Someone needed to say it:
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If T**** were a woman, she’d been institutionalized and wouldn’t have been chosen by her father to supplant her brother Fred, Jr.
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This asshole. I used to watch and enjoy his show - now, I find out he’s no better than Ellen D.
And I never watched her, I have an aversion to chat/talk shows.
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It’s worth checking out the imgur link in the second tweet, too.
No kid should be forced to hug anyone they don’t want to, and that includes Auntie Joan who can learn to get over her disappointment, but no kid should be deprived of touch, or appreciation of delicate, beautiful things, based on gender, either. Let boys have blue butterflies or soft, pink unicorns. Teach them that physical contact doesn’t need to be limited to sex and/or violence.
We talk a lot about the very real issues of male privilege, but we also do them damage and when that combines with privilege, it harms us all.
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My son, when he was two, wanted to help me put on my makeup. He didn’t object - well, not much - when I painted his face to be a kitty-boy a la the stage version of “Cats” for Halloween around that same time.
He used to pick flowers for me out of the garden, and I remember the Mother’s Day when we lived in U of KY family housing next to the university’s arboretum; he took my arm and walked me through the entire place, he was nine at the time.
Now he critiques my art, and likes it, for the most part. <3
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I’m the oldest of four kids, and when we were young, we played a lot of dressup while I was “babysitting”. I had a lot of scarves, because they are cheap at the thrift store. We played pirates, and princesses and whatever someone thought up.
I have a photo of my brother, at like 8, in tights and scarves, because I thought he looked great. We were having fun. My sisters had “wedding dresses” and neither looks to be having as much fun as him.
When we were adults, he actually thanked me for all the dressup. He has been doing community theater forever, and never had a weird feeling about any costume, even drag. He said that our playing meant he didn’t have that weird macho bullshit drilled into him.
My SO saw that photo, and his immediate reaction is that I was trying to humiliate my brother. That’s some toxic shit right there! You can see on his face that he’s having fun.
All I can say is that having a feminist mother insulated all of us from swallowing the full measure of patriarchy.
I feel really bad for the blue butterfly kid. I hope he gets to grow up to have as many pretty things as he wants, and doesn’t have his soul crushed by toxic bullshit.
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They gloss over an aspect of gatekeeping, in that you find what you’re looking for.
Look at professional sports. You’ll find an inordinate number of players whose birthdays aggregate around 3 particular months in a year, when it comes to any sport that has registration cut-off dates. Recruiters and coaches are looking for kids that are “bigger, stronger, faster” and when that looking starts around the age of five, a few months can make a lot of difference in that arena. Those kids get extra play time, more intense coaching and more exposure to those making the decisions than a kid born 8-10 months later. Which just increases the gap so that by the time biology catches up a few years later, it’s irrelevant, because the early-borns now have hours and hours more of practice and training, not to mention that they’re more familiar to the recruiters.
Same goes for chess: if you’re in a country that takes chess seriously, then it’s more likely that a boy was introduced to the game at a younger age… quite possibly even before he was old enough to figure out that he wasn’t supposed to chew on the pieces. Since boys will outnumber girls at the early stages due to this (the mentioned participation gap), they are more likely to attract the eye of coaches and mentors. Girls who had to wait a little longer to start might be just as capable, but are now a year or more behind on that dedicated training. Which means that they’re seen as less of an ROI when it comes to receiving more coaching and training… And if you’re not from a country where it’s taken seriously… well, it’s like expecting a kid who spent the first ten years of his life in Chad to make the NHL. He may have all the drive and talent in the world, but being able to overcome those early years without access to the infrastructure centred around the sport that a 10 y/o in Toronto or Detroit has takes a lot more than talent and drive. Oh, and money. Let’s not forget that things like tournaments – especially at a world class level – require money. Money buys time to practice, to hire better coaches, to travel to competitions, to enter competitions… and who generally controls the money?
See also how girls are less likely to be recognized as being neurodiverse than boys because boys are less likely to be harshly punished for exhibiting the behaviors linked to neurodiversity, so are less likely to hide them and therefore more likely to be taken for a diagnosis. A loud, excitable boy is allowed to be loud and excitable, and so people see the ADHD markers. A loud, excitable girl learns quickly to turn it all inward because “girls don’t act like that.” A boy can be blunt to the point of rude, a girl has to manage everyone else’s feelings, whether it’s exhausting or not, so people assume she can’t be autistic, because she picks up on emotional cues too much.
“Girls don’t do math.” “Girls aren’t interested in mechanical things.” “Girls don’t make good engineers.” Yet, time and time again we see that the reason they give up or lose interest isn’t the activity, but the toxic environment.
It’s interesting that Kasparov recanted. I wonder if getting his ass kicked by Deep Blue helped teach him some humility. Especially since he came up in a culture where “a machine will never beat a man at chess”, and then one day it happened to him. I doubt it was the only thing that made him reassess, but it is the kind of thing that can make someone question their certainty.
It was a diverting piece of fiction, but the chess-play is probably about the only thing they got right. Well, and the willingness to drug children and “difficult” women. And that’s not even getting into the racist, sexist and homophobic tropes.
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TELL ME ABOUT IT.
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That did actually come up pretty early on in The Queen’s Gambit. Subtle enough that if one didn’t already know, one might miss it.
But I totally agree that it was entertainment, not a documentary!
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Wall Street Journal isn’t some rando blog on the internet. A major publication allowed this to be published with its name on it. Think about that for a few. Then imagine what these guys (and the folks who read them) feel safe saying off the official record.
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I wonder who that “wise man” was - because that means there’s a great many men and women who are not qualified for the honorific of Dr., then.
And she’s delivered children…as an actual mother, that is. Something NO man can do.
Sheezus Pleezus, when are we gonna be able, as a species, to get past all this bullshit?
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I had to look up the name to find out who that is. Apparently he’s a random know-it-all.
Should I send him this?
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On the subject of Dr. Jill Biden, otherwise known as “kiddo”:
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Northwestern University, where Epstein wrote that he had taught for 30 years, issued a statement saying it “strongly disagrees with Mr. Epstein’s misogynistic views” and noting he has not been a lecturer there since 2003. The university’s English department said in a separate statement that it rejects the opinion piece “as well as the diminishment of anyone’s duly-earned degrees in any field, from any university.”
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TLDR: Misogyny
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Do you think the fact that Ms. Ball was female had anything to do with such late recognition of her involvement with getting and keeping STTOS on the air?
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Fun retort:
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Although one might argue that Merriam-Webster, yet again, won the internet:
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