“I’m a gay woman living in a conservative city in the south and, let me be honest with you, the only people who have had problems with me being a gay woman in a conservative city in the south are the liberals.”
On tomboys, pronouns, and trans-enabling teachers.
Including an interspecies battle of wits; detected trajectories; some hot and steamy jiggling; and an experiment in sudden-onset upwardsness.
In terms of ideology, “diversity” seems to be the belief that the less we have in common, and feel we have in common, the happier we will be. An unobvious proposition, to say the least. Yet the word is mouthed as if it were a self-evident good, a “strength,” a moral imperative, a thing of which one could never have enough.
It seems to me we’ve strayed very far from the idea that an attractively developed society should – and must – be discerning about which kinds of newcomers it welcomes, lest it be flooded with incompatible tribes and the trash of the world. The idea that the locals, the voting citizens, might want a good deal and ask, “What’s in it for us?” seems anathema to Our Betters. Likewise, the notion of a civilised society implying, quite strongly, “You’re lucky to be here. Behave accordingly.”
And so, instead, we get the routine airbrushing of crime news, and instructional videos in which ludicrous progressive women film themselves performing please-don’t-rape-me dances.
Including an ambitious juicing project; bewildering pleats; on personality and pet preference; and scenes from swinging Caracas, circa 1969.
All this and more.
Apparently, littering isn’t a moral shortcoming of the people actually dropping the litter.
Including when your underwear keeps going missing; the engineering of Mount Rushmore; a bedlamite infestation; and replacing lost fingers with grafted toes.
There’s an implied dare. The game being, “You won’t do what’s needed, despite our alarming and menacing behaviour, because you’re nicer than us, less vain, and not unhinged, and so we can dominate you and terrorise you, and break your stuff, for as long as we want, for shits and giggles.”
Well. I would suggest that the activists’ own actions render their wellbeing of very low importance.
On progressive concern for the wellbeing of burglars; on erotic entanglements with pets; on denouncing those who notice things; and when it turns out that there is a time and place for running people over.
I suppose we could take a moment to ponder the fact that there are creatures, cross-dressing middle-aged men, for whom it is necessary to conjure court orders to deter them from attending nurseries, as if they were children, and from climbing into wheelie bins. While wearing soiled nappies.
Including a feat of dexterity; a dog relocation device; a collection of Medieval medical recipes; and for enthusiasts of Star Trek, an actual Cardassian TV/VCR combo, only $495.
All this and more.
It’s fundraising week over at my place. If you’d like to help keep a blog afloat, and ad-free, by all means do.
Understanding the mental states of others, their motives and assumptions, insofar as one can, doesn’t necessarily result in positive feelings towards them, or identification with them, or lead to a default forgiveness and willingness to excuse their behaviour. Simply put, if your “empathy” results in you being endlessly forgiving, endlessly accommodating, over and over again, then you’re almost certainly doing it wrong.
Or not doing it at all.
Including a collection of unconvincing support apparatus; a lesson in how quickly the day can turn to shit; Lake Cow Bacon; and James Bond as depicted in Indian comic-books.
All this and more.
On small children being subordinate to cross-dressing men; on the crushing terror of “white supremacy” in middle-school maths class; and on explaining civilisation to those seemingly unfamiliar with the concept.
Including scenes of pumping and squeaking; a cunning use of the tongue; why you can’t walk through walls; and reasons to avoid detection by an alien intelligence.
All this and more.
Or, “Journalist dismayed by white actors playing white characters in period drama.”
I’m not at all sure what historical inclusivity might mean, given the racial demographics of rural England at the time of Brontë and Austen, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, what Ms Flint seems to want sounds more like ahistorical inclusivity. And whether incongruous, politically corrected racial casting choices constitute “imagination,” rather than A Following Of Very Modern Fashion, is a question I leave to the reader.
From the world of academia, specifically sociology, some lively rumblings.
No laughing at the back.