30 Replies to “What, Nobody Had Matches?”

  2. My question is…were the papers destroyed because they agreed with how the University tried to deal with Lindsay Shepherd or against how they handled it? I suspect the latter, but context would be useful.
    The National Post had two great articles on the controversy (Christie Blatchford and Barbara Kay) yesterday.
    I am frightened about looking at sending kids to university today. I have two recently-graduated daughters (both got useful degrees which led them to employment). One came out the other end OK in terms of having her head on straight in these types of matters, but the younger one was teetering on the edge of becoming an SJW. She is backing off a bit, the longer she has been out of university (2 years) and working in the real world.

  3. Below I have copied an anonymous response to The Cord editorial on this subject. I received my Masters at WLU over twenty years ago but am disgusted at what is happening here and at potentially all faculties of higher learning in the West.
    “As an employee at Laurier, I feel relieved that the public is beginning to know the horror of working in what has come to feel like an indoctrination camp run by Thought Police. As far as I am aware, everyone at this university has been forced to attend a workshop, led by two young women, who introduced us to the Newspeak: gender neutral pronouns. We were told that those who reject this approach to pronoun use are transphobic. In other words, the old pronouns are an “unapproved thought.” Continued use of the old, gender-specific pronouns was not open to discussion. That, apparently, would be a subversive line of thinking. Note that some of us have years of acquaintance with the English language and advanced degrees in linguistics; note that many of us know how fickle language can be. Nevertheless, in the interest of holding on to our jobs, we suppressed this Thoughtcrime.
    Everyone in attendance at this workshop was also forced to select a pronoun of introduction and announce to all present how we wished to be addressed. Some of these pronouns implied a transgender identity. That this might be considered a forced “outing” for some didn’t seem to cross the minds of the workshop organizers. Another idea that hadn’t occurred was that some of us might feel it was invasive to be forced into a workshop to discuss our gender. Like all good tyrants, Wilfrid Laurier believes that it knows what is best for its minions. It believes it should have control of all aspects of our lives. Thank you, Big Brother.
    As an intellectual, and as someone acquainted with the history of the Chinese cultural revolution, this workshop – or should I say brainwashing session — sickened me. I suppose that my lack of enthusiasm showed, because afterward, my program manager took me aside to make sure that I was “on the same page” as the university. For fear of losing my employment, I smiled and made some noises about an upset stomach. I’ve learned through bitter experience that it’s better not to rock the boat with critical thinking here at Wilfrid Laurier.
    I came to learn this lesson not long ago. I’d made the rash decision of allowing some of my co-workers to “friend” me on Facebook. One of my so-called “friends” on Facebook reported me to her supervisor, and also to Human Resources. Apparently, my private support for a particular political movement made her feel “unsafe.” I found myself called into a meeting in Human Resources, where I was told that my Facebook post had caused a complaint (although they refused to tell me the identity of the complainant). Moreover, they told me that even though my Facebook account is private and was directed toward no one, my Facebook post amounted to Harassment. I was presented with the university’s Workplace Harassment policy, and was advised that I was guilty of workplace violence. Only through consultation with a lawyer (at my own expense) did I discover that this was untrue and that it amounted to bullying.
    Altogether, Wilfrid Laurier University has become the handmaiden of political correctness, vitriolic social justice warriors, greedy special interest groups, and reactionary anti-intellectuals. We have become public flagellants, not intellectuals; we have become witch hunters, and screed writers. By my estimation, it’s only a matter of time before the book burning begins.”

  4. It is a dilemma for a SJW.
    In the past fascists burnt everything they hated but burning causes pollution.
    That would be intolerable.

  5. I would just like to give a big shout-out to Progressive-Liberalism and identity politics. You own it. You own all of it.

  6. Thanks Johnny Marin … sickening. Unclear if you wrote the response or you are quoting. Thanks.
    Fahrenheit 451

  7. I wish we would stop calling them “social justice warriors”. That’s their term, and it’s Orwellian. They’re violent Marxists and should be referred to as such at every opportunity.

  9. Solzhenitsyn, THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, P. 310, uppity newspaper editor sentenced.
    Article 58 and a “tenner” for you, comrade.

  10. I had the same question. It is an important question. Are those fighting for freedom fighting back or are the Komsomolets asserting control.

  12. “I am frightened about looking at sending kids to university today.”
    I forgot to mention in my earlier replay that I feel the same. My oldest daughter was turned at the University of Manitoba, but my other two daughters and son successfully resisted the commie indoctrination at the schools they attended.

  14. Ze is pregnant
    Ze had a vasectomy
    Hir penis is small
    Hir boobs are perky
    Mind you, with the sex change trend who knows anymore anyway?
    Ze can go f*ck hirself ☺ ☺
    The world is mad mad mad.

  15. First you have to understand that rights and freedoms have had an Orwellian update.
    Non-leftists are now all considered the alt-right. The alt-right are white supremacists nazis. Nazis are hateful people. Hateful people only spew hate speech. Hate speech is actually violence. Violence is illegal. Progressives have the right to defend themselves and others from violence. So taking away the rights of violent people in order to protect others is virtuous.
    Progressives are virtuous and you have the freedom to agree with them completely or face any consequences they deem appropriate. This can range from not allowing you to speak, getting you fired, sending you away for re-education, dragging you to a human rights tribunal or, in their own words, they can “punch a nazi”. Remember, everyone who disagrees with a progressive, even slightly, is a white supremacist nazi.
    Progressives are totally blind to how they are setting up a totalitarian system. Not only will they justify any suffering due to abuse of this system but they are also too dense to understand how it may be used against them if radicals on the other side gain control of the system progressives set up.

  16. Its what socialists/fascists/communists/national socialists do.
    There is nothing mysterious about that, it is a standard practice.
    Without fail, every time.

  17. Growing up in a socialist system run by communists I’m first hand familiar with the tactics of the totalitarian dictatorship.
    Going through grades 9 to 11 got in trouble many times while disagreeing with the school dictators. When asked about where I get the ideas, would refuse answer. The interesting thing about these school dictators was that as soon as I refused, they left it alone.
    Before you say how cool, there was a dossier on every kid without exception that followed your life from school, to further school, to military services, to working life, gathering information about you. This was then used in your work position or prevented you to have a position above laboring nobody. They had a name for it, it was called Kadre’s summary, you see everybody was a kadre.
    This happening in a supposedly free country sounds like a spiral into totalitarianism. Peterson is right to refuse to use dictated language, the sad thing is that the Stalinists will prevail until there is a revolution. Then the same totalitarians will die by the hands of their own fellow travelers.
    The way it works is that the first totalitarians set the rules and are done away with, the next totalitarians will apply the rules and will simply say those are the rules, we did not make them. Since history is rewritten by the rulers, nobody of the new generation will know.
    I know, I lived in it, even if nobody believes it, maybe that is the way the big picture works.
    E Pericoloso Sporgersi

  18. I find it useful. Anyone who takes a word, and decides that word needs an adjective, an “adjustment”; that tells you a lot of what you need to know about them.
    Justice, is justice; if you need an adjective it is no longer justice in any sense. Likely the opposite.

  19. “Justice, is justice; if you need an adjective it is no longer justice in any sense. Likely the opposite.”
    Absolutely so.
    Or as the writer Paul Fussell once noted regarding the phrase EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL engraved on the front of the US Supreme Court building: “Three of those words are unnecessary.”

  20. Grade 8 in New Bruinswick 1969.
    One of our teachers read aloud selections from The Gulag Archipelago
    Ever since, I recognized the techniques throughout my growing up.
    Now I bitch at everything that appears to suffocate freedom, and concise free thought
    I never got to thank her.

  21. “In other words, the old pronouns are an ‘unapproved thought.'”
    There’s a bit of a silver lining here.
    This proliferation of boutique “gender-neutral” personal pronouns is actually linguistically counter-intuitive since language just doesn’t work this way.I might forget your name, but I won’t forget you’re either a he or a she.* In effect, these people are attempting to create “proper pronouns” for themselves in addition to their names (their proper nouns). Outside the sheltered, self-obsessed groves of academe and in the big, indifferent world, such efforts will fail because the common everyday usage of millions of ordinary** English speakers simply makes them unenforceable.
    I tend to see this as a very much a trend or a fad, unsustainable in the long term (in no small part due to the infinitesimally small numbers of people involved). Still, I agree that for the present it certainly does complicate the lives of those poor devils who just want to pursue their university education and move on.
    “Note that some of us have years of acquaintance with the English language and advanced degrees in linguistics…”
    As one formerly well immersed in linguistics, I’m afraid the current crop of academics in the field have largely been co-opted by the “gender-neutral” ideology. Just one of the reasons linguistics is increasingly bordering on junk science. And don’t get me started about sociolinguistics.
    * Though if you do insist on some phony, complicated pronoun, I’ll make a point to forget you.
    ** That is, the overwhelming majority who are simply male or female.

  23. What was described with respect to personal pronouns sounds a lot like the “student as customer” malarkey I had to contend with 25 years ago while I taught at a certain post-secondary institution.
    Everyone was expected to undergo indoctrination–er, customer service training–and dissent was not only frowned upon, it could have had severe consequences.
    The way in which it was inflicted upon us, the language that was used, the way in which it was implemented and enforced, as well as how certain staff members became fiercely loyal to the ideology, reminded me of the stories I heard about the Cultural Revolution in China.
    The teaching staff were no longer in charge of how courses were to be conducted. Instead, we were expected to kowtow to the students–I mean, customers of our learning delivery. Whatever the kiddies wanted, they were supposed to get–or else.
    The whole thing became absurd. Some departments completely abolished conventional titles and terminology. Department heads became “team leaders”. Instructors were “learning facilitators”.
    I always had the sense that the institute’s administration was laughing at those who went along with that idiocy. There were, however, some who used that doctrine as a way of purging their enemies or used its imposition as a way of climbing through the pecking order.
    The purpose for which that institution was established was quickly forgotten as actual learning and education were tossed aside in favour of politics.

  24. well there you have it.
    remember those enormous ‘bubble canopies’ that were going to cover entire cities in the year 2020 (ignoring the REAL greenhouse effect that would have raised temps inside the clear bubbles to 60 or 70 celcius on quiet days)? anyway, the ‘bubbles’ have been miniaturized to the personal custom-built size.
    egad, a portable ‘safe space’!!!
    pos-tit notes all over the inside reminding the occupant of the ever-changing list of ‘correct’ pronouns !!!
    crikey. the whole friggin world is turning into something like a kid’s parlour game with no rules or different rules for each player or rules that change constantly.

  25. “Portable safe spaces”
    Very usable. Will be using it many times, just to see the snowflakes melt.
    Thanks.
    E pericoloso sporgersi.

  26. There is only one acceptable pronoun;
    “Hey Thing…whats your problems?”For person to person.
    And It when it be absent or when referring to the other.
    As in “What is It’s problem?”.
    And if It fails to address you correctly using your chosen Title, beat It senseful.
    For any creature of the age of majority that still remains confused as to it’s own gender, has nothing useful to contribute to civil society.

  28. Fun fact: The writer of the editorial has an honours degree in journalism and a post-graduate certificate (WTF is that) in integrated marketing communications and doesn’t seem to have a job but rather hangs around the university enjoying his polarizing taste in music.

  29. I have but one universal all-purpose pronoun to use on these Red Guard wannabees and their psychophants: “Fu”. You can probably deduce where I’m going with this…
    Feel free to use it yourselves…I’m happy to share.

  30. I don’t know why anyone is taking this out on The Cord. Their editorial on the subject basically said “We are not going to take a position, but will just report on events as they unfold.” The story was big enough that they could not ignore it. They did the next best thing.

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