes to spreading anti-Semitic propaganda.

Talia Lavin

There are two answers to this question that mutually reinforce each other. The phenomenon of anti-Semitism hiding in plain sight and in humor that is not a new one. There’s a passage in [French philosopher’s] Jean-Paul Sartre [1944 text] Anti-Semite and Jew, that reads:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.

That echoes so true even now. This idea that your ideas don’t have to be logically sound. They just have to disconcert the listener. You have a Pepe cartoon frog character pop in your mentions saying, “Jews are termites.” He doesn’t mean it literally — he means it to unsettle you.

And then the second part is — it’s not that hate ever disappears from the American public. It’s that, after the civil rights movement, and in recent decades, it’s become euphemized. Instead of using the “n-word,” you say “thug.” Instead of “Jew” you say “globalist.” That adds an element of plausible deniability. But it’s not that hard a code.

And I think there’s a certain amount of naïveté in the public ear. When people talk about George Soros funding the migrant caravan, you can map that directly to white supremacists talking about white genocide.

Tara Isabella Burton

So my last question, then, is what’s next? How do we combat this? Do we address this at the level of platforms and tech companies? On the level of interventions with potentially radicalized people? What’s the most effective way to disrupt neo-Nazis’ networks?

Talia Lavin

I’m not a tactical expert — I just [monitor] the rise [of anti-Semitism] — but I do think tech companies must take responsibility for the hate and violence being stoked on their platforms and that includes hosting and service providers. We’ve started to see this piecemeal after [the 2017 white supremacist protests in] Charlottesville, after [neo-Nazi website] the Daily Stormer was kicked off GoDaddy and had this nomadic journey through different domains. And hosting services are starting to turn away from Gab, which is currently down.

But people shouldn’t have to die for tech companies to see what’s happening. It’s not like people didn’t know what Gab was before 11 people were murdered. There needs to be proactive work being done by tech companies to ensure that their platforms aren’t being used for anti-Semitism and racist hatred.

You can say what you like about free speech. But these are private companies, so that sort of First Amendment flag-shout-waving isn’t really applicable. People are dying. More people will die. The orgy of right-wing-violence from last week isn’t slowing down.

And so I firmly believe that YouTube, that Twitter, that Facebook need to take responsibility for what they are, which are platforms where hate and violence can spread.

Original Source -> How anti-Semitism festers online, explained by a monitor of the darkest corners of the internet

via The Conservative Brief

[deathgroup]

Introduction, Reading I (Situated Knowledges in Design Practice) by Yi, 23 Sept 2018

| ‘What is an Author’: Towards a Critical Discourse of Practice as Research.|

When I was doing my portfolio for applying MA, my advisor kept asking me “why do you use this shape/color/font etc. ” “Why do you choose this one not that one” these super detailed questions. Which in my head before, assuming that it was because they just look fine under these choices. Then she told me, always ask yourself why when you are doing design, because design is not an independent entity, it always links to other concerns, knowledges and even unconscious. I remember clearly the first time when she brought it into my mind is when I decided to use circles as the main shape in a children game installation. At the very beginning of the whole project, she asked me, why do you choose circle? That question really surprised me, because that was the very first shape came into my mind and why would there be any reason or explanation for that? So she gave me a day to search all the knowledges and evidence that can support my choice. Among all the directions she pointed, “try anthropology” still so impressive to me. I would never link circle with anthropology if she didn’t mention that.

So actually I didn’t do that project in the end, and I already forgot all the knowledges and evidences I found. But from that moment, the way I see this world began to change. Maybe it sounds like a pointless question for some people, they may think why bother to bring this small question into a huge context, isn’t it making a mountain out of molehill?  But I do feel really good about it. It made me realize that everything’s connected and you can always find a bigger world through a tiny hole, as long as you really think about it.

In Brad Haseman’s article, he addressed that “the task of mapping these discursive field would, in the first instance, have fallen on the artist rather than the critic”. In my understanding, he’s saying that the artist him/herself, should be the first one realizing his/her own design logic and knowing the whole operating system, because the whole design process should always be in the ground and under every step, should be some supporting columns. It’s kinda like writing essay, make your own contention based on other works’s argument. However, the difference is you don’t need to show the proof, but you should always think of it. Nothing is new under the sun, so there must be something you can always dig, explore and relate to when you reflect your own discourse. And those things you found can also bring you more inspirations in meantime. I think Foucault already concluded clearly: “Author function means the author is not considered as a named individual but rather a function, a construction.” Though we always see design and art as something really creative and inspirational, but they are never ever “the sole invention of individual artist/researcher as we have seen, but are forged in relation to established or antecedent methods and ideas.”

Another thing I’ve been thinking a lot is what “design” means to me, why I choose design as the only thing I really want to do. Back to that “writing essay” metaphor. When I was studying literature, I wrote many essays, and I found I’m super bad at expressing myself through words. I’m not good at logic, it always took me a very long time to do the proof, to link my contentions with the arguments (I guess I just don’t have the talent). But meanwhile, I’m good at understanding and realizing, there are lot of things I can connect to. If I’m an author, the only language I can use to articulate my thoughts is text, but if I’m a designer, there would be more ways and languages for me to choose, and I can always use the most proper one after comparing. So for me, design is the tool to substitute mouth, it is the means but not the aim. And what I need to learn is how to make this means the most efficient, accurate and intriguing.

      Adopting Foucault’s definition of author-and-work as “mode of existence, circulation and functioning of certain discourse within society” requires us to consider not whether the work is “good” or “bad”, but to focus on the forms the work takes and the institutional contexts that allow it to take such forms. (<Towards A Critical Discourse Of Practice As Research>p137)

Don’t Judge! 

|  The Way We Think Now: Toward an Ethnography of Modern Thought  |

In phenomenology, the terms “the other” or “the constitutive other” is my favorite conception. It has this weird alluring attraction to me. When I was preparing the final test for Western Literary Criticism course, I even prayed that there could be one essay question about that. Saïd said "the Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire. If this definition of Orientalism seems more political than not, that is simply because I think Orientalism was, itself, a product of certain political forces and activities. ” And he mentioned Nietzsche’s notion:

      A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which, after long use, seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.

This is what I thought of when I started reading <The way we think now: toward an ethnography of modern thought>, especially when the author address the question: “how meaning in one system of expression is expressed in another-cultural hermeneutics, not conceptive mechanics”. The birth of anthropology is due to the Westerners' need for the understanding of primitive culture. But recent years, more and more anthropologists, by taking a look at the cultural other, in turn, look at the Western culture and society, and finally realize that the Western knowledge system that being regarded as the standard in the past was originally artificially constructed, from the perspective of value and variety. I guess it is human’s nature to imagine and construct the things that we aren��t familiar with using our own experience and social values. we tend to measure the value of others with our own value. And this is where bias and crowds come from. Like Geertz mentioned in the book : “ What it forms a threat to is the prejudice that the pristine powers that we have in common are more revelatory of how we think than the versions and visions that, in this time or that place, we socially construct.”

The confirmation of local knowledge has potential deconstruction and subversive effect on the traditional unified knowledge view and scientific view. The concept of local knowledge naturally requires that each researcher and student first learn to tolerate the other and the differences, learn to understand the kind of mindset from the cross-cultural standpoint. Only by consciously cultivating the position and mentality of cultural relativism can we avoid ideological imagination and prejudice in the face of the “other”.  Melville J. Herskovits, the American anthropologist, drew this conclusion: “ The core of cultural relativism is a kind of social training that respects differences and requires mutual respect. It emphasizes the value of multiple lifestyles and seeks to understand and live in harmony, rather than judging or even destroying things that are incompatible with their own culture.”

If we think about why we should learn these knowledges and what can we get from anthropology, the idea might be the realization of “reflexive perspective”. Always keep sensitive and suspicious, be aware of our own opinions and judgements. Be inclusive, show respect. Don’t judge!

| Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective |

Last year, in the first class of “Design as critical practice”, Arja asked us what do you think of the point  “everything’s political”, I hardly thought about politics in my life, so I couldn’t agree with that. However, later on, I gradually realized that it’s not about me consciously doing things with political mindset, it’s about how those social values/standards in our daily life unconsciously influence/ shape us, and the truth that we hardly realize or trace back the very origin of those social rules and knowledges. Like Haraway said: “No insider's perspective is privileged, because all drawings of inside-outside boundaries in knowledge are theorized as power moves, not moves toward truth……science is rhetoric, a series of efforts to persuade relevant social actors that one's manufactured knowledge is a route to a desired form of very objective power.” This point reveals that science knowledge is closely related to power and it is political or have complex connections with politics. According to Haraway, in the traditional philosophy of science, the object is resourced and there is no initiative, however, it is definitely another “constitutive other”. In situated knowledge, the object is also an actor with initiative, and only by facing up to the initiative of  “object” can we avoid the various errors and false knowledge in these sciences.

[victorian-flavour-blog]

So, does Miss actually exist?

New year, new room, good old question. After these winter months, my thoughts seem to be up again on the issue, and this time they are suggesting a new answer. That is to say, I'm changing my mind. I used to think that my failure to find Miss or Misses is because we lack ways of getting in touch. But now, I start seriously doubting that any such Miss actually exists. 

It is a gut feeling, mainly due to a very simple fact. See, I used to wonder how to tell if someone might be Miss. That is, how I could spot the interest and traits that are necessary for this kind of relationship. I then realised the answer is very simple: if we ever come across each other, we will know. I, for certain, will spot the personality from her face and demeanour, and Miss will do the same. I will notice her poise and her dignity, and she will see I notice. Just by looking at each other we will know if there is liking and interest. 

So the simple fact is: I have never met such young lady. Let me be more precise. 

First of all, elegance. There really are soo few elegant young ladies out there. Blue jeans reign supreme, along with hoodies, foul language and slouching. If the XVIII and XIX centuries might well be dubbed the age of elegance, ours is no doubt the age of sloppiness. It's an age when people no longer know what dignity and self-respect is, along with respect for others. The idea of beauty now entails lips that resemble a hot dog, tattered jeans that an Indian street child would be ashamed to wear, and the unmissable trainers. 

Of course, fashion is the outer expression of a mentality that considers not just acceptable, but even desirable, to swear and reject any poise as boring and inappropriate. This was openly shared with me by the daughter of one of my former landlords: a 20 year old lady who studies at Cambridge and is convinced that swearing shows that one has character and is "cool". It's not only her opinion, it's what all her friends believe. To them, the crisp, elegant received pronounciation is a sort of stigma. She even got to the point to believe that Victorian houses must be bad by association, because the Victorian times were an age of oppression, colonialism, and so forth. Reality and logic hold no place in the thoughts of these privileged Cambridge students, it's all about the simple: "new is cool, old is boo". No wonder you then have students from rich families who take drugs and behave and dress like ghetto scoundrels. 

This is apparent in the school where I work too. Being it a highschool, most students mercifully wear a uniform. But the sixth formers don't. When I bring them lunch, I usually find them slouching on the coach with their feet in the air, often swearing or listening to loud rap music. Other times they are slouching directly on the floor, in a sort of hippy camping, always in their hoodies and tracksuits. This is it: and that's the daugthers of the privileged families who can afford one of the most exclusive private schools in London. To be honest, whenever I have to climb up there I wonder whether it's worth keeping that job. On one occasion, the students were being taught some martial art by a young man. Now, leaving aside any thoughts on how feminity and grace can be possibly enhanced by kicking and punching, my point is that the young man was teaching them to shout the "f" word to give a move more momentum. "Three, two, one, f***! Three, two, one, f***!" That was it, the whole 6th Form in unison. Until the gods took pity and sent a teacher to ask the young man to keep it proper -suggestion that the young man seemed to take somewhat scornfully. 

Now, could the students be blamed for the amount of televised trash they have absorbed since birth, for the myriads of messages that continously target them and tell them to be vulgar, and for attending a school where even the occasional contract teacher instructs them to swear? Obviously not. Today's youth are just what they are meant to be: the honest mirror of an age where elegance is not just forgotten, it's actively destroyed and prevented. With this in mind, I must admit it would be surprising, to say the least, to come across a young lady who retains ladylike manners and outlook. To achieve that, one would have to go against the stream on purpose, while overcoming a tremendous peer pressure and any inevitable feeling of enstrangement and inadequacy. It would truly require a great deal of understanding and self determination, which clearly one cannot expect to find very often, or to find at all. In fact, in this light my own love for elegance is truly surprising, and I don't have an explanation for it. Granted, I love elegance but I'm not elegant myself. Still, I must admit that I've never slouched on my school's floor with my feet in the air.

So, elegance is a rare occurrence nowadays, and among the under 25s it becomes a trace element. Things get worse when you consider that the lack of elegance is strictly correlated to the fantastic belief that we are all equal. And hey, in a way today we really are. Sure bank accounts may feature much more or much less figures, but in the end we all wear hoodies, listen to the same songs and speak in the same way. The refined ways of the upper class have been flattened to Cockney level, or rather Congo level. 

Which takes us to the second point: the mindset that can conceive or even desire a Miss/servant dynamic. If what is taught and instilled today is that we are all supposed to be equal, and that anyone can become more important by robbing accumulating money, is there any space left for the feeling of belonging to a different class, which is the basis for a Miss/servant dynamic? Clearly not. The distinction between rich and poor is not a class distinction. It's merely an accident, one that is furthermore to be concealed, mitigated, played down to avoid any feeling of unfairness and resentment and carry on with the pretence that we are all equal. To place an accent on or to be proud of one's privilege is now an extremely unpopular thing to do, one that would be straight into face of the hypocritical political correctness of our times. 

To sum it up, not only could Miss only be someone who pursues elegance in spite of all modern trends, but she would even be aware and proud of her class privilege in spite of modern hypocrisy. No doubt a truly remarkable personality, of clear understanding and strong will. How likely? You decide for yourself. And it's not finished. On top of such traits, Miss and I could obviously connect only if we liked each other. No doubt you see why my thoughts have taken a pessimistic turn. 

As I said, I have never met such young lady. The elegant ones I see tend to be over 25, and probably dress relatively smart only because they have to adhere to business dresscode. A better opportunity to see people's true fashion sense is at weekends, during their shopping or dining trips. Even better in summertime, when T-shirts make it so easy to look cheap. In fact I've done the experiment by walking on King's Road in July, and the results were, well, dismal. Let's face it: elegance is dead. But even on the rare occasions when I have seen a classy young lady, somehow I could tell she wasn't Miss. I haven't seen the poise, the glance, the demeanour of Miss. Perhaps not by chance, those rare young ladies have never noticed me. I can tell their thoughts are far away, they have no interest in a servant. It cannot click.

My thought now goes to the young lady I met in San Francisco's Nob Hill years ago on my American adventure. I had arrived at the guesthouse where I was supposed to help the landlady keep the place clean. The young lady was the only guest at the moment, a 23 year design student from Colorado. It was her to open the door, and my heart throbbed. Gosh, how pretty she was. Red hair and cute face, like in my dreams. And yes she was privileged. Spoilt, used to getting her way and impatient to wait, according to the landlady. She even liked the beautiful arpeggios of Chopin's music. Something that I found terribly sweet, she was pretty unable to look after herself for food and daily necessities. What a darling. One evening I even made dinner for her in the best way I could, with the food she liked and the table set in the grandest way. She was pleasantly surprised. I guess I don't need to tell you what I made of her offer to wash the dishes. Because, yes, she sadly offered to help. She was so sweet and friendly. In fact, in the few weeks I spent there it became apparent to me she couldn't be Miss. Her mindset was so far from having a servant. And her deportment, well, a bit American. But it was a nice try, and I should probably regret not having stayed longer. See, I was 18, and still had a magical view of my dream. I wasn't ready to content myself with the crumbs.

Anyway you get the gist: even when you do find a bit of elegance, the mindset is not there, and the personality is not there.

So, how about my last endeavour on planet Lolita? Well, the same conclusion hold true: apart from the fact that Lolita fashion and elegance are rarely synonims, and that at best it's usually a sporadic kind of elegance that doesn't invest daily life, the mindset of most Lolitas seem to be up to date with modern trends, and their personality far from Miss's. That explains why my posts on groups of thousands of Lolitas haven't got any interest: there isn't any. They are not Misses. It cannot click. 

The mysterious author of the blog I quoted on my previous post, as expected, didn't reply to any of my emails. If she received them, any comment is redundant. If not, it's pointless for her to post contact details on her website. This is precisely why I no longer waste my time writing to this or that online user. Besides, a friend of mine who is a world authority on Tumblr, as she spends inordinate amounts of time on it, tells me that she's never come across any elegant bloggers. No surprise, of course. And another friend of mine who knows many Lolitas tells a similar story.

So, no elegant young ladies on Tumblr, not on Kings Road, not at my school, not in Lolita groups... seems like there aren't that many anywhere. With elegance, the quintessential trait of Miss, being so incredibly rare, to assume that there is somewhere a young lady who is not only elegant but also has no problem with inequality and would like to have a servant, is like betting on the existence of aliens. Sure aliens might exist somewhere in the universe, but to expect to come across any would be a tad far-fetched.

So this is it: after all my attempts, my encounters, my investigations, I've come to the conclusion that Miss most probably doesn't exist. It matters little that there might be one, two, or a dozen in the whole world: I will never meet them anyway. It is of course a very hard bite to swallow; nonetheless there's nothing else I can do. Sure the door for Miss will be kept open, but I won't be checking every other minute. There is no room in modern world for things like class, poetry, discreet feelings. Everything must be debased and vulgar. Today's girls are after smartphone chats, torn jeans, martial arts, monkey dances... they sure have no time for servants, nor can they remotely see the appeal of such dynamics. Playing the piano, reading classical literature? Ha! Marijuana socials replaced all that long ago. Pride in their heritage and education? You must be kidding -going rough in East End clubs is the cool thing now. And it's no consolation that modern society will soon crash, as any falling plane is bound to do.

It seems like the only thing I'm left with is to wonder why I was born in this century, or why I was given an inclination that I have no way of fulfilling. And I guess the answer is simply: shit happens. But, you know what? I won't ditch my dream. You keep your ragged jeans and marijuana, you cool girls. And I'll keep my feelings.

[chrisbransdon]

There is a sense of urgency which accompanies my belief that Jesus Christ is Lord. It undergirds everything I think, say and do. But it often gets me into trouble. My brand of urgency makes me volatile; I overreach. The bible warns against the passions of youth and I don’t think it’s just talking about sex. It’s talking about the youthful need to tear through everything like a hurricane. I wonder if and when I will outgrow this temperament. I’m nearly 30 and I don’t feel any less naïve, strong-willed, or convicted than I did when I was 20. So much for my flaws. But if I can salvage anything from this unfortunate personality profile it would be that, somehow, I find that I am able to make people believe in the things that I believe in. The only thing that saves me from being so insufferable that my friends would give up on me entirely, is the fact that I am so gosh darn earnest. I swear to you I could kill a man with my earnestness.

These days I don’t know how to best channel that earnestness. While the middle aged blogosphere continues to reel from the transition into exile, I feel that I have been preparing myself for it for years. I am afraid, but I am also oddly energised. I feel that I have a good read on the times, but I also feel that I could make a fool of myself. Whatever it is, I feel the need to write about it. If it all goes up in flames, so be it. But maybe it won’t even spark. I don’t know which would be worse.

I don’t write for the usual blogging suspects because I’m not sure we yet understand each other. You have the memory of a time before social media. You got to form as a person before post-modernism had infiltrated the school curriculum and convinced us all that truth was an elastic concept. I’m still trying to establish what I believe, while navigating the ideological whiplash facilitated by the constancy of my feeds. It’s exhausting, it’s chaotic. Certain leaders are required for times like these.

Jim Elliot once said that he wished men would turn one way or another on facing Christ in him. Such single-mindedness is a rarity online, because, well, that’s not really the purpose of blogging. I tend to think that anyone who blogs ought to have some degree of self-loathing for indulging in it. I say this because I am very self-conscious about the fact that the online world is not so much given to the work of evangelism or conversion as it is to endless discourse. I do hope and expect that what is happening offline is markedly different to what is happening online.

But if I only had the online world to go by, it seems pretty obvious to me why we are floundering when it comes to evangelism. My impression from the online world is not that we would force men to turn one way or another in facing Christ in us, but that we would have men think us reasonable and nuanced. I am told to offer people a coherent worldview, I am led to believe that it is time for us to revise our tactics for evangelism. At worst I watch leaders give ambiguous and open answers so that all of their bases are covered. In short, everyone is given over to a very middle-class intellectual bubble where ‘reasonableness’ is our gold standard. Ironically, ‘reasonableness’ is not necessarily defined by biblical truth, or scientific data, or you know, reason, but by how well your opinion is received. I consider this kind of intellectual climate disastrous for the continued growth of the church and especially for evangelism. It is a disaster because in prizing our ‘reasonableness’ above all things, we relinquish the very ground upon which conversion happens: the moment at which a man must deny himself and submit to the very unreasonable conclusion that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Saviour.

Oh, but why can’t we have both? The catch cry of the Christian intellectual: it’s both/and, Christine, you simple girl. I’m sure it is. I am just quesioning the insistence upon the both/and intellectualism which is popular throughout Christian media. What may be a charitable position in academia translates too easily to a lukewarm Christianity online. And because we have so thoroughly reinforced this kind of thought leadership in our blogs, articles and comments, we are dull in our voices, and we bar ourselves from ever making specific critiques.

Instead, we share Jordan Peterson clips and are careful to include apologetic captions, lest we upset the blogosphere equilbrium with too extreme a position. Am I the only one wondering why I need to look to men like Jordan Peterson (or friendlyjordies for goodness sake) to find someone who is willing to make a definite statement? I don’t even fully agree with everything that Peterson says, but the dude is saying something and in lieu of my own leaders who say nothing I fill the void where I can. And I know I’m not the only one! Tell me I’m wrong. We have all counted the cost and decided that to say what you really mean is too risky. To say what is truthful is too divisive. After all, why h8 wen u can equivocate?

You can’t be half in exile. You’re in or you’re out. That is the kind of black and white language that the rules of argument are suspicious of, but the gospel itself undermines logical fallacies and it bids me come and die. If you wanted one line on why I am not a feminist, this is it. Having died to the world, I die to its politics, to its ideologies. In this death I live, and in so doing I am able to offer life from the other side, with a conviction that I pray belies the magnitude and worth of the message I have been entrusted with. 

I am an exile for this position. I am a radical. And this is not a forgiving time for radicals.

That is where you, keeper of the blogging keys, come in. I’m not saying step aside. I’m not saying millennials don’t need you. I’m saying that it’s actually much better and much worse than you realise. It’s better than you realise because you don’t need to convince us that these are hostile times. To use a Batman related illustration: you are adjusting to the dark, but we were born into it. Our eyes have lighted and we can see the way forward but you guys are literally still asking ‘how did we get into the dark? What is the nature of the dark?’ It is almost comical to watch my leaders constantly fret over these questions. But now it is becoming more and more frustrating because what we need is for you to get on with leading us. And that’s where it gets much worse. What we need are men of character and conviction who are willing to live and die by the word of God. What we need are men who are willing to show us what it looks like to get smashed and get back up again. Part of me thinks that you spend so much time analysing the times because it means a delay on actually living in them. Once you finally come to grips with everything you are theorising over, there is nothing left but to get on with being hated.

And yes, I have deliberately addressed the men. Why? Because I have decided not to play by the rules of feminism or identity politics which would dictate to me what is the ‘right thing’ to say. And I say that with such confidence because I genuinely believe my theology. Christian men, I am looking to follow and work with you. But you are believing the lie that you ought to make yourself smaller. It is a tragedy. It is a tragedy for the women who are looking to follow you, and it is a tragedy for the young men in your churches. The complementarian women like myself are not always the most vocal online (ok maybe I’m the exception), or in your churches, or in your classrooms. But it doesn’t mean that we’re not with you. What’s the worst that could happen if you stop self-censoring? Julia Baird and her followers come for you? If Carmelina Read can survive it, you can. Stop speaking for the sake of potential critics, speak in order to give courage to your friends. Get smashed, get back up again. It’s not just in the blogosphere that we need to draw from our leaders’ courage. It’s in every sphere of life.

Billy Graham once said

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

He was extraordinarily courageous and yet I believe that the Christian men of our time need to display even more courage than that. I’m waiting for the first of them to stand. 

[evilelitest2]

100 Days of Trump Bonus Edition: Full Metal Alchemist 2003

This is the first of I think five bonus 100 Days of Trump editions, who didn’t quite make it into the final cut but I am posting here,  They will be included in the final write up before I move unto my next project.    So lets talk anime, specifically my favorite anime, Full Metal Alchemist, specifically the vastly superior 2003 version (I will fight you).  Now there are a lot of things i could recommend about FMA 2003, and a lot of things I could tell you about why it fails in various ways but today I want to focus on two specific things the show talks about that relate to 2016, The Iraq War and the whole “Equivalent Exchange” Mantra.

“The pleasure of a dream is that it is a fantasy. If it happens, it was never a dream.” - Old Grandfather

   The first is fairly straightforward, 2003 is very explicitly about the middle eastern conflict (the manga less so) and namely how both sides don’t really view the war as the same thing. In both Ishbal and Lior (Reole) the locals have an existing political/social dynamic at play before Armestris shows up, and in both instances they view the conflict as an internal one, not one that a foreign power should get involved in.  The many groups come together under the most radical factions when a bunch of outsiders start interfering with their local customs, or trying to impose foreign rule on them.  Meanwhile Armistices due to being a fascist state with state controlled media, views the conflict only as a series of events, they don’t pay attention to Lior until it starts to affect them and so they try to handle the situation in a very simple way not taking into account local beliefs and customs.  And when their liberation fails, they become increasingly violent until hey look, genocide. Funny how that works 

 Now if this was the only point the anime made, I wouldn't bother with a 100 Days of Trump, after all Spec Opts the Line already made that point better.  No what I really want to talk about and what makes FMA 2003 better than the manga to say nothing of brotherhood*, lets talk about the so called “Rationalist Movement” or the “Dark Enlightenment.”

   Now the actual Enlightenment was/is an intellectual tradition that invented among other things, liberalism, and rationalism was a later movement that came out if it instrumental in the creation of modern science, but if you are on the internet and talk about social justice, you likely associate the term rational with the reactionary anti intellectual movement of bigoted morons that makes up youtube, reddit and part of Tumblr, to say nothing of Gamergate. They justify their beliefs by saying that they are just being rational and logical and tend to dismiss any form of progressiveness as some sort of emotional feelings based religion that can be disproven through sheer snark. Which is hilarious because these so called Rationals never do any actual fucking research, they don’t understand any of the subjects that they talk about (for all that they bitch against feminism none of them have read any feminist texts), they don’t actually know the history behind any of their subjects (For example if you want to talk study race relations in the United States, and you don’t understand housing law, then you are just being a fucking idiot who isn’t even trying).

“Nothing’s perfect. The world’s not perfect. But it’s there for us, trying the best it can. That’s what makes it so damn beautiful. ” - Roy Mustang

   And of course, they are fucking in love with pseudo science and conspiracy theories (so rational).  Above all though is this worship of science as some sort of life style, that science has the answers to everything which....no...no it does not.

    How does this relate to FMA?  Well turns out, revering science as a philosophy is almost the state religion in Armestris (the fascist dictatorship where the story is set), much in the same way that the Soviet Union was an atheist state that just swapped the Orthodox Church for Communist Orthodoxy) and the motto of our alchemist hero is “Equivalent Exchange”  In order to achieve anything, something of equal value must be lost.  THis is the personal motto of our main character, basically taking the First Law of Thermodynamics and applying it as a form of morality.  And it feels logical, people make progress based upon how hard they work, if you are willing to give up you will get ahead.  Its also just..objectively not true.  

    The FMA manga just doesn’t really address this, but debunking Equivalent Exchange as a philosophy is pretty much the main point of the 2003 anime, because of course..some people are just born into wealthy.  Some people are born into poverty.  Sometimes infants die within days of life due to an illness and sometimes you are hit by a stray bullet in a gang war, life is not and has never been fair.  But people really really want it to be, the desperately want the world to have an order, a meaning, a sense of internal justice, we want bad things that happen to make sense and to have justice to it.  

 This is called the “Just World Fallacy” and it is something we see a lot with victim blaming (well she was raped because of what she was wearing) to the notion that you can work you’re way out of poverty.   People want to believe the world is fair and just but it...it just isn’t.  It never has been, and it never will be, pretending otherwise is just justifying injustice. 

   And world views that attempt to justify this inevitably just end up rationalize inequality.  We see this in a lot of state imposed religions, we see this in honor cultures across the world, in various philosophies used to justify things like slavery, and we see it with the ever popular trend of trying to make a morality out of science...and this is basically social Darwinism.  No seriously, Equivalent Exchange has about as much bearing to the real world as Social Darwinism does to race, and both are massive misunderstanding of Thermodynamics and Evolution respectively.  Because if you try to think about these notions for like five mins, you realize....this makes no goddamn sense.  Hence why Social Darwinism is utterly debunked by the actual scientific community but it doesn’t stop the youtube community of “race realists” from pretending that this is a scientific reality and the progressives are just trying to fight against the natural order.  Which is always the appeal isn’t it, the natural order of things, never mind that this natural order never seems to have existed and always seems to change with the times.  Of course, most of these same people deny climate change because nothing says rationality like a total lack of ethical consistency.

   And this is important to understand, Science isn’t a world view, or a religion, or a philosophy or a morality, science is just a method of observation, nothing more, nothing less.  It is a methodology for trying to understanding factors around us.  You can’t form a morality based on the laws of thermodynamics because what applies to energy isn’t relevant to like...larger society.  Science isn’t a world view, how can it be, we still know so little about how the world works.  People who says ‘Science determines social standing” are almost universally people who want to protect their power and are trying to justify why they have so much while others have so little.  

This is to say nothing of the whole heat death of the universe thing.  

“But nothing’s ever perfect, haven’t you realized that yet? Earth turns on a tilted axis, just doing the best it can.” - Van Hohenheim

*I really don’t get why people like brotherhood, I understand the manga, the manga is good, just not as good as the anime in my view.  But Brotherhood is just the manga story being told in a crappy way, it doesn’t add anything new or distinct to the story and its form of storytelling losses any of the subtly and nuance of the manga, there just isn’t anything in it to find valuable.  Absolutely terrible directing and some of the worse lighting I’ve seen in anime and that is saying a lot.  Manga fans who say it is better than 2003 I can understand and respect, but Brotherhood?  Really?