Weird book promotion scheme
Rafia Zakaria apparently deleted the stupidest of her tweets from yesterday attacking Joan Smith for her review of Zakaria’s book on “white feminism.” Or most of them, but not quite all.
She doesn’t really care what the review says, which is why she composed all those childish “nyah nyah Karen na na Boomer” about them.
I’ll grant her one point: she didn’t care enough to find out who Joan Smith is.
“They’re”?
So Zakaria knows Joan Smith is a woman long enough to call her a Karen, but not long enough to refrain from calling her “they.”
Yay feminism. Feminism is for everyone except terfs, boomers, Karens, white women, and women who write unflattering reviews of Rafia Zakaria’s book.
“And likely all her entitled and racist views”? Name one. Document it. Show us your work.
No, that’s incorrect. It could just be that Zakaria’s book is not a good book – and judging by her tweets it’s hard to see how it could be much good. Her thinking is crude at best.
Yes I think I’ll just skip reading Lol White Feminism Lol.
Updating to add one that I missed:
At what age does Rafia Zakaria think women should be put to death? 70? 65? 55? At what age, exactly, are we too old to be useful and too repellent to be allowed to continue cluttering up the place?
Is she aware that, barring accident, she will reach that fatal age herself in due course?
Update 2:
Actually I thought her review did a good job of making the point that centering trans in feminism is to cater to privileged white males. Feminism is for women, not for everyone, and it’s time people understand that. It is for women, and men are not women.
My. Goddess. The flaming self-importance and preening!
I’m with Paul Fussell that writers should shut up about the reviews they receive, positive or negative.
You’ve had your say with your book, dear writer, and the book doesn’t come with your mouthy mouth attached to it.
Oh hey a Paul Fussell fan. Same here. Funny fact: I knew him as a name for years before I read any of his books (and for that matter before he’d written some of them), as my best friend’s father’s best friend. They were both also besties with Kingsley Amis, who tore a swath through Princeton back in the day.
I’m not sure reading anything so blatantly racist (starting with the title) and selectively biased against mainstream feminists (of her choosing) would make much of a difference to me. Particularly if it’s written in an angry voice of victimhood. Judging by her twitterings, I highly doubt Zakaria has the arguments or the integrity to hijack feminism from history and reformulate it to her liking. The attempts at schoolyard ridicule is enough to put me off. Nah, not interested. :P
Ophelia, wonderful story! In the 90s, I read “The Great War and Modern Memory” and got hooked. What a great thinker and writer Fussell was.
And at what age does Zakaria plan to do her own Logan’s run so she don’t become ridiculed for not dying young?
We all get older, and there are always people younger than us who think we are doddering fools. 18 yo think that 25 yo are too old to talk to reason with.
LOL.
On 4th April 1970 a colleague read out an announcement from Playboy to the effect that it was Jack Weinberg’s 30th birthday. Who was Jack Weinberg (I didn’t know) and why was his 30th birthday important to record (I didn’t know that either)? It turned out that he was the one to whom the slogan “Don’t trust anyone over 30” was attributed. Anyway, I shan’t be reading Rafia Zakaria’s book.
Mike B, he was indeed. An anti-bullshitter, too, and thus one of the streams that fed my hostility to bullshit and thus to this very blog-thingy here.
Scolding a childish person for being a substanceless boor is now racism. Another worthless author that doesn’t know what words mean.
Fussell warns us to be aware of “canting nonsense.”
It’s not entirely clear what Rafia Zakaria’s ethnicity really is, but I’d hazard it’s one of the ones that actually is white (like Persians), so she might want to be careful there…
She’s certainly not important enough to have a Wikipedia page, so I couldn’t find out.
According to the Gruaniad, she’s from Pakistan.
Indians and Pakistanis are typically grouped with Aryans, no? Or at least that is an important genetic thread. Sanskrit was one of the earliest Indo-European languages. Although the epic history of the subcontinent means that they can be all colors and features, of course.
“[H]er feminism”? More like transism. Which is apparently inherently misogynistic nowadays, when it didn’t have to be, considering how much it benefited from actual feminism.
To be fair, she’s showing her product in action. She’s demonstating the effectiveness of accusations of “white feminism” in shutting down discussion and criticism. It doesn’t answer discussion or criticism, it just stops it. Sympathetic listeners will decide that you’ve “won” because you “touched a nerve.” In this respect it is a (small) step up from sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “LA LA LAL AL, I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!!” and, like the Force, can have a strong influence on the weak minded.
Is she? Seems to me she did a lousy rotten job of shutting down criticism.
Well, maybe not shutting it down in reality, but announcing that the criticism does not actually need to be addressed or is not worthy of noticing, because of its source. Branding the critic with “Karenhood,” ” terfitude” and “transphobia,” count in this scenario as unanswerable arguments. Pushback=bigotry. She’s declaring victory and not engaging. This saves the trouble of actually having to make an argument or prove anything.
JEEZIZ! Misspelled my own nym!
Shut down her own side of the discussion then. Bang-up job!