I’m not the only person to respond to Magdalene Taylor’s “heteropessimism” article in the New York Times. Sarah Jones at NY Mag had a different take: “Yes, straight women are in trouble.” Perhaps, but she’s an unreliable narrator. Heterosexual women are not okay. Probably they never have been. At least, that’s the story I keep…
It’s basic politics that propaganda doesn’t usually work through persuasive argument. Instead, you simply present your worldview as neutral with all the important ideas as assumptions taken for granted. Magdalene Taylor’s new article in the New York Times is in that style. It presents itself as an evenhanded lament of “heteropessimism” and the gender wars,…
I came across this article tonight on Unherd: “What Playboy got right about men.” The gist is that, well, men could be men without shame, where tits are just one of the things we like, and also it really DID have a lot of articles. The article suffers from being ahistorical bullshit: Today, the consensus…
I haven’t seen Love is Blind for years, but the Great Pilates Controversy has been everywhere. Most recently, I opened a new tab in Firefox and one of the suggested links was this one: Why the manosphere reveres the ‘Pilates girl’. It’s published in The 19th, so we can treat it like the representative mainstream…
I was happy to see The Atlantic declare The Death of Millennial Feminism, because it’s long overdue. The occasion that marked the turning of the zeitgeist was Lindy West’s new book. Until Andi Zeisler’s piece at Salon, I hadn’t seen a single person try to defend it. The Atlantic article is really good: The reaction…
It wasn’t always true that “the left” had a problem with masculinity. I mean…”I am a man” was a civil rights slogan. Leftism had to do with unions and factories and things. You could join the Red Army. The Black Panthers were considered cool. Leftism could be militant. In olden times, “leftism” had connotations of…
I’m an elder millennial, class of 2001, the last to graduate before 9/11. Things used to be very different. It was a whole different zeitgeist. If you were in grade school when it happened, as an adult you wouldn’t understand what you missed unless you made a special effort to understand the Before Times. It’s…
My autism diagnosis was 8 years ago at this point, so the novelty has worn off. In daily life, I do my job and my hobbies. I don’t need to think about being autistic very much. My sister is one of those “being New Age turned me fascist” people, and we don’t talk. I haven’t…
Given the obviously-incoming Charlie Kirk retribution campaign, I’ve gotta say: warning leftists against “trans allyship” was a thankless task. Trans was the ONE issue where the right could argue in good faith and wipe the floor with the other side. Men really can’t be women. The transes basically admitted they had no good arguments, only…
Just because people ON social media said the “No Kings” protests were cringe doesn’t mean they weren’t cringe, that the perception is an EFFECT of social media. On Salon.com, Andi Zeisler tries to cope by making comparisons with WTO 99 and comparing them favorably. Even though she’s apparently 10 years older than me, and I…