Jul 27, 2022·edited Jul 27, 2022Liked by Rudolph Rigger
Great essay. Sexually abusing children is one of the greatest evils in the world. Altered sexuality, destroyed trust, and a lifetime of debilitating paranoia are the fruits of this offense.
My older sister fondly recalls how our childhood neighbor would see her playing in the yard and invite her into his home to treat her with strawberry soda and a cookie. Absolutely nothing going on except an elderly man being kind to a child. That is gone forever now.
The head-scratching part of this all is that parents are extremely vigilant in guarding against actions like my former neighbor's, but they deliver their children to the (painted fingernail) clutches of bearded men squeezed into sequined gowns and sky-high stilettos. I've read stories that in some of these Drag Queen Story Hours, parents are ushered from the room so the children can have some "alone time" with the perverts...er, I mean, performers. In at least one case of this "alone time" that I've come across, the drag queen lied down on the floor and the children were instructed to get on top of him and wiggle their bodies against his.
Truly, Klaus' talk of a Great Reset has offered us an opportunity for one of our own to purge this perversion from our diseased societies.
For a time, I was close to a survivor of sustained emotional and physical (but not sexual) abuse as a child. I read up on things and there's only one word I can use to describe the effects it has.
Hellish.
The stories I read about their life-long struggles to escape from this nightmare were harrowing. It was like they had this massive hole in their hearts that they just couldn't fill and many resorted to extreme behaviours in an effort to dull their pain and stem the flow. Many did not have a stable sense of self-identity, were emotionally labile, and in constant fear and 'internal' loneliness.
I, frankly, could not be closer to a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her brother. While she never, to my knowledge, engaged in extreme behavior, she struggled mightily to form relationships with non-family members. Trust was destroyed. Paranoia ruled her life, as she was forever on guard for the tiniest sign that she could interpret as betrayal. Relationships were destroyed over innocent or inadvertently thoughtless comments made by others. Reading accounts of those molested by priests, this is very common among abuse victims.
It's interesting to note that Jesus reserved his harshest condemnation for those who harm children (Luke 17:2). A life is altered forever by this heinous act.
My brother and I often remark to the effect that we were the last generation to have been able to enjoy the "old man down the block with cookies and cool stories about another age," and are more appreciative and respectful of elders as a result.
Today, there's a good chance that guy would be lynched while a kindergarten teacher was "instructing in body-positive masturbation techniques" in the children's bathroom.
Right. At the very least, the neighborhood busybody would inform the police of such suspiciously bizarre behavior. I mean, why exactly would someone be kind to a child? Who does that???
We grew up in a saner America. It's up to us to start the MASA movement--Make America Sane Again. My initial blueprint calls for tens of millions of leftists to be deported. A Liberia, but for wokesters.
Liberia deeply admired the US for a long time following its formation and the brief period of relocation of freed slaves there, a fact still seen today in the names of its cities and counties.
The woke would not go willingly into exile. We all see ourselves as the rightful inheritors of this particular nation. This only ends one way.
The problem is, I'm increasingly unsure the polarization will leave me better off, assuming I'm on the side that's still standing.
Being a COVID rebel has created some heretofore-unseen coalitions, and I've been realizing in the past few months that I've perhaps rushed to embrace an identity simply because it was "not them" before realizing that we are not all, in fact, compatible bedfellows.
I see the division as authoritarians vs. lovers of freedom and founding principles. That's not why everyone is here, though.
We were poor when I was a child. Mr. Lucas lived a coulle houses down & owned a bakery in town. As we would walk by his house he would often call us over to chat and almost always would give us a box filed with broken cookies, smushed cake, or some other confection that had some defect. I'm fairly sure he defected them himself, so it would not seem like charity.
It's sad knowing that such a kind man would be rebuked in this warped society.
Jul 27, 2022·edited Jul 27, 2022Liked by Rudolph Rigger
"The dangerous thing here is that by normalizing the promotion of sexual matters to kids, we’re going to end up normalizing sexual activity in kids - and that’s a road we definitely shouldn’t be going down."
Too late. We've been doing that for *decades* already. But only the fundie Christians noticed because it was hetero activity being promoted. And because it was a fundie cause, everybody was allowed to make fun of and dismiss it. The fundies were right, though. Sexual activity was completely normalized down to age 13 no later than 2006. That was the last time I had any reason to know about what the teenagers were up to, but from what I've heard... "progress" continues apace.
Sorry, but if you're only seeing it *now* and didn't see it coming from fifty miles off when the nice teacher ladies were insisting on sex-positive sex-ed and contraceptive how-to from what? Fifth grade? Third? Well... what did you *think* would happen? I mean, really? We're talking about progressives here. There's no end goal, no backstops. Everything they work for sounds perfectly reasonable until you realize it never, ever STOPS there. You never reach a point where "OK, we're good now, this is enough"-- "progress" means always moving.... the goalposts. I know, nobody likes the fundies, they're frumpy and don't like fun (no I was never one, but I grew up around them, and actually most of them are nice people). But they always understood the true nature of that beast, and recognized it as a threat to them and their children.
I spent my thirteenth year babysitting, hanging out at the library, and riding my bike around the neighborhood. Every one of my nieces spent it stressing about condoms, the pill, and pregnancy scares, and developing emotional schisms with their dads, as they transferred their affections to a string of boyfriends, and dad tried to protect them. In my later teen years, I'd go veg out at my sister's house and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the evenings, while plotting how to finish high school in 3 years because high school sucks. My nieces? One of them managed to graduate high school and go to college, but still thinks she's gonna make a career out of posting sexy fashion photos on the internet. One flunked out and is back living with mom. The other is currently working on flunking out and has declared herself "pansexual" because that's how you fit in with the cool kids these days. But hey, at least they're sex-positive, right? I mean, clearly the worst possible outcome would be for kids to feel weird about their developing bodies and reticent about sex. God forbid anyone ever experience feelings of guilt about sexuality, or worse, *have hangups* about it. That'd be just awful. Better to have everyone from 13 up screwing like bunnies (safely, of course), and make the kids who abstain feel like freaks. What could possibly go wrong?
When I was 13, having sex was still edgy, and probably meant you'd been abused at home. Other girls considered that too young and reacted with revulsion and concern. That is definitely not the case now. 13 is normal, so where's the edge now? 11?
There's probably some biological reason why young teens develop an interest in sex that seems a bit out of control - can't imagine what that would be (/s)
In today's loopy world it would probably all be ascribed to social 'constructs'.
There's a big difference between developing an interest in sex, and deciding to act on it. That's why when I was thirteen it was normal for girls to share with each other racy book recommendations like... (gasp) Judy Blume. I guess the boy equivalent was sneaking dirty magazines. We were all curious. Hardly any of us were actually doing it.
The outcomes stats consistently show that becoming sexually active at a younger age = worse outcomes in adult life. But we continue to encourage it. Do we hate our kids that much?
Why not instead focus on long-term planning, thinking through consequences, useful life-skills education like personal finance, how to get your first job...?
Good comment. It was always headed to where we currently find ourselves. We were idiots to think otherwise. This perversion is OK but not that one...for now. Devout Christians warned where this was leading. How I laughed at them! But, at least, I distanced myself from their culturally unpopular beliefs. I was a coward.
Jul 27, 2022·edited Jul 27, 2022Liked by Rudolph Rigger
I am your token lesbian. Or perhaps it is toking lesbian. So. (Toke break) (3 am, jarred by the garbage trucks making the commercial rounds, heavy lids banging sounds like gunshots, for once it's not). The only relevant point I can add is that I am horrified at the thought of being read a story by a dragster in elementary, jr, or highschool, apart from perhaps a 'thesbian' (and i was) (a thesbian lesbian, because it rhymed and so I had to), a skit of some sort, it WOULD HAVE FUCKED ME UP IMO. I got to figure out I was a lesbian in the normal way by taking acid in college (a sheet of Escher, a confusing night and following few months, followed by a few decades), (and I also missed a Laurie Anderson concert quite regrettably) but only because someone else was having a bad trip and I didnt want them to be alone. But I've got it sorted out now. Or at least did. So, let folks figure THAT out on their own, if that is even a relevant comment anymore.
Added a Ps I didn't ever trip after that, because I figured I would find out I was really a nun the second trip. Lesbian was enough. Friends had the nerve to say, oh yeah, we knew...and I was like...oh, thanks....cool on you....which is true, you can't or at least should NOT tell someone they are gay EVEN IF THEY SEEM TO BE if THEY DONT KNOW IT YET....in many cultures, this is a robbery, to put info into someones head that will neg affect them before they are ready to understand it.
"I got to figure out I was a lesbian in the normal way by taking acid in college"
The mind boggles (I've never done drugs - except legal ones 😂).
What's your take on the push from some quarters for lesbians to be attracted to anyone who identifies as a "woman"? How has it affected the LGBT+ 'community'?
The typical media picture of the LGBT+ 'community' is of one wholly supportive of the current gender trends - and those who disagree are painted as some fringe TERFy bigots. I suspect this is not the case at all. Not that there ever was a uniform ideology, of course, because like with any 'identity' grouping it's made up of individuals - although these days it seems that to be a legitimate member of these various identity groups one has to have a uniformity of thought in lockstep with the assumed ideology.
Whilst I have seen some anger directed towards straight men who don't fancy women with, shall we say, astonishingly large clitorises, I've seen a lot more directed at lesbian women who don't. I'm very curious as to why so much of the gender woo woo push seems to negatively impact women. There's an impact on gay men too, of course, but straight men seem not to be so much of a target for the accusations of bigotry or the impact.
Thanks Rudolph...I am not even sure acid is or was illegal...but I certainly found it life changeing! And I am ok with that, I think it just was more eye opening than I expected. Ah, well. I think it is really quite funny, since, how folks will say something to the effect of 'oh, you might like my friend x or y, because they are gay or lesbian too'....which is about as much of a correlary as saying, you might like my friend x or y, they are heterosexual too. as if this is something that would be predictive of friendship or amicability, when I have found it to be no more predictive about making friends than eye color or left or right handedness...i have found that independent birds of a feather do not particularly flock together....in this respect. I am the introvert so lots has never added up for me. The last few years has increased this, as when your 'friends' try to kill you...it does make one think harder about who they hang with, if anyone...slowly finding a new tribe in this pre/post/erous apocolyptic moment....best!
I ran with a group of ladies in theatre college and we called ourselves The Lesbian Thesbians and then we stopped cause not all of us were gay and we rebranded as The Box Theatre Group. 😂
Missing out on Laurie Anderson to be with a friend is a big sacrifice and a solid move. 🤛
I appreciate your openness. This kind of honest, adult exchange is what makes substack (particularly the smaller substacks) so interesting. That said, at some point I will have to be careful to pay more attention to my actual community instead of such a network (I am using Vesper Stamper's terms here: https://vesperisms.substack.com/p/community-by-any-other-name).
“ Teaching kids that it’s not right to hate someone, or harass someone, or make fun of someone, or fear someone, purely because they’re different is a good, positive message”
I struggle with this. I have very young kids. I want them to be kind and considerate people but I also don’t want them to have a toxic peer group of fatherless miserable weirdos. I want to teach them it’s okay to not want to be around people if they feel uncomfortable. So I don’t know, it’s a fine line. They’re young now so I can cultivate their friends group but I know that won’t always be the case.
My preschooler loves rainbows but I refused to buy her the plastic made in China crap at the checkout counter.
I'd still maintain that it's right not to hate, or harass - but that's not the same as being all gushy and celebratory either. It's OK to choose ones friends - and probably the best thing we can do for our kids is to give them the foundation of love and security so that they have enough self-confidence to be able to choose their friends and to be able to reject ideas they don't like.
I greatly appreciate & personally enjoy mixing humor with very serious issues. It's a character trait within my family, as well as, in the Fire & EMS service. Your ability to mix information, comedy, and serious issues is one of the many reasons I follow you and others. Most of the content I read, watch, or listen to combine styles & genres.
This is the first column of yours that I'm aware of that was not humorous, nor needed to be.
Gad Saad refers to the woke culture as a "mind virus." Such a description seems/seemed to be appropriate, but missing something. I was listening to a Rogan podcast today with guests Francis Foster & Konstantin Kisin as I went about my chores (Countrymen of yours I believe). One of them refered to it as a cancer.
I think refering to woke culture as a societal cancer is most apt. A body can live for a long time with a cancer, but if the cancer is not excised, it will, eventually, metastasize to so many parts of the body that it will kill the body, or the society.
Thanks - it's hard to be flippant and humorous with some topics.
KK and FF are the hosts of Triggernometry which can be found on YouTube and they do some great interviews with a variety of people. They are consistently critical of a lot of 'modern' trends. KK's writing (he has published a fair bit and also has a substack) is also very good.
"...or a non binary pangendered queer asexual turnip or a swede)."
As a swede, I take offence at being lumped in togther with turnips. The turnip-ocracy's systemic oppression of our vegetative roots must be stopped!
Ahem.
You ask why. Does this make sense?
In a society some things are oppressed, banned and declared anathema, and some things are endorsed, exposed and declared sacrosanct. The first stage is to get rid of the ban. I'll use homosexuality (the act) as an example.
For a long time it was declared a sin worthy of death due to christianity basically being judaism 2.1. Due to the Enlightenment, the church and clergy lost secular and vulgar power, and with the onset of medicine and science homosexuality became not only an act but a concept - something to be researched and understood. With this development the stigma of sin was gradually exorcised, but the pathologisation took its place.
The development of psychology and the lack of natural science-based reasons for homosexuality meant it as a concept again transitioned: to a lifestyle. Before the 19th century such a thing was impossible outside maybe 0.1% of society. With the ebullient wealth and rising standards of living as well as the class system affecting the function of courts more than ever since the heyday of Rome, homosexuality started becoming a lifestyle and an identity.
So, we're at 1900 and it is seen as a moral lapse and pathological behaviour to be cured by Science - the homosexual is to be pitied, not scorned and ostracised. As the civil rights movements of the 20th century rolls on (despite the world wars), the process starts to coalesce into a fixed identity - a given set of archetypes and stereotypes both benign and not. Finally, the label of it being a psychological disorder is also removed.
So, we have gone from total ban to it being legal. However, homosexuals can't produce offspring without either technology or normal relations (no, homosexuality is not normal - I am not using normal in the normative sense, and as fewer than 1% is homosexual it is far from normal*) this creates conflicts with civil law, as does the fact that homosexuals can't marry as marriage is explicitly between one man and one woman. (Yes, hypothetical straw postmodernist, I'm fully aware that other races and cultures do it differently - that is completely beside the point, unless you agree to also allow for their views on homosexuality. You don't? How'd I know you wouldn't like "Islam for gays"...)
However, any movement or group striving for an ideal (in the Platonic sense of ideal) has a hierarchy (without it you aren't a group at all), and as the group has a set of beliefs they hold to be self-evident and capital-T True, advancement within the group is to a large part based in signalling adherence to the ideal. Hence, making homosexuality the act legal is not enough. The envelope must be pushed ad infinitum because that is how such a struggle functions no matter what it achives on the way: compare to feminism. Equal before the law wasn't enough - reality must be undefined to prevent women having to own up to being different from men (that the logical end for feminism is either women becoming men or men ceasing to exist, well that's a different screed). Or compare to nazism or islam for that matter: same thing in effect. An idealistic utopian movement without any checks and balances or external authority.
That is why these groups push for ever more extreme things year after year. That is why they must be fought against, even if your neighbour James Ali Hussein-Smith, from Stoke-on-Trent, retired plumber living with Proinsias M'Bele-Ulundu from Shankill Road in Belfast, oh they're such a nice secular pair of moslem fellows, what does their daily prayers on rainbow-coloured prayer mats: they are not representative of the groups implied, they are not in power over them and they are not an authority to them.
What is pushed and rejected as too beyond the pale by the leaders of today may well be seen as nacessary mandate by the leaders of tomorrow.
I don't feel me adding another Stack would increase the total readership - we only have so much time per day to allot to reading and commenting after all. It may sound a bit callous but that's not the intent, but I beleive most people reading Substacks read them half for the articles and half for the comment/debate, thus I reach more people than if I had my own Stack.
I will cut the length of my comments though, it's borderline Stack-squatting as it is. Call it a work-related bad habit. You know, a proper essay or report is rarely under a hundred pages and articles in magazines for the closest concerned are also rather hefty - I'm a bit stuck in that habit, not really thinking a couple of thousand words being anything but a short brief.
And I'll say this: the quality of the comments can only ever mimic the quality of the posts. Great posts and a great host inviting open debate, warts and all, means a great debate.
Great essay. Sexually abusing children is one of the greatest evils in the world. Altered sexuality, destroyed trust, and a lifetime of debilitating paranoia are the fruits of this offense.
My older sister fondly recalls how our childhood neighbor would see her playing in the yard and invite her into his home to treat her with strawberry soda and a cookie. Absolutely nothing going on except an elderly man being kind to a child. That is gone forever now.
The head-scratching part of this all is that parents are extremely vigilant in guarding against actions like my former neighbor's, but they deliver their children to the (painted fingernail) clutches of bearded men squeezed into sequined gowns and sky-high stilettos. I've read stories that in some of these Drag Queen Story Hours, parents are ushered from the room so the children can have some "alone time" with the perverts...er, I mean, performers. In at least one case of this "alone time" that I've come across, the drag queen lied down on the floor and the children were instructed to get on top of him and wiggle their bodies against his.
Truly, Klaus' talk of a Great Reset has offered us an opportunity for one of our own to purge this perversion from our diseased societies.
For a time, I was close to a survivor of sustained emotional and physical (but not sexual) abuse as a child. I read up on things and there's only one word I can use to describe the effects it has.
Hellish.
The stories I read about their life-long struggles to escape from this nightmare were harrowing. It was like they had this massive hole in their hearts that they just couldn't fill and many resorted to extreme behaviours in an effort to dull their pain and stem the flow. Many did not have a stable sense of self-identity, were emotionally labile, and in constant fear and 'internal' loneliness.
The abuse of kids is a horrific wickedness.
I, frankly, could not be closer to a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her brother. While she never, to my knowledge, engaged in extreme behavior, she struggled mightily to form relationships with non-family members. Trust was destroyed. Paranoia ruled her life, as she was forever on guard for the tiniest sign that she could interpret as betrayal. Relationships were destroyed over innocent or inadvertently thoughtless comments made by others. Reading accounts of those molested by priests, this is very common among abuse victims.
It's interesting to note that Jesus reserved his harshest condemnation for those who harm children (Luke 17:2). A life is altered forever by this heinous act.
My brother and I often remark to the effect that we were the last generation to have been able to enjoy the "old man down the block with cookies and cool stories about another age," and are more appreciative and respectful of elders as a result.
Today, there's a good chance that guy would be lynched while a kindergarten teacher was "instructing in body-positive masturbation techniques" in the children's bathroom.
Right. At the very least, the neighborhood busybody would inform the police of such suspiciously bizarre behavior. I mean, why exactly would someone be kind to a child? Who does that???
We grew up in a saner America. It's up to us to start the MASA movement--Make America Sane Again. My initial blueprint calls for tens of millions of leftists to be deported. A Liberia, but for wokesters.
Liberia deeply admired the US for a long time following its formation and the brief period of relocation of freed slaves there, a fact still seen today in the names of its cities and counties.
The woke would not go willingly into exile. We all see ourselves as the rightful inheritors of this particular nation. This only ends one way.
I truly believe you're right about this, Guttermouth.
The problem is, I'm increasingly unsure the polarization will leave me better off, assuming I'm on the side that's still standing.
Being a COVID rebel has created some heretofore-unseen coalitions, and I've been realizing in the past few months that I've perhaps rushed to embrace an identity simply because it was "not them" before realizing that we are not all, in fact, compatible bedfellows.
I see the division as authoritarians vs. lovers of freedom and founding principles. That's not why everyone is here, though.
I never thought I might find myself in the same foxhole with Naomi Wolf, but here we are...
First things first, they say. And everything collapses when freedom is lost.
We were poor when I was a child. Mr. Lucas lived a coulle houses down & owned a bakery in town. As we would walk by his house he would often call us over to chat and almost always would give us a box filed with broken cookies, smushed cake, or some other confection that had some defect. I'm fairly sure he defected them himself, so it would not seem like charity.
It's sad knowing that such a kind man would be rebuked in this warped society.
What a great story. What a great guy.
"The dangerous thing here is that by normalizing the promotion of sexual matters to kids, we’re going to end up normalizing sexual activity in kids - and that’s a road we definitely shouldn’t be going down."
Too late. We've been doing that for *decades* already. But only the fundie Christians noticed because it was hetero activity being promoted. And because it was a fundie cause, everybody was allowed to make fun of and dismiss it. The fundies were right, though. Sexual activity was completely normalized down to age 13 no later than 2006. That was the last time I had any reason to know about what the teenagers were up to, but from what I've heard... "progress" continues apace.
Sorry, but if you're only seeing it *now* and didn't see it coming from fifty miles off when the nice teacher ladies were insisting on sex-positive sex-ed and contraceptive how-to from what? Fifth grade? Third? Well... what did you *think* would happen? I mean, really? We're talking about progressives here. There's no end goal, no backstops. Everything they work for sounds perfectly reasonable until you realize it never, ever STOPS there. You never reach a point where "OK, we're good now, this is enough"-- "progress" means always moving.... the goalposts. I know, nobody likes the fundies, they're frumpy and don't like fun (no I was never one, but I grew up around them, and actually most of them are nice people). But they always understood the true nature of that beast, and recognized it as a threat to them and their children.
I spent my thirteenth year babysitting, hanging out at the library, and riding my bike around the neighborhood. Every one of my nieces spent it stressing about condoms, the pill, and pregnancy scares, and developing emotional schisms with their dads, as they transferred their affections to a string of boyfriends, and dad tried to protect them. In my later teen years, I'd go veg out at my sister's house and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the evenings, while plotting how to finish high school in 3 years because high school sucks. My nieces? One of them managed to graduate high school and go to college, but still thinks she's gonna make a career out of posting sexy fashion photos on the internet. One flunked out and is back living with mom. The other is currently working on flunking out and has declared herself "pansexual" because that's how you fit in with the cool kids these days. But hey, at least they're sex-positive, right? I mean, clearly the worst possible outcome would be for kids to feel weird about their developing bodies and reticent about sex. God forbid anyone ever experience feelings of guilt about sexuality, or worse, *have hangups* about it. That'd be just awful. Better to have everyone from 13 up screwing like bunnies (safely, of course), and make the kids who abstain feel like freaks. What could possibly go wrong?
When I was 13, having sex was still edgy, and probably meant you'd been abused at home. Other girls considered that too young and reacted with revulsion and concern. That is definitely not the case now. 13 is normal, so where's the edge now? 11?
Some good points there Yarrow.
There's probably some biological reason why young teens develop an interest in sex that seems a bit out of control - can't imagine what that would be (/s)
In today's loopy world it would probably all be ascribed to social 'constructs'.
There's a big difference between developing an interest in sex, and deciding to act on it. That's why when I was thirteen it was normal for girls to share with each other racy book recommendations like... (gasp) Judy Blume. I guess the boy equivalent was sneaking dirty magazines. We were all curious. Hardly any of us were actually doing it.
The outcomes stats consistently show that becoming sexually active at a younger age = worse outcomes in adult life. But we continue to encourage it. Do we hate our kids that much?
Why not instead focus on long-term planning, thinking through consequences, useful life-skills education like personal finance, how to get your first job...?
Good comment. It was always headed to where we currently find ourselves. We were idiots to think otherwise. This perversion is OK but not that one...for now. Devout Christians warned where this was leading. How I laughed at them! But, at least, I distanced myself from their culturally unpopular beliefs. I was a coward.
I am your token lesbian. Or perhaps it is toking lesbian. So. (Toke break) (3 am, jarred by the garbage trucks making the commercial rounds, heavy lids banging sounds like gunshots, for once it's not). The only relevant point I can add is that I am horrified at the thought of being read a story by a dragster in elementary, jr, or highschool, apart from perhaps a 'thesbian' (and i was) (a thesbian lesbian, because it rhymed and so I had to), a skit of some sort, it WOULD HAVE FUCKED ME UP IMO. I got to figure out I was a lesbian in the normal way by taking acid in college (a sheet of Escher, a confusing night and following few months, followed by a few decades), (and I also missed a Laurie Anderson concert quite regrettably) but only because someone else was having a bad trip and I didnt want them to be alone. But I've got it sorted out now. Or at least did. So, let folks figure THAT out on their own, if that is even a relevant comment anymore.
Added a Ps I didn't ever trip after that, because I figured I would find out I was really a nun the second trip. Lesbian was enough. Friends had the nerve to say, oh yeah, we knew...and I was like...oh, thanks....cool on you....which is true, you can't or at least should NOT tell someone they are gay EVEN IF THEY SEEM TO BE if THEY DONT KNOW IT YET....in many cultures, this is a robbery, to put info into someones head that will neg affect them before they are ready to understand it.
"I got to figure out I was a lesbian in the normal way by taking acid in college"
The mind boggles (I've never done drugs - except legal ones 😂).
What's your take on the push from some quarters for lesbians to be attracted to anyone who identifies as a "woman"? How has it affected the LGBT+ 'community'?
The typical media picture of the LGBT+ 'community' is of one wholly supportive of the current gender trends - and those who disagree are painted as some fringe TERFy bigots. I suspect this is not the case at all. Not that there ever was a uniform ideology, of course, because like with any 'identity' grouping it's made up of individuals - although these days it seems that to be a legitimate member of these various identity groups one has to have a uniformity of thought in lockstep with the assumed ideology.
Whilst I have seen some anger directed towards straight men who don't fancy women with, shall we say, astonishingly large clitorises, I've seen a lot more directed at lesbian women who don't. I'm very curious as to why so much of the gender woo woo push seems to negatively impact women. There's an impact on gay men too, of course, but straight men seem not to be so much of a target for the accusations of bigotry or the impact.
Thanks Rudolph...I am not even sure acid is or was illegal...but I certainly found it life changeing! And I am ok with that, I think it just was more eye opening than I expected. Ah, well. I think it is really quite funny, since, how folks will say something to the effect of 'oh, you might like my friend x or y, because they are gay or lesbian too'....which is about as much of a correlary as saying, you might like my friend x or y, they are heterosexual too. as if this is something that would be predictive of friendship or amicability, when I have found it to be no more predictive about making friends than eye color or left or right handedness...i have found that independent birds of a feather do not particularly flock together....in this respect. I am the introvert so lots has never added up for me. The last few years has increased this, as when your 'friends' try to kill you...it does make one think harder about who they hang with, if anyone...slowly finding a new tribe in this pre/post/erous apocolyptic moment....best!
I ran with a group of ladies in theatre college and we called ourselves The Lesbian Thesbians and then we stopped cause not all of us were gay and we rebranded as The Box Theatre Group. 😂
Missing out on Laurie Anderson to be with a friend is a big sacrifice and a solid move. 🤛
Now I had to google Laurie Anderson...
Not everybody’s cup of tea... people preferred her late husband, Lou Reed. But she was a power all her own.
She is quite alive last I checked....but yes Lou is gone, man, gone....
Yeah, she’s alive, but in her prime, she was 🔥. I suppose her greatness hasn’t gone away so “she IS a power all her own”.
I appreciate your openness. This kind of honest, adult exchange is what makes substack (particularly the smaller substacks) so interesting. That said, at some point I will have to be careful to pay more attention to my actual community instead of such a network (I am using Vesper Stamper's terms here: https://vesperisms.substack.com/p/community-by-any-other-name).
“ Teaching kids that it’s not right to hate someone, or harass someone, or make fun of someone, or fear someone, purely because they’re different is a good, positive message”
I struggle with this. I have very young kids. I want them to be kind and considerate people but I also don’t want them to have a toxic peer group of fatherless miserable weirdos. I want to teach them it’s okay to not want to be around people if they feel uncomfortable. So I don’t know, it’s a fine line. They’re young now so I can cultivate their friends group but I know that won’t always be the case.
My preschooler loves rainbows but I refused to buy her the plastic made in China crap at the checkout counter.
That's a tricky one.
I'd still maintain that it's right not to hate, or harass - but that's not the same as being all gushy and celebratory either. It's OK to choose ones friends - and probably the best thing we can do for our kids is to give them the foundation of love and security so that they have enough self-confidence to be able to choose their friends and to be able to reject ideas they don't like.
Once again....BRAVO!
Thanks Mark - appreciated
I greatly appreciate & personally enjoy mixing humor with very serious issues. It's a character trait within my family, as well as, in the Fire & EMS service. Your ability to mix information, comedy, and serious issues is one of the many reasons I follow you and others. Most of the content I read, watch, or listen to combine styles & genres.
This is the first column of yours that I'm aware of that was not humorous, nor needed to be.
Gad Saad refers to the woke culture as a "mind virus." Such a description seems/seemed to be appropriate, but missing something. I was listening to a Rogan podcast today with guests Francis Foster & Konstantin Kisin as I went about my chores (Countrymen of yours I believe). One of them refered to it as a cancer.
I think refering to woke culture as a societal cancer is most apt. A body can live for a long time with a cancer, but if the cancer is not excised, it will, eventually, metastasize to so many parts of the body that it will kill the body, or the society.
Thanks - it's hard to be flippant and humorous with some topics.
KK and FF are the hosts of Triggernometry which can be found on YouTube and they do some great interviews with a variety of people. They are consistently critical of a lot of 'modern' trends. KK's writing (he has published a fair bit and also has a substack) is also very good.
"turnip or a swede"
i get the distinct impression that you have been reading comments lately....
I recently reread Tess of the d’urbervilles and it took me a while to figure out wtf a Swede was and why it requireD so much toiling in the fields
"...or a non binary pangendered queer asexual turnip or a swede)."
As a swede, I take offence at being lumped in togther with turnips. The turnip-ocracy's systemic oppression of our vegetative roots must be stopped!
Ahem.
You ask why. Does this make sense?
In a society some things are oppressed, banned and declared anathema, and some things are endorsed, exposed and declared sacrosanct. The first stage is to get rid of the ban. I'll use homosexuality (the act) as an example.
For a long time it was declared a sin worthy of death due to christianity basically being judaism 2.1. Due to the Enlightenment, the church and clergy lost secular and vulgar power, and with the onset of medicine and science homosexuality became not only an act but a concept - something to be researched and understood. With this development the stigma of sin was gradually exorcised, but the pathologisation took its place.
The development of psychology and the lack of natural science-based reasons for homosexuality meant it as a concept again transitioned: to a lifestyle. Before the 19th century such a thing was impossible outside maybe 0.1% of society. With the ebullient wealth and rising standards of living as well as the class system affecting the function of courts more than ever since the heyday of Rome, homosexuality started becoming a lifestyle and an identity.
So, we're at 1900 and it is seen as a moral lapse and pathological behaviour to be cured by Science - the homosexual is to be pitied, not scorned and ostracised. As the civil rights movements of the 20th century rolls on (despite the world wars), the process starts to coalesce into a fixed identity - a given set of archetypes and stereotypes both benign and not. Finally, the label of it being a psychological disorder is also removed.
So, we have gone from total ban to it being legal. However, homosexuals can't produce offspring without either technology or normal relations (no, homosexuality is not normal - I am not using normal in the normative sense, and as fewer than 1% is homosexual it is far from normal*) this creates conflicts with civil law, as does the fact that homosexuals can't marry as marriage is explicitly between one man and one woman. (Yes, hypothetical straw postmodernist, I'm fully aware that other races and cultures do it differently - that is completely beside the point, unless you agree to also allow for their views on homosexuality. You don't? How'd I know you wouldn't like "Islam for gays"...)
However, any movement or group striving for an ideal (in the Platonic sense of ideal) has a hierarchy (without it you aren't a group at all), and as the group has a set of beliefs they hold to be self-evident and capital-T True, advancement within the group is to a large part based in signalling adherence to the ideal. Hence, making homosexuality the act legal is not enough. The envelope must be pushed ad infinitum because that is how such a struggle functions no matter what it achives on the way: compare to feminism. Equal before the law wasn't enough - reality must be undefined to prevent women having to own up to being different from men (that the logical end for feminism is either women becoming men or men ceasing to exist, well that's a different screed). Or compare to nazism or islam for that matter: same thing in effect. An idealistic utopian movement without any checks and balances or external authority.
That is why these groups push for ever more extreme things year after year. That is why they must be fought against, even if your neighbour James Ali Hussein-Smith, from Stoke-on-Trent, retired plumber living with Proinsias M'Bele-Ulundu from Shankill Road in Belfast, oh they're such a nice secular pair of moslem fellows, what does their daily prayers on rainbow-coloured prayer mats: they are not representative of the groups implied, they are not in power over them and they are not an authority to them.
What is pushed and rejected as too beyond the pale by the leaders of today may well be seen as nacessary mandate by the leaders of tomorrow.
Another great comment Rikard
Have you ever considered writing your own substack or blog?
I don't feel me adding another Stack would increase the total readership - we only have so much time per day to allot to reading and commenting after all. It may sound a bit callous but that's not the intent, but I beleive most people reading Substacks read them half for the articles and half for the comment/debate, thus I reach more people than if I had my own Stack.
I will cut the length of my comments though, it's borderline Stack-squatting as it is. Call it a work-related bad habit. You know, a proper essay or report is rarely under a hundred pages and articles in magazines for the closest concerned are also rather hefty - I'm a bit stuck in that habit, not really thinking a couple of thousand words being anything but a short brief.
And I'll say this: the quality of the comments can only ever mimic the quality of the posts. Great posts and a great host inviting open debate, warts and all, means a great debate.
Surely one parent must legally challenge and demand damages.
And if not today in a few years.