Predictable consequences

From Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians, p. 24

...social psychologists found long ago that people who are prejudiced against one group are usually prejudiced against a whole lot more as well. Prejudice has little to do with the groups it targets, and a lot to do with the personality of the holder. Want to guess who has such wide-ranging prejudices? Authoritarian followers dislike so many kinds of people, I have called them “equal opportunity bigots.” They will not win the gold medal in the Prejudice Olympics (we’ll find out who does in a later chapter), but high RWAs will definitely be on the podium.

 Author Peter Watts on RequiresHate/Benjanun Sriduangkaew

   The fact that RH occasionally went after the Bakkers and Bacigalupis of the world let her claim that she was Speaking Truth To Power, but in fact People of Color were four times more likely to be targeted than us privileged white boys.  Four times more likely to be hounded across every social media site they appeared at over months, sometimes years. More likely to be told that they should have acid thrown in their faces, or raped by dogs, or have their hands cut off.  A lot more likely to be considered insufficiently Asian, or “white on the inside”.  

HERE ARE MY OPINIONS, SHOUTED AT YOU TWITTER STYLE

1) The next time you encounter a police officer, you should say "I'm sorry officer, but if I were not a white person you would probably search and arrest me on some trumped-up charge, so I'm going to voluntarily strip-search myself then voluntarily serve a long prison sentence forfeiting many of my rights as a citizen and my future economic prospects because that's only fair."

If this sounds like a thing you would do, you probably think "white privilege" is a useful way of thinking about the world.

2) A century ago the left broadly operated under the idea that "the good life" should be open to everyone regardless of birth. Now the left mirrors the conservative pathology that somebody somewhere may be getting something they didn't earn.

3) If CNN wants you to talk about something, you'll probably be talking about the wrong thing.

4) If you want to talk about systems of power, have an explanation for where they come from and how you would get rid of them. Leave the Illuminati/lizard people stuff at home.

5) If you believe white people are some manifestation of unique evil otherwise unseen in world history, congratulations, you're a white supremacist. Sign up today for your robe and pointy hat. You don't disagree that the unique ingenuity of the "white race" led to its current hegemony, just with its moral value

Virginity's just another word for something left to lose

Last week I crossed over into my 33^rd sexless year. While this is mainly a source of wry amusement for me (insofar as I was ever particularly bitter about it I got past that long ago) when virginity has been a part of your life for that long it starts to form a little bit of your identity. So sometimes you get a little twitchy about certain things.


Of course, I am a little sensitive about mainstream caricatures of male virginity; I like genre fiction and games, and I may not be the most...successful person fiscally speaking. So although this is a little on the nose, we can ultimately have a good laugh about ourselves as anyone would.


However, while I'd expect “HAHA UR VIRGIN DWEEB” to come from the likes of third-rate comics, the increasingly-unfortunate young, hip, “social justice” internet has decided that “virgin” as a male slur is some kind of mighty blow against the patriarchy. And that is a bit of a problem.


Ostensibly, the use of “virgin” as a male insult by “progressives” is meant to signify that said person suffers from the disapproval of women. If you were a good, right-thinking progressive man women would be fucking you left and right. The lack of sex then is meant as a judgment on behalf of the world's women, that you have some fatal character flaw. To that end it's nearly always brandished as the supreme proof that the speaker finds some thought of yours sexist or misogynistic in some way; it must be true! The world's women have spoken!


It's an ill-fitting accusation for a number of reasons. Some are readily apparent. I've been fortunate enough to have a number of female friends over the years who, for various very good reasons, have never had sex with me. Self-deprecating humor about my romantic life aside, I don't think my virginity is indicative of some general female revulsion, or a lack of women voices in my life.


More peculiar, and more insidious, is the implicit endorsement of the mainstream cultural understanding of male virginity, that sexless men aren't living up to their gender expectations and in fact might not even be quite men at all. Women are meant to be virginal, and are condemned as “slutty” if they defy those expectations. Most progressives know that story. But it's necessarily complementary that if virginity is female behavior, then what virgin men are failing at is behaving like women. This isn't some kind of “reverse sexism” fantasy, they are entirely co-dependent.



This is especially regrettable to me because it isn't a new thing in my life. Ten years ago I became disillusioned with evangelicalism because of the restrictive box of masculinity where you were expected to fit. There's more to write about this element, but it's beyond the scope of this post, and also still quite muddled in my mind.