One example [of an alleged microaggression] was staff “rolling their eyes during … meetings while Principal Moffett is speaking.” [ ... ] Errol Hassell Elementary made the news earlier this year when a parent got a lawyer involved regarding the school’s “21-Day Social Justice Challenge.” The parent alleged Principal Moffett had “dismissed” his concerns and retaliated against his daughter. It's true that rolling your eyes at something someone is saying is disrespectful. Then again, it's also true that being a complete cunt tends to rub people up the wrong way.

So, hey. No biggie. It's always refreshing to be reminded that we belong to the same species that produced Witchfinder Generals. That's really what Moen is, albeit a looking glass variant.

It reminded me of Ms Yassmin Abdel-Magied ... Having previously been unaware of this particular enlightened intellectual, I went to her Wikipedia entry which, if accurate, and presumably it is, makes for fascinating reading in light of her "waking nightmare" comment: Yassmin Midhat Abdel-Magied was born in Khartoum, Sudan. As skilled migrants, her parents moved to Brisbane, Australia with her when aged 18 months in late 1992 [ ... ] Abdel-Magied's father, Midhat Abdel-Magied, completed a PhD in electrical engineering at Imperial College, London [ ... ] Yassmin's mother, Faiza El-Higzi, was a qualified architect in Sudan, and now holds postgraduate degrees across various disciplines [ ... ]. Abdel-Magied attended primary school at the Islamic College of Brisbane and the independent Christian high school John Paul College, at which there was no policy against wearing a hijab David Baddiel, a British comedian and writer, once commented on the Scottish tennis player, Andy Murray, that it was funny how everyone assumed that because he was from Scotland he must be working class (not the case at all). At the time, it was an off-the-cuff comment on a BBC radio programme poking gentle fun at London's intelligentsia. It was mildly funny then, but Channel 4 (UK), the BBC, and The Guardian has for quite some time championed and promoted a number of ethnic minority intellectuals, writers and the like on the unstated assumption that such people are authentic voices of the oppressed. Afua Hirsch is one good example (educated at the exclusive all-girls Wimbledon High School before going on to Oxford, naturally, her parents and even grandparents' were educated at Oxford and Cambridge and held elite posts in the old colonial establishment). Priyamvada Gopal is another - a child of diplomats, she was educated at an exclusive international school in Vienna, Austria, and is now professor at the University of Cambridge, where she complains of being discriminated against by the porters. There are no doubt more. The words "controlled opposition" and "managed dissent" come to mind for some reason.

the educational importance of those TikTok leggings Now I know what horror movie clowns are going to look like about 15 years from now.

Like he's off his meds. Heh.

Again, aspirational role-model. More of the same here. It does leave one wondering how on Earth they could ever have possibly come to the conclusion that this would advance the ostensible cause of creating a more open and inclusive society. So I have been left to assume that this is not why they are doing what they are doing. As far as I can tell, one or more of the following seems more plausible as a motivation: Unadulterated narcissism - to achieve notoriety without caring for the particulars of how it is achieved. So long as it provokes all the "right" people, it's a publicity victory. "Normalise" (so-called) marginal communities - to bring the marginal into the centre and establish it as an alternative but equal "norm",seemingly on the grounds that if anything and everything can be considered to be a norm, then no one can be excluded or marginalised. Perhaps needless to say, but if this is the case, it betrays a profoundly crude, simplistic and immature understanding, one might even say a fantastical understanding, of what a society is and how it functions. Dismantling liberal society - to expose the (alleged) internal contradictions of liberal Western societies by trying to demonstrate that it is, in fact, far more intolerant and oppressive to minority communities and not, as it is claimed to be, tolerant and open. Whichever of these it is - or even none - the real question is still why such obvious Bedlamites are given so much support in Media and government.

People should “not discriminate” against someone based on sex, race, disability, or religion, according to the poster, nor someone’s “sexual offender status.” Trump should book it as a speaking venue. For the "lulz".

Chicken-and-egg debate gets surprising new makeover.

[ Fixes overflow of bold, fetches revolver. ] [ Shifts to a place further along the bar ] It’s like The Black & White Minstrel Show, but for gay kids. That really hits the nail on the head, doesn’t it? The first time I encountered this kind of thing was more than 15 years ago at an international arts festival in Singapore. Artists of all kinds had been invited from across the globe to perform and some of them were even talented. From Lithuania came a theatre group that put one of the most imaginative and compelling performances of Othello I’ve ever seen - the fact that it was performed in Lithuanian probably enhanced the effect. From Hong Kong came a Cantonese Opera, the first time I’d seen a show of that kind. Then there was the UK’s entry. Let’s just say that to this very day I’m still half convinced that the Singaporean organisers knew absolutely what they were doing when they chose this particular act to represent their former colonial power. It was a drag queen version of a Punch and Judy show except instead of Punch and Judy there were Barbie and Ken like dolls of glamorous female flight attendants cooing over a pilot. Despite being performed to a small group of primary school age children (and their bemused parents) from what I could gather the show was full of absolutely filthy innuendo so it was really just as well they (apparently) didn’t get what the show was actually about. Needless to say, it left me in a less than patriotic mood.

Is this real? They can't be serious, surely?

While faults can be found*, that is a great article and not only because, with the exception of the Hanania tweet, no one else seems to have asked the question. That alone makes it worth reading. That and the sly humour in this carefully placed paragraph: An analogy to this whole situation would be defining obesity as people who are substantially overweight, despite eating less than 2,500 calories a day. You can’t simply define an illness to exclude causes you do not want to think about. There's no way the author isn't aware of this kind of thing. *I'm not unaware of the irony.

You're very welcome. Also, something to go behind the bar. It's quite something to behold.

Ping!

"Part-time Cambridge academic and barrister" takes a calm and measured response to the complexities of the US legal system. Her lectures must be entertaining.

I also understood that it was more than simply physical attraction, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. You know, I think she probably could have if she'd thought about it more.

As a basis for sympathy, though, it leaves something to be desired. Well, quite!

Needless to say, Ms Smoot has written for the Guardian. A year ago: To expect true allyship from the White people in my life would be to ask them to be willing to sacrifice the thing that they covet most, though they may never be truly conscious of it: their Whiteness. So, I don’t. Now: Within several of my closest relationships, the fact that I require ungendered pronouns when referring to me in the third person has become the source of deep strain and disappointment. There's a hint of method in this madness of quite literally asking for the impossible then expressing dismay when it isn't and can't ever be delivered. It's suggestive of something like the practice of edging, but where the stimulation comes from emotionally blackmailing others rather than any physical sensation.

As a nonbinary trans person ... Eh? Anyway, some 1,000 words later, a ready-made yet apt response to Ms Smoot presents itself. What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

If my introduction to you as a writer is ... Curiosity got the better of me. #writersoftwitter 1 #writersoftwitter 2 ("he/they") #writersoftwitter 3 ("he/him") And as a bonus, some questionable but also rather telling advice: #writersoftwitter

I told myself that to do so I needed to distance myself from anything deemed masculine my wife, always one to joke, even soon after giving birth, bragged that she had a connection to our new baby that I could never attain When I met my wife at 28, I was terrified of the prospect of sex, but I yearned to be close to her romantically ... but in my head, at times, I was petrified and alone, often shutting down when sex was in the air ... Does his wife ever read what he writes? Do his wife's friends? His in-laws?

Dining scenes. More tea, vicar?

In coping news. A thread. Think I got me a winner: It's a consensus is social sciences that free speech can't be limitless ... Leave social matters to people study it.

hearing that your immediate predecessor was harassed and assaulted, and reduced to tears on a daily basis As if that weren't bad enough, the actual context in which that appears in the original beggar's belief (my italics). ... White people’s feelings and intentions often have outsized consequences on People of Color (Sullivan, 2017). The White art teacher I replaced at my high school was said to have wept at the end of every school day. Near the end of her tenure, this teacher pressed assault charges against a Black student who cut off a lock of the teacher’s hair. He cut off a lock of her hair. Her hair! That's not ill-discipline, let alone "rambunctious" behaviour. That's an early warning sign of someone very likely to graduate on to far worse crimes, possibly of a serial nature. In the very next paragraph, he complains that the administration of a prison where he volunteered saw fit to " occasionally suspend all on-site educational and rehabilitation programming based on suspicions of romantic feelings between incarcerated men (nearly all BIPOC) and women volunteers (nearly all White)." According to Stabler, "this experience hearkened back to a long history of violent White panic around the corruption of White women". Despite, or, who knows, because of these views, Stabler is now an Assistant Professor at Appalachian State University in the Department of Art Education in the faculty in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies. Because of course he is. Because what Faculty Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies worthy of the name wouldn't want a male member of staff on it who thinks cutting off a lock of a woman's hair is nothing to write home about, while at the same time finding it a serious problem that convicted felons should not be able to do as they please with visiting female volunteers?

... didn’t end well, mainly for the Oberlin faculty members ... Good. Fuck 'em.

“What a racket” Indeed. We've progressed forwards to 1954 and the Comics Code Authority. That was voluntary too. ... all of the actors playing the heroes in an upcoming scripted project appeared to be light-skinned East Asian people whereas the villains were portrayed by darker-skinned East Asian actors And here, it seems, we've progressed back to 1854. Maybe even 1754? If this example were true, why isn't referring to the casting process? If by "scripted project" they mean one with storyboards, maybe all they saw in the drawings were villains lurking in shadowy lairs and, hence, appearing to be "darker-skinned"? If by "scripted project" they mean literally just final stage scripts with casting decisions yet to be made, how on Earth could they have possibly parsed from the script how light or dark the skin tone was? And, more importantly, why are these cretins standing around like the unseen police officer in the Peter Griffin skin tone chart meme? It's grotesque.