There’s introspection, and then there’s donning a cilice made of tweets to affect the appearance of introspection. These poor progressives. They’re so desperately insecure, so afraid that they might be unwittingly oppressing someone, so unable to trust their own motivations. If only someone could come up with a metric to give them an objective way to measure their biases. Then someone could point out that obsessing over metrics is such a typical white male thing to do, and the fun could start all over again.
April 10, 2014 @ 6:05 am
That's pretty hilarious. Years ago, on my first day at a (short-lived, for other reasons) corporate job, a colleague in another department whom I had just met made a positive (but not lascivious or inappropriate) comment regarding the pulchritude of one of the females in my area. Not knowing exactly how I should respond, I just nodded and murmured my assent.
He then shrugged and said, "I like cute chicks with big tits, sue me!" The would-be Alan Aldas and Phil Donahues seem not to realize that women check out men and talk amongst themselves as well, that a healthy (and respectful) sexuality is not the same thing as crude sexism.
April 10, 2014 @ 10:01 pm
One of my jobs is in a more working class (for lack of a better term) environment. Among other colorful characters, there's a flaming gay guy and a woman who, if she's not actually trans, has to be a very butch lesbian. Not to romanticize the salt-of-the-earth types, but you can't help but notice that everybody gets along with no drama, even when they're talking about issues of sex, race or politics. The humor and language might make a college feminist faint, but the interactions are just so much…healthier.
Then you get online and read all these well-off, over-educated people who make an absolute neurotic mess out of everything. Reading Scalzi's little performance, you just want to say, "Dude, you're never going to attain Spock-like levels of rationality or fairness, and that's okay."