What’s this now?
“A Teacher,” which presents a different kind of toxic femininity than the one we’re used to seeing onscreen, displays an admirable sense of responsibility and an alienating timidity. https://t.co/Msj9bgAcTz
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) December 31, 2020
What the hell is “toxic femininity”? Is that like “black racism” or “homophobic same-sex attraction”?
Let me guess – it’s what Karens have, right?… Read the rest
The Trump people are, of course, failing dismally to get the vaccines out there. No biggy, it’s only 4000 deaths per day.
The Trump administration’s Covid-19 vaccine distribution program needs a major shot in the arm because at the current rate, it would take almost 10 years to inoculate enough Americans to get the pandemic under control, a jarring new NBC News analysis showed Tuesday.
On the upside, by then the population will be a lot smaller.
… Read the restDr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading epidemiologist, told CNN on Tuesday, “Well, we certainly are not at the numbers that we wanted to be at the end of December.”
The Trump administration’s Covid-19 testing czar, Dr. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of
That’s…interesting.
https://twitter.com/DanialWebb/status/1344573750591844352 https://twitter.com/DanialWebb/status/1344573753766924290And by “supporting” they of course mean “encouraging in the trans ideation.”
https://twitter.com/DanialWebb/status/1344573756056989697 https://twitter.com/DanialWebb/status/1344573758762328064In #6 he means “unlikely to be able to consent” [with full understanding]. They’re all too likely to consent, all the more so if urged on by a “Kathryn” Bigelow.
This is truly horror movie stuff.… Read the rest
Ha! Take that.
https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1344525004973682689… Read the restOriginally a comment by Tim Harris on His plays harbor problematic depictions and characterizations.
‘Edward II’ has a very strong relationship to Shakespeare’s ‘Richard II’ (one of my favourite plays, one that I have directed and acted in as Richard); it is the forerunner to Shakespeare’s play, and an influence on it, just as Marlowe’s poem ‘Hero & Leander’ (a wonderful poem) was a stimulus to Shakespeare to write ‘Venus & Adonis’. In ‘As You Like It’, Shakespeare makes a specific reference to Marlowe and ‘Hero & Leander’ when Phebe says:
Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might,
‘Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?’
The second line is a a line from ‘Hero & … Read the rest
Mansplaining feminism to feminist women.
https://twitter.com/twitone/status/1343573819303342087How are women supposed to reject sex as a concept? What would that involve, in practical terms?
— Jo – Time for Tea (@joslyoung) December 28, 2020
Rejecting being defined by what you have between your legs, you should try it, feminists have been doing it for at least the last couple of hundred years.
— Kat Bristow (@KathrynBristow) December 28, 2020
This made for a fine laugh this morning.
https://twitter.com/BrennanQC/status/1344248805370306562Why it’s funny is because Timothy Brennan is head of Devereux Chambers, which Foxy Jolyon left as of midnight yesterday.
https://twitter.com/BrennanQC/status/1344259462018818049Burn ALL the bridges down.… Read the rest
Originally a comment by Papito on The influencer wife.
I once had a long conversation with a good friend of mine, who is a Japanese-American, about appropriation. She had been very offended that a group of white and Chinese protesters shut down an event at the museum that allowed visitors to try on, and take a picture of themselves in, a kimono. The protesters insisted that this was cultural appropriation, you know, all the usual, orientalism, the male gaze, whatever. My friend, let’s call her Keiko, insisted that it wasn’t their culture that they were talking about, and in her culture, Japanese culture, trying on kimonos and having your picture taken in them was something that people did. She … Read the rest
This happened.
Okay so going into the police station because someone reported me in for blasphemy.
Good luck— Zara Kay (@zarakayk) December 28, 2020
She hasn’t been heard from since.
URGENT ACTION: Tanzanian government must drop all the politically-motivated charges against @zarakayk immediately and unconditionally#JusticeForZara #ReleaseZara #FreeZaraKay
@MagufuliJPhttps://t.co/kgKmyY2yFG pic.twitter.com/jMJdWXHriW— Maryam Namazie مریم نمازی (@MaryamNamazie) December 30, 2020
@DeBalie @YoeriAlbrecht @sophierutnfrns @Ianth
Our activist friend @zarakayk who spoke at #CelebratingDissent event last year is in trouble.Please join international coalition of #ExMuslims in calling for her release. #JusticeForZara #ReleaseZara #FreeZaraKay https://t.co/cRPKiBxRtL
— Halima Salat (@halimasalat) December 30, 2020
… Read the restDrop all charges against @zarayk, they are politically motivated. #JusticeForZaraKay ,#JusticeForZara, #Tanzania, don't persecute @zarakayk https://t.co/kfItT7EbUq
What if the pardon power conflicts with international law?
… Read the restDonald Trump’s pardon of four American men convicted of killing Iraqi civilians while working as contractors in 2007 violated US obligations under international law, United Nations human rights experts have said. …
“Pardoning the Blackwater contractors is an affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families,” said Jelena Aparac, the chair of the UN working group on the use of mercenaries.
The group said the Geneva conventions obliged states to hold war criminals accountable for their crimes, even when they are acting as private security contractors. “These pardons violate US obligations under international law and more broadly undermine humanitarian law and human rights at
Kathleen Stock juxtaposes academic freedom and UK universities’ policies on The Trans Question:
The Education Reform Act 1988 describes the need “to ensure that academic staff have freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions, without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or privileges they may have at their institutions”. Most UK university statutes contain a similar clause.
Keeping that in mind, consider those policies.
Leeds for instance:
“Think of people as being the gender that they self-identify as.”
Er – no. A university might as well tell its staff to think of people as being the nationality or species or profession or celestial body … Read the rest
He has got to be kidding.
Or rather they have got to be kidding, since they wrote it and simply put his label on it. But still – he and they have got to be kidding.
Trump issued a ProclaMation flattering Thomas Becket and Religious Freedom and the right of religious bosses to tell the monarch to fuck off. Yes because Trump is so keen on being told to fuck off.
Today is the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket on December 29, 1170. Thomas Becket was a statesman, a scholar, a chancellor, a priest, an archbishop, and a lion of religious liberty.
By “religious liberty” Trump means the liberty to agree with him and do what … Read the rest
Oh no, people questioning someone’s identity again. People are what they say they are! Unless they’re TERFs who object to being called TERFs of course; that’s completely different.
Last week, a Twitter sleuth sketched out how Hilaria Baldwin, the influencer wife of actor (and sometime SNL star) Alec Baldwin, has perpetrated “a decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.”
Or rather, pretends to be a Spanish person. Impersonating one means a specific one, as opposed to a generic one. She was going for the generic.
… Read the restThe user, who goes by the handle @lenibriscoe, shared a number of damning videos of “Hilaria,” from a Good Morning America appearance where she employed a Spanish accent
Graham Linehan asks the age-old question: Is Eddie Izzard a lesbian?
… Read the restAlright, everyone, let’s get out there and start asking our favourite celebrities the following question: “Is Eddie Izzard a lesbian?”.
Ask everyone you can think of, from intellectuals like Jameela Jamil and Frankie Boyle all the way across to such LGBT giants as Michael Cashman and Linda Riley. Let’s get people on the record as saying that Eddie Izzard is a lesbian.
Because, by now I think more and more people are waking up to the fact that, yes, this is literally what is being proposed. It is why lesbians have been lying down in front of Pride Marches and such. It’s why Maya Forstater lost her job. It’s
More than 13 years later and it’s still pissing us off.
As it should.
In 2007 I was a college sophomore returning to campus from winter break and I picked up a Vanity Fair in Penn Station and read Christopher Hitchens' article "Why Women Aren't Funny." Here's how it began. This is a real article printed in a real magazine by a (formerly) real man. pic.twitter.com/f4sA240krt
— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) December 29, 2020
So she got a job writing comedy.… Read the rest
A tedious conversation:
But everyone isn't free to define herself in whatever terms she deems fit. We can't define ourselves as heads of state, doctors, pilots, many more items, unless we really are those things.
— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) December 29, 2020
I'm not, I'm responding to the words of the tweet.
— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) December 29, 2020
No I'm not, I'm replying to "Eddie Izzard, who is free, as is everyone else, to define herself in whatever terms she deems fit." You're not free to define what I said and meant.
— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) December 29, 2020
… Read the restI know what I said, and that I said it in response to a wild claim that we can define
The really scary thing is the abject apology Jessica Cluess felt compelled to give.
https://twitter.com/JessCluess/status/1333906316247457794Well, I tell you what, if she does learn more about “Ms. Germán’s important work with #DisruptTexts” she won’t be impressed. She probably knew that when she said it. She was either appeasing the bullies or mocking them, or perhaps both at once.
Having just read a bit of Ms. Germán’s important work I can report that it has no value. She’s not literate enough to do that kind of work; she’s not sufficiently interested in literature to do it. She’s the wrong person for the job.
The reality is there are already teachers reading against the grain, encouraging students to think critically about what … Read the rest
The Lorena Germán – Jess Cluess contretemps has nudged my curiosity, so I looked for more.
Way back last July:
https://twitter.com/JessCluess/status/1280214961709555719Oy. You mean, like Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton? For example?
Fast forward to today and she’s being bullied in the usual fashion.
https://twitter.com/MagpieLibrarian/status/1343978007778750465So how about this DisruptTexts crew of educators?
Here’s Lorena Germán on how (and why) to disrupt Shakespeare.
… Read the restWe knew that suggesting educators disrupt Shakespeare would be a challenge for many. We were pleased to see the openness to the idea and the willingness to engage. But then again, it could be because we’re “preaching to the choir” and we acknowledge that educators hesitant to
… Read the restA sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts—everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Dr. Seuss.
Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular—especially those “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: “Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic
Small backwater towns are not all Frank Capra and social capital. They can be all MAGA and fuck wearing masks, instead.
… Read the restTen years ago, Dr. Kristina Darnauer and her husband, Jeff, moved to tiny Sterling, Kan., to raise their kids steeped in small-town values.
“The values of hard work, the value of community, taking care of your neighbor, that’s what small towns shout from the rooftops, this is what we’re good at. We are salt of the earth people who care about each other,” Darnauer says. “And here I am saying, then wear a mask because that protects your precious neighbor.”
But Darnauer’s medical advice and moral admonition were met with contempt from some of her friends, neighbors and patients.
