#if i hear 'gender ideology' one more time i might shoot someone

[kartoshinki]

writing my intro after two beers is a fantastic idea, there is absolutely zero possibility of me just falling into emotional, polemic rants about anti-scientific reactionaries and other transphobes being dickheads AND stupid

[the-everqueen]

why i disliked “the traitor baru cormorant”

so...recently i read Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant. i bought it thinking, Cool, an insightful fantasy series for me to get into while i wait to hear whether i passed my qualifying exams! i have some time before the semester starts! 

and then i absolutely hated it and spent every minute cataloguing what i thought Dickinson got wrong.

...uh, if you want to get the tl;dr of the liveblog i gave the gf, here’s the top three reasons i disliked this book:

1) not a fan of the “strong female character” trope

yes, Baru doesn’t sling around a sword or shoot arrows better than Anyone In The Whole World. but Dickinson IMMEDIATELY tells us (not shows, tells) that she’s good at math, she’s clever at picking apart strategic scenarios, she’s a savant. (tbh, i don’t love how he shows this, either, with the standard child-prodigy-who-catches-the-attention-of-a-powerful-adult trope.) in Dickinson’s crafted world, her math skills aren’t entirely unusual: women (for...some reason?) are stereotyped as being good at calculations, despite also being aligned with hysteria and too many emotions. this bothers me more than it’s probably supposed to, because the sexism in this novel doesn’t really seem to follow an internal logic. i guess it’s so we can have a woman as the protagonist? also...hoo boy...her “savant” characterization bothers me because...she’s heavily coded as South East Asian (...maaaybe Philippines or Native Hawaii, but as i’ll get to later, Dickinson doesn’t make a huge distinction). uh...model minority stereotypes anyone? yes, within the text, plenty of people associated with the Empire comment that it’s impressive someone of her background got into a position of power so young. at the same time, i’m sure that sounds familiar to so many Asian-identified people! the constant tightrope of being expected to perform to a certain (white, Western) standard while also being Othered. mostly this bothers me because Baru is also characterized as...a sellout for the Empire. sure, her stated goal is to undo the Empire from within, but [MAJOR SPOILERS] in the end it appears that her actual goal was to attain enough power that the Empire would let her be a benevolent dictator over her home island? and it’s only after a major PERSONAL betrayal that she revises this plan? [END SPOILERS] Baru also assimilates without much pain or sacrifice. she hardly ever thinks about her parents or her childhood home. she willingly strips herself of cultural signifiers and adapts to Empire norms (apart from being a closeted lesbian, which...yeah, i’ll get to that, too). and it’s not that Dickinson doesn’t TRY to make her a nuanced character, but...to me, it feels so painfully obvious that this is not his experience. it feels almost...voyeuristic. 

...much like his descriptions of wlw desire!

2) we get it, you read Foucault

the categories of sexual deviance are based entirely on a Western Victorian-era medical discourse around non-heterosexual forms of desire, but Dickinson ignores the network of sociocultural, religious, and historical contexts that contributed to that specific kind of discourse. he uses the terms “tribadism” and “sodomy” but those ideas CANNOT EXIST outside a Euro-American Christian context. yes, a huge part of the 19th century involved the pathologization of sexual and romantic desire (or lack thereof). but that in turn goes back to a history of medicine that relied on the “scientific method” as a means of studying and dissecting the human body--and that method in itself is a product of Enlightenment thinking. Theorist Sylvia Wynter (whomst everyone should read, imho) discusses how the Enlightenment attempted to make the Human (represented by a cisgender, heteronormative, white man) an agent of the State economy. every categorization of so-called deviance goes back to white supremacist attempts to define themselves as ‘human’ against a nonwhite, non-Christian Other. and IN TURN that was ultimately founded on anti-Black, anti-Indigenous racism. at this point it’s a meme in academic circles to mention Foucault, because so many scholars don’t go any further in engaging with his ideas or acknowledge their limits. but SERIOUSLY. Dickinson crafts the Masquerade as this psuedo-scientific empire that’s furthering erasure of native cultures, but...where did these ideas come from? who created them? what was the justification that gave them power? [MINOR SPOILER] blaming the Empire’s ideology on a handful of people behind the Mask who crafted this entire system makes me...uncomfortable, to say the least. part of what gives imperialism its power is that a lot of ordinary people buy in to its ideas, because it aligns with dominant belief systems or gives them some sense of advantage. 

also speaking of cultural erasure...

3) culture is more than set dressing

again, to reiterate: Baru does NOT think back to her childhood home for longer than a couple passing sentences at various points in the narrative. but even though the early chapters literally take place on her home island, i don’t get a sense of...lived experience. this is true of ALL of the fantasy analogues Dickinson has created in his Empire. i felt uncomfortably aware of the real world counterparts that Dickinson was drawing inspiration from. at the same time...there are basically no details to really breathe life into these various fantasy cultures. i HATE the trope of “fantasy Asia” or “fantasy Africa” or “fantasy Middle East” that’s rampant among white male sff writers. Dickinson does not get points from me for basically just expanding that to “fantasy South East Asia,” “fantasy Mongolia,” “fantasy South America,” and... “fantasy Africa,” plus some European cultures crammed in there. he’s VERY OBVIOUSLY drawing on those languages for names, but otherwise there’s no real sense of their religious practices, the nuances of their cultures, the differences between those cultures (besides physiological, which...oh god). part of that is probably supposed to be justified by “well, the Empire just erased it!!!” but that’s not an excuse imho. 

also...in making the Empire the ultimate signifier of the evils of imperialism...Dickinson kind of leans into the “noble savage” stereotype. Baru’s home island is portrayed as this idyllic environment where no one is shamed for who they love and gender doesn’t determine destiny and there are no major conflicts. (there is a minor nod to some infighting, but this is mostly a “weakness” that the Masquerade uses as an excuse to obliterate a whole tribe.) Dickinson justifies young Baru’s immediate assimilation as her attempt to figure out the Masquerade’s power from within, but given that the Masquerade presumably killed one of her dads and her mom maybe advocates a guerilla resistance...it’s weird that Baru basically abandons her family without a second thought. yeah, i get that she’s a kid when the Masquerade takes over the island, but...that’s still a hugely traumatic experience! the layers of trauma and conditioning and violence that go into this level of colonization are almost entirely externalized. 

(later it’s implied that Baru might qualify as a psychopath, and tbh that feels like an excuse for why we haven’t gotten any sense of her inner world, not to mention kind of offensive.) 

this isn’t exhaustive but...

it’s not that i don’t think white people shouldn’t ever address POC experiences in their books. just...if your entire trilogy is going to revolve around IMPERIALISM IS BAD, ACTUALLY, maybe you should contribute to the discourse that Black, Brown, and Indigenous authors have already done. reading this book made me so, so angry. i did not feel represented! i felt like i was being talked down to, both on a critical theory level AND on a craft level. there are SO MANY books by actual BIPOC and minority authors that have done this better. N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy and her current Cities series. Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti trilogy. Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House remains one of the more powerful novels i’ve read on how The System Is Out To Destroy You, That Is The Point. (Bardugo is non-practicing Spanish and Moroccan Jewish on one side of her family, and her character Alex is mixed and comes from a Jewish background!) 

...

there’s not really a point to this. i get a lot of people have raved about this book. good for them. if that’s you, no judgment. i’m not trying to argue IF YOU LIKED THIS YOU ARE PROBLEMATIC. i’m just kind of enraged that a white dude wrote about a Brown lesbian under a colonial empire and that THIS Brown lesbian under a colonial empire couldn’t even get behind the representation. also kind of annoyed that it’s the Empire of Masks and Dickinson either hasn’t read Fanon or didn’t see fit to slip in a Fanon reference, which like. missed opportunity. 

[the-mira-life-project-mtf]

Talked with my family today about calling me by my preferred pronouns. I have been wanting to ask them to call me by she/her as I’ve been passing as female now for five months without any mid-gendering! Yay!

A few times I found myself with my family at dinner, shopping and staying at the hotel and occasionally would be misgendered by my family that made me feel self conscious,

For example, when I was shopping with my grandmother she would constantly say ‘he’ and ‘him’, and one time at Albertsons, it got bad:

The cashier comments “You ladies find everything you were looking for?” as I replied

“Yes we most certainly did! Even more then expected!”

The cashier scanned our groceries and looked to my grandmother “Would you like any help out today?”

“No I have him to help me.”

The cashier glanced at me, tight lipped as a man waiting in line who seemed friendly at first glared at me as I just wanted to go.

For a few hours, I dwelled on all I’ve experienced as I thought ‘I can’t afford to take her shopping.’

I was cooking dinner and walked over to my grandmother as I said “I need to talk to you about something that might be hard to hear; but I liked it if you called me by my preferred pronouns. She...”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“I like you to please call me she or her when we are out. I am mostly passing now as female, I present myself accordingly and besides, I am legallly female now.”

I then explained my reasoning “Today shopping, the gentleman behind us just glared at me...judging me. I was highly uncomfortable!” “Even though nothing happened, one day you might identify me as being trans and someone messed up in the head might feel my existence is a threat to their ideology and end up shooting or stabbing me!”

“I am sorry.” she says as she nods her head “So you want to be called a woman...”

“Yes.” I reply.

“Okay, though might take me awhile to get use to it.”

I nod, smiling. “I understand...I am still learning myself.”

When my mother and sister came home, I was wondering how to present this change to them (as before, I never required anyone to call me Mira or a woman...but with my transition tipping the scales towards feminine). Surprisingly, grandmother broke the news as I nodded, saying that I understand it will take time.

It is another major step in my transition!

[gyrlversion]

My Afternoon With ‘Curvy Wife Guy’

Curvy Wife Guy and Intelligencer writer Madison Malone Kircher face off. Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer/AFP/Getty Images

Robbie Tripp is a hugger. When I met him in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, I stuck out my hand for a shake and Tripp, clad in a Hawaiian shirt, opened both arms. We hugged. Of all the experiences I’ve had at City Bakery in Flatiron — crying, hiding from a colleague while on an early-morning coffee date, drinking my bodyweight in hot chocolate — this one was new. I was hugging Curvy Wife Guy.

If you know Robbie Tripp — blogger, self-described creative entrepreneur, soon-to-be rapper — you know him by his internet moniker: “Curvy Wife Guy.” It’s a nickname he picked up after a picture he posted on Instagram in 2017 went viral. In the caption to a photo of Tripp and his wife, Sarah, embracing in swimsuits on the beach, he told the world a tragic tale. Tripp had been teased in his younger years for preferring “girls on the thicker side, ones who were shorter and curvier, girls that the average (basic) bro might refer to as ‘chubby’ or even ‘fat.’” The post was, if you ignore the fraught language, an ode to Sarah. “A real woman is not a porn star or a bikini mannequin or a movie character,” he concluded. (Sarah, for the record, may be “curvy,” but she is also objectively, conventionally hot.)

Like a lot of people on the internet, I took notice of Tripp’s, ah, effusive celebration of his wife’s body, and like a lot of other bloggers, I wrote a short post about it. I dutifully followed both the Tripps on Instagram and then, other than checking in periodically, didn’t really think much about them — until April, when the couple posted pregnancy announcements on their respective accounts. Sarah’s has already escaped my memory, mostly because it contained the sorts of excited, but conventional, things one expects in such a post. Her husband’s is seared into my brain. Tripp called his wife a “sacred vessel carrying my seed” and a “pure fertile goddess” with a “five-star womb.” Knowing readers would want to hear about the new adventures of a viral sensation, I wrote a short blog post about the caption, calling it “expectedly cringey.” The Tripps promptly blocked me on Instagram.

A bit dramatic, but not totally a surprise. For an internet culture writer, which I am, this is business as usual. A person achieves some level of success, fame, or other notoriety on the social platforms that govern much of American culture. I write about that person, and what they’ve done to earn the praise or enmity — really, the attention — of the public. And that person, depending on how they feel about my coverage, either remains in contact or, well, doesn’t. What is fairly rare is hearing from the subjects of those blog posts after they’ve been written, which is why I thought I was hallucinating late Sunday night when a DM from Tripp appeared in my Instagram in-box asking to meet up during his visit to New York last week. I especially thought I was hallucinating because, when I woke up Monday morning, the message was gone. I hadn’t screenshotted it.

As it turns out, Tripp simply got nervous about how I might interpret a “late-night DM.” “I didn’t know what you were going to do, and I figured an email was a little bit more professional,” he told me as we settled in for an hourlong conversation. After the deleted DM, he’d emailed me and a number of other internet culture writers, asking if they wanted to get coffee. In the email, he wrote that he thought if we met face-to-face, I’d realize I don’t “hate” him — his word, not mine — or have him figured out quite so well as I think I do. The subject line was “Opportunity of a Lifetime!!!!!!!!!”

I’m not sure it was really the opportunity of a lifetime, but as I later told Tripp, I felt saying “yes” was the right thing to do, given I’d written about him repeatedly. Interpreting Instagram posts is fine, but there’s no substitute for meeting your subject in person. Plus I’d be lying if I did not say I wasn’t a little curious. This Instagram version of himself had to be an act, right? Maybe he was actually someone I’d get along with? Was it possible that meeting Robbie Tripp in person would lead to a lifelong friendship?

He told me I was the only writer to take him up on the offer — “I was almost kind of like Kevin in Home Alone. I was like, ‘I’m not afraid anymore.’ You know what I mean?” — and said I could ask him anything I want. I asked him why he blocked me on Instagram. “I don’t ever do things with the intent of people writing about it, commenting on it,” Tripp says. “Just by the way that I am and the way that I say things, it always just ends up happening.” He told me my headline and tweets about his pregnancy announcement had hurt his feelings.

When Tripp’s Instagram post went viral in 2017, he had about 20,000 followers. Now he has 115,000. (Sarah has 460,000.) They’re influencers, which means their business is attention. The more eyes they can get on their posts, the more they can attract sponsorships or advertising within them. For a single sponsored Instagram post, the couple can charge as much as $20,000, and “that’s just in terms of a single post. If we’re throwing in blog posts, other types of syndicated content into their video content and all that stuff, it [they figure] gets bigger.” One of Tripp’s shticks is “desert money,” a catchphrase cobbled together from the couple’s move to Arizona and his “always be grinding” attitude. Most influencers aren’t as candid about money as Tripp is. “It’s gauche in our industry to talk about money. You play your cards close to your chest because your engagement and your stats and your metrics are kind of like your currency,” Tripp explained to me.

If this all seems to you at odds with his claim that he doesn’t create content with the intention of getting attention, it did to me too. Tripp told me there are parts of his life where he won’t “do anything to lessen the perceived controversy” — he mentioned here his upcoming music video — but that the pregnancy announcement was different. “That’s just me telling, genuinely sharing that moment with my followers.” (I imagine my face looked like Marcia from The Brady Bunch. Sure, Jan.)

Tripp’s insistence that, despite a livelihood that relies on attention, he doesn’t actively seek it out came up several times in our conversation. When I asked Tripp about the criticism he’d faced over his original post, he said that it all rested on the assumption “that I asked for that or I somehow knew that it was going to go viral,” which he says he didn’t. Either way, the couple plans to share their baby on social media when it is born. “There are definitely influencers who say, ‘I’m not going to post my kid, I’m going to put my kid on my Instagram,’” he said. “I wouldn’t say we’re about that.”

I wondered a bit if he’d had another motive for arranging this coffee: His upcoming music video for an as-yet-untitled “curvy girl” anthem, the teasers for which features Sarah and a handful of models in swimsuits. Tripp sports a fruit-patterned shirt. In one behind-the-scenes clip, you can hear a little of the song playing from the gold Tesla Tripp rented for the shoot. “Got stretch marks / Yeah, they’re tigers stripes / Get you the new model / Get you the curvy type,” Tripp raps. “Some say a curvy girl that’s risky / But they ain’t met a curvy girl that’s frisky.” He turns the song off as he begins a lyric about “200 pounds.” “It was never a consideration that I wouldn’t be in it,” Tripp tells me when I ask why he decided to star in the video. “I told Sarah in the beginning, ‘This was going to be empowering. This was going to be fun.’” he said. “I’m an artist. It’s my project.”

“Not many guys are out there promoting this opposite-gender body positivity,” Tripp said. “I’m just here to say there are those of us out there, guys out there, who find curvy women attractive, beautiful, and desirable.” I told him I’d just as soon live in a world where men don’t feel the need to comment on women’s bodies, full stop. He said just because I’m uncomfortable with a man commenting on a woman’s body — like, for example, my body — doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of women out there who agree with him. He apologized profusely for racist and homophobic tweets that had been unearthed in the wake of his sudden viral fame, explaining that the time that he and his wife spent living in San Francisco had helped him grow. He told me his wife’s preferred SoulCycle studio was in the Castro and asked if I knew what that meant. We’d hit an impasse.

There’s a precedent for how conversations go when internet writers finally meet, in person, the viral subjects they’ve previously lambasted — Valleywag writer Sam Biddle meeting Justine Sacco, the publicist who tweeted “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS,” or Vice’s Eve Peyser, meeting the New York Times’s Bari Weiss. Two ideological opponents see each other face-to-face, talk it out, find common ground, discover that the internet had made them cruel or callous in ways they didn’t expect.

Not for me and Robbie Tripp. There was no catharsis, no new sense of purposefulness or peace. No moment of enlightenment or sense that I’d wasted my life or hurt an innocent man. Because, ultimately, Tripp and I don’t hate each other — I never claimed to hate him, in fact. We need each other. We don’t misunderstand each other. We understand each other all too well.

The strong disagreements I have with Tripp — which, to be clear, I absolutely still hold — are good for business. Good for both of our businesses. Tripp said I’d hurt his feelings, and maybe I had, but I hadn’t really hurt him. The opposite, in fact. His career has benefited from my distaste for his diction in the same way mine has benefited from the clicks I’m guaranteed whenever I write about his latest gambit. If there was a lesson about the way we relate to each on the internet contained in my own viral-subject-viral-author meet-up, it was that: There’s a mutualism to our relationship. Bees and flowers. Those little birds that eat ticks and rhinos. Me and Curvy Wife Guy.

As we parted ways, Tripp told me he’s still unsure if he’ll unblock me. Later, he posted a multi-video Instagram Story directed at all his “haters.” In it, he tells the story of our meeting and informs his fans we had a civil conversation and he’s sure — though, of course, I will write whatever I want to write — he convinced me he’s not the person I thought he was. I, however, did not see this story. A friend, whom he hasn’t blocked, told me about it.

As of publication, the writer of this piece remains blocked by both Curvy Wife Guy and his Curvy Wife.

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[hviral]

Mass shootings aren’t becoming more common

When 22 people were killed in El Paso, Texas, and nine more were killed in Dayton, Ohio, roughly 12 hours later, responses to the tragedy included many of the same myths and stereotypes Americans have grown used to hearing in the wake of a mass shooting.

As part of my work as a psychology researcher, I study mass homicides, as well as society’s reaction to them. A lot of bad information can follow in the wake of such emotional events; clear, data-based discussions of mass homicides can get lost among political narratives.

I’d like to clear up four common misconceptions about mass homicides and who commits them, based on the current state of research.

Violent video games cause mass homicides?

By Monday morning after these latest shootings, President Donald Trump along with other Republican politicians had linked violent video games to mass shootings.

I’ll admit my surprise, since only last year the Trump administration convened a School Safety Commission which studied this issue, among many others. I myself testified, and the commission ultimately did not conclude there was sufficient evidence to link games and media to criminal violence.

Long-term studies of youth consistently find that violent games are not a risk factor for youth violence anywhere from one to eight years later. And no less than the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 2011 that scientific studies had failed to link violent games to serious aggression in kids.

A 2017 public policy statement by the American Psychological Association’s media psychology and technology division specifically recommended politicians should stop linking violent games to mass shootings. It’s time to lay this myth to rest.

Mass shooters are male white supremacists?

Early reports suggest that the El Paso shooter was a white racist concerned about Latino immigration. Other shooters, such as the perpetrator of the Christchurch, New Zealand attack, have also been white supremacists.

Overall, though, the ethnic composition of the group of all mass shooters in the U.S. is roughly equivalent to the American population.

Hateful people tend to be attracted to hateful ideologies. Some shootings, such as the 2016 shooting of police officers in Dallas, were reportedly motivated by anti-white hatred. Other shooters, such as the 2015 San Bernardino husband and wife perpetrator team, have espoused other hateful ideas such as radical Islam.

Most mass homicide perpetrators don’t proclaim any allegiance to a particular ideology at all.

Of course, mass homicides in other nations — such as several deadly knife attacks in Japan —  don’t involve U.S. race issues.

As far as gender, it’s true that most mass homicide perpetrators are male. A minority of shooters are female, and they may target their own families.

Mental illness definitely is or is not to blame?

Whether mental illness is or is not related to mass shootings — or criminal violence more broadly — is a nuanced question. Frankly, proponents on both sides often get this wrong by portraying the issue as clear-cut.

As far back as 2002, a U.S. Secret Service report based on case studies and interviews with surviving shooters identified mental illness —  typically either psychosis or suicidal depression —  as very common among mass homicide perpetrators.

As for violence more broadly, mental illness, such as psychosis as well as a mixture of depression with antisocial traits, is a risk factor for violent behavior.

Some people suggest mental illness is completely unrelated to crime, but that claim tends to rely on mangled statistics. For instance, I’ve seen the suggestion that individuals with mental illness account for just 5% of violent crimes. However, that assertion is based on research like one Swedish study that limited mental illness to psychosis only, which is experienced by about 1% or less of the population. If 1% of people commit 5% of crimes, that suggests psychosis elevates risk of crime.

It’s also important to point out that the vast majority of people with mental illness do not commit violent crimes. For instance, in one study, about 15% of people with schizophrenia had committed violent crimes, as compared to 4% of a group of people without schizophrenia. Although this clearly identifies the increase in risk, it also highlights that the majority of people with schizophrenia had not committed violent crimes. It’s important not to stigmatize the mentally ill, which may reduce their incentive to seek treatment.

So improving access to mental health services would benefit a whole range of people and, by coincidence, occasionally bring treatment to someone at risk of committing violence. But focusing only on mental health is unlikely to put much of a dent in societal violence.

Mass homicides are becoming more frequent?

Mass homicides get a lot of news coverage which keeps our focus on the frequency of their occurrence. Just how frequent is sometimes muddled by shifting definitions of mass homicide, and confusion with other terms such as active shooter.

But using standard definitions, most data suggest that the prevalence of mass shootings has stayed fairly consistent over the past few decades.

To be sure, the U.S. has experienced many mass homicides. Even stability might be depressing given that rates of other violent crimes have declined precipitously in the U.S. over the past 25 years. Why mass homicides have stayed stagnant while other homicides have plummeted in frequency is a question worth asking.

Nonetheless, it does not appear that the U.S. is awash in an epidemic of such crimes, at least comparing to previous decades going back to the 1970s.

Mass homicides are horrific tragedies and society must do whatever is possible to understand them fully in order to prevent them. But people also need to separate the data from the myths and the social, political and moral narratives that often form around crime.

Only through dispassionate consideration of good data will society understand how best to prevent these crimes.

The post Mass shootings aren’t becoming more common appeared first on HviRAL.

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[googlenewson]

With a thoughtfully woke CEO and consistently high ratings on all the diversity lists, Randall Tucker knew that his new life as Mastercard's Chief Inclusion Officer would be a different kind of gig.

"This was not a turnaround situation," he laughs. "But my marching orders were to build on the great work and make it more relevant and global."

Now, just over two years on the job, Tucker says he's making a mark. "We've elevated the conversation of diversity and inclusion at that leadership level," he says. "We've all made sure that the work is seen as just as important as all other functions within the company."

RaceAhead caught up with Tucker just as he was about to jet off to celebrate his 24th wedding anniversary. "My husband and I met our first week at college," he says, an unexpected development but a wonderful one. "As I’ve gotten older, I've learned that everything is better when you have someone to share it with."

It’s a philosophy that informs his thinking about what makes a welcoming workplace. What follows is a lightly edited version of our conversation.

RA: Let's start with how you started. Mastercard was already doing so well and has a vocal equality champion in CEO Ajay Banga. How did you set your course?

RT: Well, we needed a working definition of what we were trying to tackle. I started with my formal definition of D&I – diversity is all the things that make us similar as well as different, the things you can and can't see about other people. Then there's inclusion - how do build diverse teams and keep them? At the end of the day, those are the two things that made sense for me, the management committee, and Ajay to focus on.

I imagine data played a big role.

Exactly. Next, I took a pause for the cause to figure out what we're really trying to move the needle on and how D&I can help support our core businesses. I had leadership interviews with the first two tiers of the organization. I had one-on-one conversations with board members. I looked at our HR data and employee engagement survey data and then the customer data which asked about our commitment to diversity.

How does “diversity” play out globally?

It's very different from region to region. In the US, we tend to gravitate to gender and ethnicity as the markers of diversity. But in other parts of the world that might not be the heavier weight. It might be language, it might be education, it might be religion or your career experiences. So that was part of the thinking.

Then basically I looked at all this stuff and said, what's it trying to tell me?

What was it trying to tell you?

Two things, one big, one modular. The first is that inclusion education matters. I don't believe we are born inclusive leaders, so part of the job is to build the muscle of inclusive leadership in our talent. That's how we make sure everyone can reach their greatest opportunity in the organization.

Next, we needed to focus on the regional goals that made specific sense to those leaders, while still mapping back to the global vision. One size fits all, but with regional customization.

Can you give me an example of regional differences?

The idea is that to create the greatest business opportunities you need diverse perspectives at the table. In Asia, it's how do we hire more people outside of the payments and banking industry, since our focus is primarily tech? In Latin America, it might be increasing women in senior leadership. In the US, it's often how do I get more people of African descent in the mix. The goal is to get all those perspectives working together harmoniously, so everyone feels that they belong.

How did you shape inclusive leadership training at Mastercard?

I started by thinking about what those things that keep coming up that we need to get better at right now. Things you'd find on employee surveys, things that we get sued for - and then solve for them in tangible ways.

It's not about holding hands. What's impeding us from meeting our goals and creating a space for belonging so people can think better and innovate better? Also, I have opinions about implicit bias training.

Let's hear it.

Inclusive leadership is a skill you can learn like any other, like financial acumen or executive presence. It's a honing of something. It's hopeful. It's a relaxed approach because we can all be more inclusive leaders. Standalone trainings feel like "we need to fix you." It creates outlier work and people don't understand how it relates to their business.

Instead embed your inclusion thinking in every policy, practice, and conversation. Now, it's just the way Mastercard execs learn to lead.

The numbers show - and it comes up all the time in my reporting – that non-majority culture talent can't make it past their first leadership jobs. What should companies be doing differently?

The piece that I make sure that I control is the development piece: What is the inclusion dialog around talent review? In that discussion, who is going to be given those stretch assignments. Who is in your next class of leaders in the organization? Are they diverse? We're having those conversations upfront about the people who are being identified as high potential. I show you the photo of your talent pool and ask you, is this what you want? Give them a chance to make a different decision by giving them the data.

The inclusive leadership part is - what do people specifically need to succeed?

So much of inclusion is about getting people to really see each other.

We do ourselves a disservice if we only talk to people like ourselves. We make sure our business resource groups (BRGs) are collaborating with each other. We make sure people are mentoring and sponsoring people different than themselves. There is not a Mastercard executive who won't make time for lunch if you ask. So ask.

But really, I learned about the power of dialog and crisis management when the Pulse Nightclub [mass] shooting happened.

You were the Senior Director of Inclusion and Diversity at Darden Restaurants at the time?

Yes, and it was right down the street from us. Orlando is already a welcoming environment. But now we needed to ask, what does it mean to love and respect your neighbor? So, I brought in people from the black, Hispanic, gay, Muslim, and law enforcement communities for a panel discussion. You know, we didn't all agree, but it was healing.

And that's what I'm really proud of, bringing that sense of dialog and discussion here to Mastercard every day. How can we get better at really talking to each other? Working with other groups? Inclusion can't be built in silos.

On Point

[bs-title]Intel talks diversity on Capitol Hil[/bs-title][bs-content]Intel's diversity and inclusion chief Barbara Whye testified to Congress in support of the STEM Opportunities Act, a law that will address the issues that women and underrepresented talent face in tech. She had plenty of pointers to share. Intel had made a public promise in 2015 that by 2020 its employees would better reflect the population of the US. They ended up reaching their goal in 2018 with a workforce now 27% female, 9.2 % Hispanic, and about 5% African American. She ticked through a variety of inclusion strategies, but asked lawmakers to do better. "These programs can help to reduce the opportunity gap, but only Congress has the influence and resources to address these systemic problems on the national level."[/bs-content][bs-link link="https://wapo.st/2VESn7J" source="Washington Post"]

[bs-title]The UK conducts a "racism in the workplace" survey, gets bad news[/bs-title][bs-content]The UK's Trade Union Congress (TUC) used an online survey to better understand the daily experiences of their Black and Ethnic Minority population (BME) in the workplace. The survey asked over 5,000 people some basic questions about their experiences at work, whether or not they had been racially harassed, or if they had been treated differently by their employer because of their race. The survey also asked the workers to share their experiences of bringing issues of racism to their employers and how they reacted. The study found that racism still plays a large role in the lives of the BME workers with over 70% of Asian and Black workers reporting they had experienced racial harassment at work and around 60% of Asian and Black workers, reporting that they had been given unfair treatment by their employer because of their race. The full report, called "Racism Ruins Lives," is below.[/bs-content][bs-link link="http://bit.ly/2HrNzsz" source="Racism Ruins Lives"]

[bs-title]A fire in a New Haven mosque was intentionally set[/bs-title][bs-content]I'm not sure why this story isn't getting more attention, but a two-alarm fire which heavily damaged a New Haven mosque is now a federal investigation. "This was intentionally set," New Haven Fire Chief John Alston told the Hartford Courant. "Any time there's an event like this in a house of worship, anywhere in the United States, it triggers a response of both the ATF, the FBI, and state and local authorities. That has happened."[/bs-content][bs-link link="http://bit.ly/2JigfaG" source="Hartford Courant"]

[bs-title]White supremacy is terrorism[/bs-title][bs-content]The number of hate-based murders, people who were killed for their race or religion, doubled in 2017. And, the attackers followed an ideology of white supremacy which meets the FBI definition of terrorism. But, experts say, law enforcement has been slow to treat these criminals as terrorists because they are American and white. The first domestic terrorism conviction happened in 2017, after a white assailant determined to start a race war, stabbed a 66-year-old black man to death on the streets of Manhattan. It's still an outlier. "I think we needed to call it what it was," Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance told CNN. "This was an act of terrorism," Vance explained. "This exists in our country and it happened here."[/bs-content][bs-link link="https://cnn.it/2vWYCVd" source="CNN"]

  On Background

[bs-title]A surprising podcast about the day-to-day lives of people in China[/bs-title][bs-content]One of China's most popular podcasts, "Gushi FM" (or Story FM in English), tells the kinds of stories people rarely hear in the country's tightly controlled media market. The stories of loneliness, heartbreak, love, loss, and adventure range from a Chinese construction worker's escape from war in Libya, to a man who went with his father to Switzerland to die by assisted suicide. Kou Aizhe, a librarian turned journalist, is the host. "Through every story, my goal is to show the complexity of each person. I want to show the different angles," he says. While the podcast's audience is growing, with 35,000 new listeners each month, it's facing funding headwinds. But fans love it. Listener Shao Xueyan says that "Through listening to other people's stories I could reflect on my own life. It made me realize that there will always be good things that happen in life as long as you are alive."[/bs-content][bs-link link="https://nyti.ms/2VTIDWN" source="New York Times"]

[bs-title]The forgotten survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church attack[/bs-title][bs-content]t's been almost 60 years since the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing took the lives of four young girls, but no one remembers that day more than Sarah Collins Rudolph. She survived the attack, but her older sister Addie Mae did not. While the event may have been a turning point in the quest for civil rights, to this day Rudolph and her husband George carry deep feelings. After the accident, in which Rudolph lost an eye, she received no counseling, recognition, or restitution. She still struggles with health problems as a result. "The way they treated me here in the city of Birmingham, they don't acknowledge me as being the fifth little girl," she says. She thinks about the incident every day and worries for the future with the many recent shootings. "We have a president now, and it looks like all this stuff is coming back because he don't talk against it," she says.[/bs-content][bs-link link="https://wbur.fm/2VF0zFk" source="WBUR"]

[bs-title]How to write about and understand immigration in the US[/bs-title][bs-content]This resource, from Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is designed for journalists, but it works for anyone who wants to publish anything from a memo to public remarks on the subject of immigration. The number one issue with immigration reporting is a lack of context. Is the event you are highlighting a single event or part of a broader history? "It's really tempting, I think, at this moment for journalists to say the Trump administration is doing x, y, z. I think it's really important for journalists to ask the question, 'When did this program start?' Or, 'When did this issue start?'" says PRI's Angilee Shah. Click through for more and a public Google document with over 70 immigration data sources.[/bs-content][bs-link link="http://bit.ly/2ADzRjB" source="Shorenstein Center On Media"]

[bs-content]Aidan Taylor assisted in the preparation of today's summaries.[/bs-content]

Quote

[bs-quote link="http://bit.ly/2VEQSqf" author ="--Ajay Banga"]At the end of the day, if you surround yourself with people who look like you, who walk like you and talk like you, and grew up in the same places you did and worked with you in your prior jobs, then you will have a sense of comfort of hiring people around you who have that familiarity. But you will also have the same blind spots. You will miss the same trends. You will miss the same opportunities.[/bs-quote].

from Fortune http://bit.ly/2HrbiJj

[scifimagpie]

Louie C.K. and the Sith Lord Dilemma

Happy new year!

(These are the kinds of headlines I only get to write because I don't have an editor to whom I answer. Whee!)

We still have Nazis, so let's talk strategy. I'd also like to talk about something related - the infamous, often contested Centre. To keep advancing leftist ideals (such as healthcare, housing, and basic needs coverage for all; universal access to education and higher education; equal and fair pay for all genders and backgrounds, and accessibility resources for those who require mobility devices or have medical problems, among a few other things!) it can help to figure out who we're trying to talk to - and sometimes, who we can trust.

The time before #MeToo and after it are now crisply delineated by this social event. The freedom to talk about and voice the universality of sexual harassment and assault against people of various genders (yes, men too) has really shaken things up. It's just the beginning of making things right, and society in North America and around the world has some serious adjusting and compensating to do, but it's a good step in the right direction.

#MeToo also torched a lot of sacred cows, exposing people we previously trusted as participating in very bad behavior. Kevin Spacey, George Takei, Stan Lee and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, among others, are a couple who surprised and disappointed me the most. But it seems like some of the people who transgressed are already trying to stage their comebacks - not understanding, it seems, that it shouldn't be up to them to decide when their stint in the time-out corner is over.

As discussed here, it would seem that Louis C.K., who previously admitted to sexually harassing women by masturbating in front of them without consent, has taken a turn for the dark side. Making jokes about transgender people and school shooting survivors, and apparently, insulting black and Asian men, is now part of his comedic repetoire. So much for "learning and listening."

But he continues to be defended by a few people who - apparently, come from the centre - and want to believe that he still has good intentions somehow. To quote that Huffpost article, however -

"C.K.’s new set, according to its leaked version, doesn’t merely punch down; it stomps, pettily, to the bottom. None of it is smart or brave; it is simply cruel."

And how did Louis C.K. - and for that matter, J.K. Rowling - start to internalise and support such negative beliefs?

Star Wars and political strategy

So here's the thing about the two people I've alluded to - they're both wealthy, and they've both been criticised. Now, being criticised is hard at the best of times. But wealth tends to make people more fragile. Is the answer, then, to just not criticise anyone ever? (That probably sounds like a stupid thing to even say, and it kind of is. But the internet likes a good reductio ad absurdum argument, taking things to their most logical extreme, so I'm going to follow that format - as I often do in my posts!)

That would seem to be an over-correction, and to make advancement impossible. But how to we criticise someone without alienating them?

Well, I'm still working on the "doing it right" part, but I can tell you about how not to do it.

In the much-maligned prequels of Star Wars, one of the concerns expressed about Anakin Skywalker is that he's too old to learn the Jedi ways and be successfully indoctrinated in their belief system. In the following movies, as Anakin goes through puberty and discovers that at least one girl exists, this is quickly proven - so it seems - to have been an accurate fear. A lot of people have argued that the way the Jedi turned their back on him as soon as he started to screw up and the way they endorsed such extremist perspectives on emotion had doomed him to fail in the first place. I would say that Anakin actually got a lot of second chances, but the ideology did set him up to fail - and because a single misstep was seen as an inevitable sign of failure, how could he help but find himself tempted by the apparent freedom of the Dark Side?

But as we see examined in The Last Jedi, fearing someone's future and darkness and treating them badly on the basis of that can, in fact, lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. By assuming the worst of Ben Solo, he becomes Kylo Ren. Now - you could argue about the role of fate in the Star Wars universe, and even in our own, but it's not a discussion I can brook in good faith because if fate was as iron-clad as it is in fiction, all psychics would have 100% accuracy in their predictions - and that, obviously, is not the case.

But are we repeating the mistake of the late-era Jedi Order? Are we scaring off allies when we call them out for bad behavior, or scaring off future allies when they see Leftists chewing someone out?

A digression on the centre, which cannot hold

Oh, the Centrists. The Left hates them, the Right courts them, and they usually don't even identify as such. Most of the time - from what I've seen - Centrists are actually people who would identify as liberals or Liberals, but haven't caught up to every nuance; alternatively, they're soft conservatives. The centre isn't so much a fact as a product of two overlapping political bell-curves, more of an illusion than a real political movement. After all, the centre and centrists usually tend to have either conflicting beliefs or a reluctance to engage with certain groups.

But the centrists that I tend to hear about, as a leftist, are generally the ones who still fall on the liberal side of the equation. Now, here's the thing - I'm not saying that being conservative or liberal are, arbitrarily, either good or bad on an objective scale. BUT - right now, in North America and in a few other places, it sure seems like conservatism has relied too heavily on courting xenophobia in various ways. And that has led to an association of conservatives with racist, sexist, generally horrible beliefs - for instance, the Republicans in the US, and more locally, the UCP. (United Conservative Party, not to be confused with the Progressive-Conservative Party of Canada. They're very good at being polite and rewording their racism and homophobia, because this is Canada, but the underlying platform and beliefs is disappointingly rote.)

But is falling to the racist wayside the fate of all centrists? Should leftists treat anyone who fails to meet certain standards of conduct with suspicion and curtness, because they're inevitably going to betray any progressive ideals in favor of the fear-eater, conservatism?

In terms of the radicalization of young men, a number of people have spilled ink and filled hard drives creating better and more informative videos and articles than myself. And a lot of them also struggle with this problem: who can be reasoned with, and who is a die-hard danger to humanity?

No. Be nice sometimes, but don't hug every Nazi.

All of this is to say that I think the way we deal with people who don't act in good faith and the ones who do act in good faith need to be set in two different streams. It can be hard to tell, and people can switch motivations during a conversation - deciding to troll or being interested enough to start learning, for instance. But I think it would help the Left to confine some of our sharpest criticisms to internal dialogues - you know, saying things with the door closed. We have to meet people on their level.

Unfortunately, sometimes that level is also going to mean putting boots on the ground in terms of showing up to protests and engaging in adequate self-defense against Nazis.

So when it comes to Cousin Jason or Brayden saying that he thinks these dudes wearing yellow vests and talking about how we need to reduce the number of immigrants coming to Canada "might have a point," I would suggest being hard on the ideology and empathetic with Jason or Brayden himself. There's a difference between being empathetic and being a doormat - but we have no choice except to take on these conversations whenever we can, even when we're exhausted. The problem is that people in the centre often agree with us - but are too scared to speak up, or too tired, or even too confused.

We have to make a better future and present by walking the line between having boundaries and making it clear to people that we care about them and their rights. As frustrating as it can be, emotional labour from a person in a position of power, or even an oppressor, is still emotional labour. And we cannot take for granted that people will educate themselves, or yell "educate yourself!" in every conversation. That doesn't mean the most oppressed person should always yield their time and energy to people who may be acting like blockheads - but it does mean that anyone who considers themselves an ally needs to step up or be willing to tag-team something to avoid their own exhaustion.

This stuff is intricate. The problems don't have quick, glib, easy fixes. But they're also not insurmountable, because our opponents aren't monsters or fictional villains. They're people. And most of them actually want what we want - to live in happiness, health, and safety.

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partners-in-crime and their cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and nightmares, as well as social justice issues. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Find her all over the internet: The mailing list * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * OG Blog

[ablearcher5983]

Do You Feel Oppressed?  Would You Like To?

One of the most ubiquitous thought patterns throughout the 20th and 21st centuries is that of the Postmodern ideology. Eschewing the individuality, reason, and search for universal truths that came out of the Enlightenment, Postmodernism theorizes that empirical knowledge is impossible and only subjective truths can be relevant. Relying on skepticism, pragmatism and a rejection of meta-narratives and ideologies, the Postmodern critique states that the only meaning that can be found is derived from how something relates to the subject, and as such all of life's experiences are innately conflictual. Essentially everything you hear, everything you read, every interaction you have with another (when looked at through the Postmodern lens) is a complicated battle for supremacy. Replacing reality with subjective socio-linguistic constructs they divide everything by vectors according to race, sex, class, identity, wealth, etc. Language has no meaning beyond its use socially to attain power within these bounds. 

A simple example within the bounds of literary critique: The great American novel Moby Dick has long been seen as a sweeping allegory for the destructive nature of revenge and obsession. While that might have been what Melville had meant it to be, in reading it I might take it as an allegory for the supremacy of patriarchal Caucasian hierarchy. The crew of the Pequod, diverse and dogged, is ultimately destroyed while in pursuit of their “piece of the pie” by a powerful and unstoppable (white) force of nature. It's "obviously" a story of race relations throughout Euro-centric parts of the western world. Sounds a little silly doesn't it? While it is doubtful that this was what Melville intended for his epic tale, Postmodernism criticism allows for such an interpretation.

This is a novel exercise when critiquing literature, art, or music. The problem is that Postmodern ideological values have seeped into every facet of our current existence, and that poses a dangerous problem. You see, the Postmodern critique in rejecting the possibility of any truth, outside of personal truth, relies more on feelings than facts.

You might ask what this has to do with oppression? Well, everything...

Oppression is a serious concern in this day and age. From the despotic dictatorships of Sub-Saharan Africa to cultural suppression in North Korea, or religious persecution in China oppression is alive and well around the world. But surely we don't have any of these problems in America. If you turn on cable news or browse Twitter and Facebook it sure seems like we do. But still, the question remains; In one of the freest and most affluent countries in the world do we suffer great swathes of oppression?

Before we can answer that question we have to know what we mean when we talk about oppression. Merriam-Webster defines oppression as “The unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power.”  Now that’s all well and good but it’s a little vague. According to Iris Marion Young, a political theorist and former professor at the University of Chicago, there are 5 faces of oppression: Violence, Marginalization, Powerlessness, Cultural Imperialism, and Exploitation. Seeing as how Prof. Young’s work is one of the cornerstones of the Left "Identity Politics" movement let's unpack each of these and see what effect they are having on our culture today.

Violence has long been associated with oppression, they go hand in hand.  Be it the race riots of the ’60s, the War on Drugs in the ’70s and ’80s, or the various "hate crimes" of the ’90s, the last century has been marked by powerful groups use physical force to claim dominance over the “Other”. Today, with the assertion of the Black Lives Matter campaign, and fear within the LGBTQ community of violent reprisals, it looks like the next 100 years won’t be much different. Data collected by the Washington Post asserts that far more African Americans are killed by police than should be based on the percentage of the population that they account for.

The problem is that this is bad math. You see, the WaPo data contrasts shooting statistics with general population census data, but when was the last time you saw a lawyer or investment banker involved in a police shooting. The majority of fatal police shootings involve members from what is perceived as the lower class, and if we look at a racial breakdown of citizens in the bottom 20% of the household income we get a better picture of what is going on.  

African Americans account for roughly 22% of what we would define as the lower class in this instance (20th percentile and below in household income) and that falls more in line with the WaPo statistic. 

So if there isn’t an excessive variance between police shootings, racially speaking, then why do we think there is?

One of the biggest reasons is that today's media is tailored to its viewers, and is immediate in its delivery. The minute that a shooting happens it is gift-wrapped and delivered to the people who will be most appalled by it. I’m not saying tragedies don’t occur. The families of Michael Brown, Samuel DeBose, and Daniel Shaver can attest to that. Far too many people are stolen from us due to law enforcement mistakes and misuse of lethal force every year than need to be, but the numbers show that while we might perceive that there is systemic racial violence employed by those in power it isn’t necessarily true. The simple fact is that across the board excessive force is being misused by many state and local police forces (but I plan to talk about that at a later date).

Likewise, recent estimates state that there are roughly 1 million Trans identifying citizens living in the US. In 2017, 29 citizens that identify as Trans were murdered with their gender identity believed to be an inciting factor. Now while percentages are a little bit harder to quantify because we don’t know how many Trans identifying citizens are living secretly in the community, the percentage of per capita homicides is in line with (or lower) the normal murder rate in the US. While there may be fear within the community of violence directed at them for their differences they are no more likely than any other citizen of being murdered. Once again, the media is one of the biggest perpetrators of this fear.

Marginalization and Powerlessness kind of go together hand in hand. Prof. Young defines Marginalization as the act of relegating or confining a group to a lower social standing or the outer edge of society. Working with that is Powerlessness, the feeling that not being one of the "haves", being relegated to the fringe, one has an inhibition to develop one's capacities. The powerless feel they have no ability to make a difference, and they feel exposed to disrespectful treatment due to their lowered status. Often this leads to self-censorship or self-oppression due to fear of reprisal or belief that they might be naturally inferior.

While I would never deign to speak for the LGBTQ community or any other minority community for that matter, I have felt this if even in the slightest of ways. 

In other posts, I have talked about my struggle with mental illness. Mental illness is still very misunderstood in the world we live in today. From people believing the cure is to just be positive and choose happiness to those who believe all sufferers are dangerous and unstable, those suffering from mental illness are often at best considered the punchline to a joke and at worst a group of pretenders. For years I hid my struggle from family, friends, and coworkers for fear of what they might think. I was considered a screw-up, someone who was wasting his potential because I didn't or couldn't communicate the inner struggle I dealt with every day. It wasn't my fault. I was subject to altered brain chemistry, but the world around me didn't know that and I didn't know how to tell them. 

As I said, I would never compare myself with others who feel marginalized and powerless, but if we want to eliminate these kinds of hidden societal oppressors we have to start talking. Admitting to fear, standing up and being counted, educating people, and accepting "Others" for the incredible individuals they are and not the label society has put on them is the only way we can grow and help reduce these feelings. It's not a fix, but it's a start... And once we start learning about each other and the struggles we are each facing, we can continue to foster this incredible cultural melting pot that America has become.

Cultural Imperialism falls next in line and it involves the values and beliefs of the "ruling class" being established as the norm. Much like the last two, this can only be solved through time and conversation. Society innately follows the majority, and the only true way to influence a majority is through changing their hearts and minds. Gandhi didn't stage a coup to eliminate imperial control of his country, but through words and peaceful actions he helped to gain independence. 

It was the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and not the violent rhetoric of the Black Panthers, that helped America wake up to the realities of continued racism. We need brave, gentle, thoughtful leaders willing to stand up and say that the way it has been can no longer be the way it is. We have to find a way forward together, or else the divide between us will become insurmountable.

Now you might ask why I felt the need to outline Postmodern dogma at the beginning of this article. And that is an astute question. Due to the influence of Marxism on the formation of Postmodern belief, everything Postmodernism critiques get sorted into one of two categories: The one exercising its power and the one upon who the power is being exercised. The "Haves" and the "Have Nots". The oppressor and the oppressed.

We see this on the news, we see it on the internet, we see it in the paper. People marching, violence breaking out, people aiming vitriol at their oppressors. The natural human condition is to yearn for freedom, and when the soul does not feel free it will fight tooth and nail to be so. The problem is that in the case of Marginalization, Powerlessness, and Cultural Imperialism (the 3 most evident forms of oppression in the US) the oppressor has no face. You can say it's the upper class, but aside from a few instances most of them are people who have worked to get where they are or traded upon their innate skills. You can say it's the patriarchy, but once again aside from a minority of corrupt individuals most of them are just trying to live their lives the best they can. While the Far Left has been very eager to latch on to Prof. Young's delineation of oppression and adapt it to their needs, they also have a habit of picking and choosing what works for them and forgetting the rest. In the same scholarly work where she defines the types of oppression Prof. Young also says:

"New left social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, however, shifted the meaning of the concept of oppression. In its new usage oppression designates the disadvantage and injustice some people suffer not because a tyrannical power coerces them, but because of the everyday practices of a well-intentioned liberal society. In this new left usage, the tyranny of a ruling group over another as in South Africa, must certainly be called oppressive.

 But oppression also refers to systemic constraints on groups that are not necessarily the result of the intentions of a tyrant. Oppression in this sense is structural, rather than the result of a few people’s choices or policies. Its causes are embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences of following those rules. It names, as Marilyn Frye puts it, “an enclosing structure of forces and barriers which tends to the immobilization and reduction of a group or category of people” (Frye,1983a, p. 11). 

In this extended structural sense oppression refers to the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a consequence of often unconscious assumptions and reactions of well-meaning people in ordinary interactions, media and cultural stereotypes, and structural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market mechanisms—in short the normal processes of everyday life. We cannot eliminate this structural oppression by getting rid of the rulers or making some new laws, because oppressions are systematically reproduced in major economic, political, and cultural institutions. The systemic character of oppression implies that an oppressed group need not have a correlate oppressing group. 

While structural oppression involves relations among groups, these relations do not always fit the paradigm of conscious and intentional oppression of one group by another. Foucault (1977) suggests that to understand the meaning and operation of power in modern society we must look beyond the model of power as “sovereignty,” a dyadic relation of ruler and subject, and instead analyze the exercise of power as the effect of often liberal and “humane” practices of education, bureaucratic administration, production, and distribution of consumer goods, medicine, and so on. The conscious actions of many individuals daily contribute to maintaining and reproducing oppression, but those people are usually simply doing their jobs or living their lives, and do not understand themselves as agents of oppression."

That leads us to the last of our five types of oppression, the one that is most important to this discussion. Exploitation was once relegated to sweatshops and plantations, but in recent years it has taken a much more insidious form. The "Identity Politics" movement has searched far and wide for anyone with even an inkling of feelings of societal oppression and pointed them like a weapon at their perceived enemies. In humanities programs at colleges across the nation, they've taught this Postmodern theology that if you aren't on top then it is the fault of some tyrannical force. They've taken complex individuals, people yearning to feel free, and boiled them down to one facet of their existence. They've split apart society into little controllable groups based on race, sex, class, identity, and wealth... And fed them the lie that the one thing that makes them "different" from others is what those in power are using to keep them down.  

They've started segregating the population again... And sadly they are exploiting those feelings of oppression to gain political capital. Whereas once liberalism stood for equality and egalitarianism, now it is divisive and using the people it claims to support. 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his seminal "I Have a Dream" speech said 

"I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood..."

And...

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together..."

For that dream to become a reality we cannot continue to divide ourselves endlessly. You may be a black man or woman, but there is so much more to who you are than just that. You may identify as Trans, but does that completely define who you are? You may be gay or lesbian, but who you choose to love only gives me the merest glimpse of you. I may suffer from bipolar depression, but that does not mean I don't have the same hopes, dreams, and aspirations as everyone else.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't take pride in who we are, or where we come from, or who we love. But we are far too complex to be fully defined by a single word or idea. 

Unfortunately, that is what Identity Politics strives to do, break us down into easily manageable groups for use in the fight against oppression, all the while setting the cause of equality back further than any tyrant ever could by making you a caricature of your true self. They do this with the Right as well. They make them out to be the scary, maniacal fascists coming to lock you away, or worse. While there are some genuinely scary people on the Right, there are just as many on the Left. The problem is the ones on the Left are the ones promising to help you. This sets up a false dichotomy where there are only two possible ways forward: Ours and Theirs.

If we are going to find a better way forward we have to stop pointing fingers and start listening. We have to stop looking at labels (even self-imposed ones) and start seeing the individuals that we share this country with for who they are, for the content of their character. We have to put away our pride and start talking honestly about what we could do better, and who among us needs our help, or else we will continue to devolve into the ontological schisms that we are currently plagued by. 

They say the first step to fixing a problem is admitting that there is one... You may be oppressed, but have you asked yourself who is really doing the oppressing and why?

[edwardruano498]

The Problem with Filter Bubbles

The TED Talk by Eli Paiser entitled, "Beware of Online Filter Bubbles" explored the fast-evolving, new "tailored" internet, which companies create to include or exclude news and search results based on a person's individual tastes, internet history and personal browsing methods. Unfortunately, this is damaging, and as a person becomes more trapped in their own "filter bubble," they will not be able to become exposed to new information that can challenge or broaden their worldview. In the talk, the presenter argues that this is bad because a democracy survives on being open minded to different ideologies — and I couldn't agree more.

One example that I immediately remembered was a program a friend showed me that recreated Donald Trump's twitter account. Essentially, the program was able to, in real time, show us what Donald Trump was seeing on his own Twitter feed based on who he was following; and the results were all people who agreed with him on various issues. It might not sound so bad, but this results in an echo chamber. It makes people assume that everyone thinks like us, and we may even forget that other ways of thinking and different perspectives exist at all.

The problem is that many sites do this for us automatically and without our direct consent. For example, if I were to Google "recipes," I would get largely different results than a middle-aged woman. I might get avocado toast or other "millennial" things, based on my browsing history, age, gender, location, and other data. And this isn't just limited to Google — sites like Yahoo!, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others offer personalized content suggestions, and the results are a flood of articles and posts that mirror our current world views, opinions and perspectives to ensure that we enjoy what we see every time and keep coming back for more. This is intentional to keep users "hooked," since we tend to follow and relish in comfort when we indulge in views that align with our own.

Think of it like your neighborhood. If you live in Burbank like myself, you might see a lot of filming shoots and studio stuff all around you, like Warner Bros. studios, Universal Studios, Nickelodeon studios, etc. But if you never leave the city, your reality might be to assume that all cities have studios like this and shoots happen every day, whereas someone else from a smaller town might've never even seen what a studio looks like. And the biggest problem? Most times, people aren't even aware that they're looking through a filtered lens in the first place.

The problem with not expanding your worldview and simply sticking to what you know is that it distorts your reality and what you make of the world. Sure, hearing your own views and opinions and ideas is comforting and easy, but it can lead to terrible and misinformed decisions. By not seeing the full picture, your creativity and imagination become limited — your ideas are put in a box of your own ideologies. It also strips you of the common sense larger issues and bigger problems that face us, and make us unable to empathize with others or put ourselves in other people's shoes.

Luckily, Paiser has a solution, and that's sticking a balance between personalization and general, unspecific information. In his example, he showed a Netflix recommendation, followed by a general recommendation, and so on. If news and journalism existed in this way on social media, people would get a balanced information diet — both their news "desert" and their news "vegetables." Sure, an algorithm to help us sort through the massive amounts of information online is helpful; if there were no recommendations on Netflix, it would take me ages to find a new movie to watch. Recommendations are handy, but we need non-recommended information in there too, not just the "junk food."

In my own career as a copywriter, information bubbles are extremely helpful. They're everything. Every email, advertisement, video sale letter and eye-catching piece of content I write for the marketing firm I work at is tailored for consumers. Yes, there's a lot of money in building personalized filters right now, and they bring in millions of dollars in revenue every day — but speaking from an ethical standpoint and not as a copywriter, this is harmful and can leave a person in their own isolated world and "island" of their own interests.

[brigutierrezuwp-blog]

Literacy Narrative draft 1

    There are certain types of discourse that I have always been drawn to. At a young age, I have always felt that I was a bit of an outcast because I was sensitive to kinds of experiences that were rooted in hardship. There were types of experiences that never sat right with me - but because I was not able to identify behaviors with words and cohesive sentences, I was unable to process what was really happening. This, in turn, led to many instances of internalization, where I would override my own thoughts and accept anothers as truth. Being a major in the humanities has really helped me learn how to become literate in socioeconomic discourse, which in turn allows me to deconstruct and identify oppression on an individual, and communal level. In addition, learning how to identify forms of oppression has been really liberating for me - it has helped me grow into my own person, for the better.

   As an adolescent, I never really knew what racism, classism or sexism was. However, I remember growing up and being exposed to all of these things. In elementary school, I saw how there were specific activities or behaviors that only boys were “capable” of doing. When I went to middle and high school, which was mostly predominantly white, I began to hear many jokes about minority culture(s) which were often interlinked with poverty. In my childhood, I heard so many sentiments rooted in prejudice and bigotry that it became normalized for me. They were just one of the many unfair truths in life, that things are what they are. It wasn’t until I got to college that I began to take classes rooted in social justice. The more I went to class and the more I read from authors like Bell Hooks and Gloria Anzandula, the more conscious I became of all of the micro-aggressions and injustices I had experienced in my life. It felt like a weight was shifted off of my shoulders. It felt validating - like this entire time my thoughts and feelings weren’t just in my head, but were actually shared by many people. I began to pick up socioeconomic terminology that made it easier to identify beliefs and ideologies rooted in systemic oppression, which in turn kind of helped me navigate through social circles - I had always had a feeling, but now I have a validated reason to decide not to hang out with certain peoples if I don’t want to. Becoming socially conscious helped me find community and friends that I feel like I can fully relate to.

   Last halloween, I was lounging around in the living room waiting for some friends. A few men walked in and greeted everyone but the women in the living room. I was confused for a second and wondered if I was making a big deal out of nothing when I went to ask one of the other girls in the kitchen what they thought. We both had noticed that even though we knew these men personally, they still did not acknowledge us. After a few moments in thought, my friend and I both felt like this interaction was kind of sexist. We felt like because we were women we were seen as simply counterparts, not really worth engaging unless to ask for a favor. The word sexist helped my friend and I realize that this behavior was disrespectful, because it is rooted in the belief that woman is second to man. If we had not found a word to help us identify oppressive behavior, we might have second-guessed ourselves, keeping us vulnerable to disrespect.

   There was also another time where I was sitting outside on my porch with some company. Somebody had mentioned that they were not racist because they voted for Obama. This statement never sat right with me - until a few weeks later I had learned about what tokenism is. The Merriam Webster Dictionary’s definition of tokenism of is, “the policy or practice of making only a symbolic effort (as to desegregate)”. By voting for a person of color, that person implied that they were absolved of any racial ideologies, even if the sentiments they were expressing before-hand were problematic. Tokenism is a tactic people use to show that they are in solidarity with a marginalized community, but only for the reason of self-defense. I see tokenism everywhere, especially in media, like when magazine companies only have one person of color in the photo shoot to convey that they are a fair and non-discriminatory.

   With this new language, there are times where I feel like I have rebirthed into a new identity. For example, as a teen I have always struggled to find words that I am able to identify with. The English language can be very gendered and binary - it is very black and white. I feel that since language affects thought process, this binary removed any possibility in my mind that there was any kind of grey area. I had struggled with my own identity for so long - I felt like I had to be this or that, and that I couldn’t just be in the middle. It wasn’t until I took a class on gender and sexuality that I found the words “queer” and “non-binary”. I felt like I could really relate to these words and they helped me really learn how to love myself. Words are curious like that, because in a metaphysical sense they're like tangible objects that prove your existence - and they allow you to relay your lived experiences to others in the most concise way possible - although it is hard because since certain types of discourse are often only studied in academia, the language follows. People I know and love often live their entire lives without being exposed to words that can allude to a concept that might change their identity or the way they view the world forever.

    Because I am a humanities major, I have to write a lot. I am in my second year of college but I have already written many essays and have composed too many short responses.However, I find that writing about issues and opinions that are so important to me has made the writing process alot easier. I have also learned how words can have several meanings depending on the context in which you place them.  I feel like being a humanities major has also motivated me to write more poetry. Learning about so many new words and seeing the different ways that they are used has made writing fun to take up recreationally again. It’s also been a great way for me to reflect on my identity and its relation to the world.

   I love my major and the path it has created for me. For a long time I used to feel really worried about where I would end up in life, but I think that with this major no matter where I’ll go I’ll always be equipped with a knowledge meant to help people. I often wonder why more people aren’t taking courses in majors like gender and sexuality. It analyzes people and where types of behaviors are rooted. It’s like navigating the matrix, or falling further down the rabbit hole. There are so many social, political, and economic factors that play into someone’s mental health and wellbeing. I can envision myself working with queer youth of color, spreading awareness and encouraging resilience and livelihood. I want to be here for the future generations that bear marginalized identities. I want to be an embodiment of solidarity, somebody that one can come to and relate to in the hardest of times. I want to enact change. Learning about social justice discourse helps me get to where I want to be.

[rightsidenews]

The Religion of the Faithless Left

Ash Sharp Editor

Puritan Hypocrisy

BLAM goes the gun. OH NO say the victims. WHAT RACE IS THE ATTACKER I HOPE IT’S A WHITE GUY ALSO STOP ISLAMOPHOBIA say the hypocrites.

Puritans are always hypocrites. Read Part I of this series HERE.

Not much more than a decade ago now, the author and political commentator Chris Hedges published a book called American Fascists. It’s an interesting piece, written at the tail end of the turbulent Dubya administration that contended that, within a few years, we would be faced with a Christian Fascist movement in the United States. Based on the popularity of people like Pat Robertson and the politicisation of church-goers by the neocon group that put Reagan in power, Hedges contended that the old right was a threat to American freedom and democracy.

As wonderful a wordsmith as Hedges is, he was, as is sadly so usual for such a smart man, dead wrong. Correctly skewering the old Christian Right for their hypocrisy and often un-Christ-like behaviour is one thing. Predicting the future is quite another. If we are charitable to Hedges few could have seen how, in the decade since Bush, two terms of Obama would enable the hard left to take more social power than could ever have been conceived before.

In the modern age of puritanism, religion is supplanted by Neo-Marxist ideology. Intersectional Theory. Feminism. The root concept which underpins the idea that it is not okay to be White. You can see this everywhere you look, from the television to pop music, to politics and the popular press and sport. The arts of our ancestors speak to us, tell us about their times. Ours will do the same for future generations. Cave paintings teach us that the early humans had a mystical relationship with the animals they hunted and fled from. Renaissance pieces are filled with secrets and satire.

What will our art say about us?

In the realm of faith, the Leftist Puritan happily displays cognitive dissonance during our days of strife. It all boils down to race and religion in the end. If an Islamist mows people down, with a gun or otherwise, the reaction is… nothing. Dire warnings about the dangers of the mythical Islamophobia, perhaps.

Heaven forfend that a white male shoots people. Not only is this an indictment of his race, but he also transforms into an ideologically driven terrorist (Whiteness is political, you know), and a reason to curse out the NRA, and demand gun control. Don’t forget to accuse your enemies of politicising tragedies when it suits your agenda, though.

Shut

If Trump truly cared about the suffering in Syria, he wouldn't have a racist anti-refugee policy. But, hey, bombs distract from scandal!

— Wil 'Kick the Nazis off the tweeters' Wheaton (@wilw) April 7, 2017

UP

I join my fellow Moderate White Person in wishing an Eid of peace, and I also condemn the extremist clan of Trump. http://bit.ly/2leXZRY

— Wil 'Kick the Nazis off the tweeters' Wheaton (@wilw) September 13, 2016

WESLEY

The murdered victims were in a church. If prayers did anything, they'd still be alive, you worthless sack of shit. http://bit.ly/2lm8wKm

— Wil 'Kick the Nazis off the tweeters' Wheaton (@wilw) November 5, 2017

Islam is Peace. Prayers are Worthless. Guns are Bad. I Love Big Brother.

It will stun future generations to hear that we have become such a self-hating society, riddled with such preposterous levels of self-inflicted and undeserved guilt and paranoia.

It wasn’t always like this. In 1979, the seminal comedy group *Monty Python released Life of Brian. The movie revolves around a man mistaken for a messiah. The religious right was apoplectic and it was awesome. And that is coming from a Christian, so save your Jehovahs.

“[Life of Brian] isn’t blasphemous because it doesn’t touch on belief at all. It is heretical because it touches on dogma and the interpretation of belief, rather than belief itself.” ~ Terry Jones

The movie mainly skewered religious hypocrisy and was so controversial at the time that it was banned in several countries and had to rely on George Harrison (of The Beatles) for funding. It remains one of the finest comedies ever produced.

On re-watching the movie recently, I was struck how mild the religious satire really is in this film. In all honesty, I found myself far more interested in the non-theological scenes.

There is a sub-plot to the film which features several Left Wing revolutionary groups all seeking to oust the Romans from Judea. These groups were analogous to hard left British groups in the late 1970s, including the then powerful trade unionists. It is almost as if our timelines are running in opposite directions. As the power of the Church has diminished, to the point where (rightly) no-one would dare attempt to ban a movie for blasphemy, the loony left has arisen, Gojira in Tokyo Harbour.

While the interminable and unending squabbling between the intersections of the left is still laughable today, it cannot be denied that it is the modern day facsimilies of the right-on Reg (John Cleese) and the People’s Front of Judea that are holding the social power. Despite everyone knowing what capitalism has done for us, still, they cry out ‘Oppression!’

Apart from a free market, advances in technology, healthcare, living standards, nearly eliminating child mortality, better food, the internet, a life expectancy of over eighty, university education for all and countless varieties of hot sauce, what has capitalism ever done for us?

Instead, these puritanical crusaders turned their attention on society itself. Internet technology has enabled us to strip monsters like Harvey Weinstein of their veils of secrecy, and therefore, their power. This marvel of communication also allows the Neo-Marxist to conduct witch-hunts and purges at speeds old Joe Stalin could only have dreamed of.

Their zealotry has claimed the scalps of numerous journalists, actors and politicians who, in the main, have all fallen on their swords rather than run the gauntlet. These men may not be nice. These men might, in fact, be criminals- but that has never been a good idea for the mob to decide. **Rupert Myers, late of GQ, is a man who makes my skin crawl. **Not for his alleged behaviour towards women, which seems inept but not illegal, but for his hypocrisy.

Sire! The Virtue Beacon is lit!

To write such a diatribe against the rest of one’s gender, to elevate oneself to the status of Enlightened Nü-Male, and then to be accused thus:

“I was very clear about not being romantically or sexually interested in him, once the subject was raised. I suggested we be mates.

“He said ‘I’ve got enough mates, I’d rather fuck you’ and forced himself on me outside a pub in Fitzrovia.”

Well. I would be a liar if I did not feel a little schadenfreude. I am wrong to do so. A failed and clumsy pass at someone is not a criminal offence, but the puritanical left is treating it like one.

Saints protect you if you live in the United Kingdom, where not only will leftist society pillory you, so will the police. The Sunday Times revealed that the Deputy Prime Minister Damian Green possessed (legal) pornography on his computer. Why is this information pertinent to the public? Are we really so depraved that we must know the masturbatory habits of politicians? If so, why? In any case, the police released it to the press.

The minister has also been pilloried for allegedly touching a woman’s knee. As I predicted when I first published this piece on Medium.com on Nov. 6th, Green has been forced to resign, unable to continue in his career with sucha tarnished public image.

Let’s not ignore that corrupt, incompetent or sleazy politicians must fall. With such incredible levels of vice in politics in our nations, how is it that this non-issue is plastered across the papers?

You can thank Donald J. Trump.

The moralists have been on this crusade for some time, but it appears to have become particularly weaponised by the Left and the MSM since The President’s locker room talk. The scent of blood in the water to a shark is much like the scent of KISS records to a Bible Belt Baptist in 1978 or a whiff of scandal to the press. Egged on by an ideological leitmotif that demands purity at all times from all beings, no man should ever find himself alone with an unmarried woman again.

How we laughed at Vice-President Pence, what a dotard, refusing to sit with a female without his wife present to ensure propriety is maintained. Pence comes to this topic from an entirely different perspective. As a born again, evangelical boomer Catholic we might expect a conservative attitude. But from the sons and daughters of the hippies, the Gen-Xers, the Millennials? I thought this was supposed to be a post-morality, post-faith, post-conservative post-everything age of rampant consumerism and meaningless sex?

No eye contact, a burka, and no sex. Ah, just like back in Gender Studies 101.

Instead, Netflix TV shows are used as examples of a religious theocracy that doesn’t exist. Wow, the asinine Twitterati bleat in unison, this is just like Trump’s America.

It is not. A totalitarian mindset exists in America, for sure. I must also state that the genuinely corrupt who are toppled, the true-life sex-criminals and paedophiles and rapists and money-launderers- spare them no sympathy. They are reaping their own whirlwind, caught up in their pretence at righteousness. The sole irony is that the totalitarians are those who are now purging their movements of male feminist allies for thought crime. Journalists who stood for identity politics are now the victims of the same.

I wonder how long it will be before Dan ‘Everyone is A Literal Nazi’ Arel is cast down from his perch. In the current climate, could it be that his social media stalking of pop has-been Lily Allen transgresses the invisible line of sin?

Dan, stop. That’s creepy.

I knew a guy like this once. A girl turned him down and he cried for days.

No doubt a self proclaimed anarchist like Arel already prays to Black Atheist Trans Jesus for forgiveness for his disgusting white penis. It is not enough today, in 2017, the current year, to merely hate yourself for being a white man. You must also hate the words you say, constantly self-reflect, ensure you keep your eyes down and touch nobody, not even in jest or error.

Such behavioural abnormality is non-PC. Such behaviour demands that you be flayed in public, to lose your livelihood. This is how puritans project their power. Shame is how they maintain control. We have moved beyond expanding the definition of words so that one can be raped by eyesight or by flatulence. We are now in an era where all actions are sinful. There is no escaping the shame. You are born in it, surrounded by it, you are the sin itself. It is, dare I say it, original in nature.

Submission looks like this. A dog, with it’s legs in the air and throat bared.

Considering so many of these leftists proclaim themselves anarchists but act like dictators, I offer my own favoured anarchy.

“Anarchy is personal; it is not a collective possibility. It rests upon the idea of a person acting within a sphere where his existence is not intrusive upon the existence of another human being unless invited to be so. Should a person find that he has uninvitedly trespassed upon the serenity of another, Individual Anarchy points that man toward accepting the responsibility for his own actions while not condemning the failure of others to own up to the things they may have done wrong.” ~ U. Buster

By this perspective, the moral crusade is anathema to anarchists. Even old Antonio Gramsci, one of the founders of Neo-Marxist thought, held it to be a fact that

To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act.

If we can agree with a long-dead communist that the truth is revolutionary, there may yet be hope for us. We must turn away from this cult of social purity, and the trappings of transcendental shaming. The internet never forgets. We’re all stuck on this rock together, forever.

http://bit.ly/2lm8CBI

[cabiba]

How The West Was Lost Part II~ Puritan Hypocrisy

BLAM goes the gun. OH NO say the victims. WHAT RACE IS THE ATTACKER I HOPE IT’S A WHITE GUY ALSO STOP ISLAMOPHOBIA say the hypocrites.

Puritans are always hypocrites. Read Part I HERE

A decade ago Chris Hedges, the author and political commentator, published a book called American Fascists. It’s an interesting piece, written at the tail end of the turbulent Dubya administration, that contended that, within a few years, we would be faced with a Christian Fascist movement in the United States. Based on the popularity of people like Pat Robertson and the politicisation of church-goers by the neocon group that put Reagan in power, Hedges contended that the old right was a threat to American freedom and democracy.

As wonderful a wordsmith as Hedges is, he was, as usual, dead wrong. Correctly skewering the old Christian Right for their hypocrisy and often un-Christ-like behaviour is one thing. Predicting the future is quite another. If we are charitable to Hedges few could have seen how, in the decade since Bush, two terms of Obama would enable the hard left to take more social power than ever before.

In the modern age of puritanism, religion is supplanted by Neo-Marxist ideology. Intersectional Theory. Feminism. The root concept, that it is not okay to be White. You can see this everywhere you look, from the television to pop music, to politics and the popular press and sport. The arts of our ancestors speak to us, tell us about their times. Ours will do the same for future generations. Cave paintings teach us that the early humans had a mystical relationship with the animals they hunted and fled from. Renaissance pieces are filled with secrets and satire.

What will our art say about us?

In the realm of faith, the Leftist Puritan happily displays cognitive dissonance during our days of strife. It all boils down to race and religion in the end. If an Islamist mows people down, with a gun or otherwise, the reaction is… nothing. Dire warnings about the dangers of the mythical Islamophobia, perhaps.

https://twitter.com/dylanmarron/status/925780334578405378

Heaven forfend that a white male shoots people. Not only is this an indictment of his race, but he also transforms into an ideologically driven terrorist (Whiteness is political, you know), and a reason to curse out the NRA, and demand gun control. Don’t forget to accuse your enemies of politicising tragedies when it suits your agenda, though.

https://twitter.com/wilw/status/850160663859154944

https://twitter.com/wilw/status/775557289545572353

https://twitter.com/wilw/status/927284357609353218

Islam is Peace. Prayers are Worthless. Guns are Bad. I Love Big Brother.

It will stun future generations to hear that we have become such a self-hating society, riddled with such preposterous levels of self-inflicted and undeserved guilt and paranoia.

It wasn’t always like this. In 1979, the seminal comedy group Monty Python released Life of Brian. The movie revolves around a man mistaken for a messiah. The religious right was apoplectic and it was awesome.

“[Life of Brian] isn’t blasphemous because it doesn’t touch on belief at all. It is heretical because it touches on dogma and the interpretation of belief, rather than belief itself.” ~ Terry Jones

The movie mainly skewered religious hypocrisy and was so controversial at the time that it was banned in several countries and had to rely on George Harrison (of The Beatles) for funding. It remains one of the finest comedies ever produced.

On re-watching the movie recently, I was struck how mild the religious satire really is in this film. In all honesty, I found myself far more interested in the non-theological scenes.

There is a sub-plot to the film which features several Left Wing revolutionary groups all seeking to oust the Romans from Judea. These groups were analogous to hard left British groups in the late 1970s, including the then powerful trade unionists. It is almost as if our timelines are running in opposite directions. As the power of the Church has diminished, to the point where (rightly) no-one would dare attempt to ban a movie for blasphemy, the loony left has arisen, Gojira in Tokyo Harbour.

While the interminable and unending squabbling between the intersections of the left is still laughable today, it cannot be denied that it is the modern day facsimilies of Reg (John Cleese) and the People’s Front of Judea that are holding the social power. Despite everyone knowing what capitalism has done for us, still, they cry out ‘Oppression!’

Apart from a free market, advances in technology, healthcare, living standards, nearly eliminating child mortality, better food, the internet, a life expectancy of over eighty, university education for all and countless varieties of hot sauce, what has capitalism ever done for us?

Instead, these puritanical crusaders turned their attention on society itself. Internet technology has enabled us to strip monsters like Harvey Weinstein of their veils of secrecy, and therefore, their power. This marvel of communication also allows the Neo-Marxist to conduct witch-hunts and purges at speeds old Joe Stalin could only have dreamed of.

Their zealotry has claimed the scalps of numerous journalists, actors and politicians who, in the main, have all fallen on their swords rather than run the gauntlet. These men may not be nice. These men might, in fact, be criminals- but that has never been a good idea for the mob to decide. Rupert Myers, late of GQ, is a man who makes my skin crawl. Not for his alleged behaviour towards women, which seems inept but not illegal, but for his hypocrisy.

To write such a diatribe against the rest of one’s gender, to elevate oneself to the status of Enlightened Nü-Male, and then to be accused thus:

“I was very clear about not being romantically or sexually interested in him, once the subject was raised. I suggested we be mates.

“He said ‘I’ve got enough mates, I’d rather fuck you’ and forced himself on me outside a pub in Fitzrovia.”

Well. I would be a liar if I did not feel a little schadenfreude. I am wrong to do so. A failed and clumsy pass at someone is not a criminal offence, but the puritanical left is treating it like one.

Saints protect you if you live in the United Kingdom, where not only will leftist society pillory you, so will the police. Over the weekend, The Sunday Times revealed that the Deputy Prime Minister Damian Green possessed (legal) pornography on his computer. Why is this information pertinent to the public? Are we really so depraved that we must know the masturbatory habits of politicians? If so, why? In any case, the police released it to the press.

The minister has also been pilloried for allegedly touching a woman’s knee.We can be sure that Green will be forced to resign, unable to continue in his career with sucha tarnished public image.

Let’s not ignore that corrupt, incompetent or sleazy politicians must fall. With such incredible levels of vice in politics in our nations, how is it that this non-issue is plastered across the papers?

You can thank Donald J. Trump.

The moralists have been on this crusade for some time, but it appears to have become particularly weaponised by the Left and the MSM since The President’s locker room talk. The scent of blood in the water to a shark is much like the scent of KISS records to a Bible Belt Baptist in 1978 or a whiff of scandal to the press. Egged on by an ideological leitmotif that demands purity at all times from all beings, no man should ever find himself alone with an unmarried woman again.

How we laughed at Vice-President Pence, what a dotard, refusing to sit with a female without his wife present to ensure propriety is maintained. Pence comes to this topic from an entirely different perspective. As a born again, evangelical boomer Catholic we might expect a conservative attitude. But from the sons and daughters of the hippies, the Gen-Xers, the Millennials? I thought this was supposed to be a post-morality, post-faith, post-conservative post-everything age of rampant consumerism and meaningless sex.

Instead, Netflix TV shows are used as examples of a religious theocracy that doesn’t exist. Wow, the asinine Twitterati bleat in unison, this is just like Trump’s America.

It is not. A totalitarian mindset exists in America, for sure. I must also state that the genuinely corrupt who are toppling, the genuine sex-criminals and paedophiles and rapists and money-launderers- spare them no sympathy. They are reaping their own whirlwind, caught up in their pretence at righteousness. The totalitarians are those who are now purging their movements of male feminist allies for thought crime. Journalists who stood for identity politics are now the victims of the same.

I wonder how long it will be before Dan ‘Everyone is A Literal Nazi’ Arel is toppled from his perch. In the current climate, could it be that his social media stalking of pop has-been Lily Allen transgresses the invisible line of sin?

No doubt a self proclaimed anarchist like Arel already prays to Black Atheist Trans Jesus for forgiveness for his disgusting white penis. It is not enough today, in 2017, the current year, to merely hate yourself for being a white man. You must also hate the words you say, constantly self-reflect, ensure you keep your eyes down and touch nobody, not even in jest or error.

Such behavioural abnormality is non-PC. Such behaviour demands that you be flayed in public, to lose your livelihood. This is how puritans project their power. Shame is how they maintain control. We have moved beyond expanding the definition of words so that one can be raped by eyesight or by flatulence. We are now in an era where all actions are sinful. There is no escaping the shame. You are born in it, surrounded by it, you are the sin itself. It is, dare I say it, original in nature.

Considering so many of these leftists proclaim themselves anarchists but act like dictators, I offer my own favoured anarchy.

“Anarchy is personal; it is not a collective possibility. It rests upon the idea of a person acting within a sphere where his existence is not intrusive upon the existence of another human being unless invited to be so. Should a person find that he has uninvitedly trespassed upon the serenity of another, Individual Anarchy points that man toward accepting the responsibility for his own actions while not condemning the failure of others to own up to the things they may have done wrong.” ~ U. Buster

By this perspective, the moral crusade is anathema to anarchists. Even old Antonio Gramsci, one of the founders of Neo-Marxist thought, held it to be a fact that

To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act.

If we can agree with a long-dead communist that the truth is revolutionary, there may yet be hope for us. We must turn away from this cult of social purity, and the trappings of transcendental shaming. The internet never forgets. We’re all stuck on here together, forever.

If you like what you read, please consider supporting your writers. It’s easy to show support for my writing: click the applause, follow me, or even tip me through PayPal. I write for a living and I’m always looking for work.