Jordan Peterson and friends

Oh, shut up, Jordan Peterson. He was at this ghastly Turning Point USA conference last week, and he gets to meet Charlie Kirk, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Donald Trump Jr, so he takes the opportunity to lecture them about the wicked left. It’s a bizarre one-sided conversation in which he Petersonsplains to them about the nature of the Left, the Left, the Left, laying all blame on them, and never bothers to consider the oppressive nature of the Right. Bonus: continuous weird hand gestures throughout. Double bonus: Charlie, Kimberly, and Junior look excruciatingly bored throughout. What? You want us to have a serious discussion?

His basic point is that the Left is just as uptight about sex as the Right, so maybe that is a productive avenue for a meeting of the minds. But he doesn’t seem to recognize the differences, that the Right wants to control who you have sex with, and how you do it, while the Left doesn’t care about what individuals do in the privacy of their own home, but are very concerned about individual freedom and autonomy, and that consent is paramount.

The radical leftist types, their basic claim is that anything goes. But at the same time they’re putting forward these affirmative consent regulations and laws in many states, and they’re insisting that we live in the middle of a rape culture and they’re acting as if sex is a very volatile and dangerous enterprise, which actually happens to be the case. And so there’s…even though this issue is extraordinarily tense, partly because people on the left, I would say, would like to let a thousand flowers bloom, let’s say, there is an accruing agreement that there is some deep discussion that has to be had about sexual morality.

There isn’t a middle ground there. What is the compromise? Peterson doesn’t have a clue. He just says They’re upset on the left, they’re upset on the right, therefore they’re comparable, without noticing that they’re upset about radically different things: the Right is upset that they can’t control sexual behaviors, and the Left is upset that some people (including some on the left) still want to control sexual behaviors, and especially control women. That’s the key difference. There is no compromise to be made, no discussion to be had.

His explanation is that it’s all about birth control.

We haven’t adapted to the birth control pill yet. You know it was a major technological revolution, the birth control pill. It’s only been fifty years, and we haven’t figured out what it means for women to have control over the reproductive function and what the consequences of that should be socially. The leftist types, especially in the Sixties, thought you could just blow sexual morality up completely, because now people were free to do what they want but that isn’t working. There’s a backlash against that, on the left, as well, so it would be fun and necessary to think…fun, it would be engaging and necessary to think that through, ’cause maybe there’s room for some real discussion about that.

First, about the Sixties — there was a lot of exploitive crap going on, and there still is. There are always people who think freedom from consequences means freedom for them, but not for you, and that blowing up sexual morality was an opportunity to get more sex, rather than an opportunity for their partners to be liberated. I also don’t think there’s much to figure out about the consequences of ‘allowing’ women to control their own bodies — did we ever have that conversation about allowing men to have the freedom to control their own lives?

But again, he only rails against the sinister Left. I think for the most part the Left is on the same wavelength here: consent is essential, both women and men get to decide what sexual behaviors are rewarding, and that Charlie Kirk isn’t the reasonable, tolerant guy we should have a conversation with.

And Jesus, is Peterson so oblivious he doesn’t realize who he’s openly aligning with here?

Shocking revelation about my core discipline

My whole worldview is in upheaval. I thought I had a Ph.D. in biology, and broadly understood what that entailed, but now I learn that the proper way to parse the name of the discipline is not to read “bio” as “life”, but “bi” as in “two”. I’m a two-ologist!

Isn’t folk etymology fun? Especially when wielded by a conspiracy-theorist, racist, sexist, climate-change-denying, pro-war MAGAt to get the rationalization he wants.

Wow. That boy is stupid.

So I, too, could menstruate if I eat enough donuts?

Every once in a while, kind of like a cycle, some men on the internet get really mad about menstruation, and they start explaining how it’s filthy, unnatural, and disgusting for women to bleed from their vagina. “Why?” they wonder, and the obvious answer is that woman are unclean, they’re eating too much junk food, so menstruation must be their repulsive horrible body’s way of cleansing itself of toxins.

Obvs. I’m kind of curious about this “academia and the arts” cure, though, but not curious enough to wander over to the Art building on campus and ask the women faculty and students about their periods. I suspect they would, if they didn’t call the police, tell me that they’re perfectly normal and didn’t notice any decline in frequency when they entered college.

I’m also interested in this claim that “Men are the superior sex and they don’t have periods because we know how to look after their bodies.” So I could look for some fat lazy slob (why are you looking at me that way) watching trash TV (I didn’t!) and gossiping (I never!) and ask them if they’ve been menstruating lately (no, I’m not going to ask myself) (and no, I’ve never menstruated). I’m wondering if I could take up a diet of Twinkies and cheeseburgers now, and look as svelte as those ladies in the tampon commercials, if only I could start bleeding out of my bottom every month. It might be a fair trade.

It’s not just men who make these claims! Freelee the Banana Girl made similar arguments a while back. If you menstruate, you must have been wicked and accumulating toxins that your body needs to purge.

And don’t forget Yada the Hotep wackaloon. He got really angry when his daughter started menstruating, and went on a quest to find a magic bark and a magic diet that would make her stop. He also claims that animals don’t menstruate…except they sort of do. One way to stop menstruation is to get pregnant, and most mammals only thicken their endometrium seasonally, and typically don’t shed that tissue until they go into labor. Humans have the curse of year-round fertility, so that’s the problem, not that they menstruate, but that they are constantly preparing for a potential pregnancy.

I wrote about this before. It’s not about toxins or cleanses — it’s about maintaining a defensive boundary against those highly invasive mammalian embryos — put up a wall of soft vascularized tissue against the chance that you might get pregnant some month, and then discard it when fertilization fails to occur.

And the prize for worst not-pology goes to…

…Geoffrey Rush! It’s a tough field of contenders with a lot of really weasely apologies out there, but Rush went all out for the win. Rush treated his co-star in a play, Yael Stone, to the spectacle of taking off his clothes and dancing naked in front of her, spying on her in the shower with a mirror, and sending sexualized text messages to her, and has now offered up this stunning “apology” for his actions:

Clearly Yael has been upset on occasion by the spirited enthusiasm I generally bring to my work. I sincerely and deeply regret if I have caused her any distress. This, most certainly, has never been my intention.

I’m sort of impressed. That’s a degree of obliviousness that even I, in my cosseted male whiteness, couldn’t even aspire to. I’ll have to remember that “spirited enthusiasm” is a perfectly acceptable synonym for “sexual harassment”.

#4

Now there’s another one.

Now a fourth woman has told BuzzFeed News her experience of sexual harassment from Tyson. In January 2010, she recalled, she joined her then-boyfriend at a holiday party for employees of the American Museum of Natural History. Tyson, its most famous employee, drunkenly approached her, she said, making sexual jokes and propositioning her to join him alone in his office. In a 2014 email shared with BuzzFeed News, she described the incident to her own employer in order to shoot down a proposed collaboration with Tyson.

Uh-oh. And in summary:

All three of these women say that Tyson’s behavior toward them was not simply inappropriate or clumsy; it was harassment. Their stories, they said, which all took place in professional settings, show a clear abuse of power. And his response, they said, ignored the real pain and discomfort that he caused under the guise of playfulness and goodwill.

How will I satisfy my fetish for “female-presenting nipples” now?

As you may have heard by now, Tumblr has announced new community guidelines that prohibit nudity, sex acts, and of all things “female-presenting nipples”. You might be wondering why. That’s easy. I pulled out the relevant lines from this long article about the decision.

in June 2017, Yahoo was acquired by Verizon for its ad business
…
Simon explicitly said that Black Lives Matter was an opportunity to [make] a ton of money.
…
the real problem was always that Verizon couldn’t sell ads next to porn.
…
Porn on Tumblr is something Verizon needs to wipe out if it’s going to make any money off what it thinks is actually valuable about the platform

I think the most important point is that they can’t sell ads next to porn, which is any public portrayal of or discussion about sexual activity (and given how random the algorithms they’ve devised to detect “porn” are, it seems to be anything vaguely like people doing anything), or anything Verizon can’t figure out how to monetize. They seem to be pouring more money into sanitizing Tumblr than they ever did on just maintaining the site, and right now there are all kinds of people sadly announcing that their blogs were shut down or photos were flagged or that they’re suddenly finding themselves censured for building fandoms of consenting adults because insurance companies and auto dealers don’t want to advertise on their sites.

Their unique brand was that they allowed sex workers, women, LGBTQ folk, and random niche fandoms to thrive, and yet recently people were getting concerned about “what they were going to do about the influx of alt right users, pedophilic users, and inappropriate bots that would appear in tags that were meant to cater to underage users,” so what did the staff do? They lashed out at the sex workers, women, LGBTQ folk, and random niche fandoms, rather than the alt right users. Curious. They’re willing to take draconian actions that alienate the people who’ve been using their medium for years, and have been investing resources in scrubbing out “female-presenting nipples”. Which raises a significant question.

Why aren’t any of the major social media sites taking similarly severe action to purge their sites of Nazis?

I mean, they always make excuses about free speech and not wishing to antagonize their dedicated user base. But porn is also free speech, and Tumblr is certainly turning away a significant number of contributors (to the point they’re going to destroy their own niche), so none of those excuses is operative. If the choice is to keep nipples or Nazis, wouldn’t most people choose nipples?

I guess Nazis are easier to monetize.

I changed my mind. No longer satisfactory.

Yesterday I said I was satisfied by Neil deGrasse Tyson’s response. Today, after reading a flood of comments and counter-arguments, I am convinced that there are many things wrong with it, from thinking that well-meaning explanations of intent after the fact are sufficient amends, to the weird handshake learned from a mysterious Native elder. All I can say is that when someone I have prior sympathy for says “Here’s why I didn’t mean to harm that person”, I should learn to cut through the excuses straight to the operative phrase, “I harmed that person“. OK, now what, Dr Tyson?

Also, an affirmation from someone with prior leanings in your favor is pretty much meaningless. He needs to listen far more to his critics, as do we all, and address their concerns. Most of all, he needs to respect the people he’s harmed, or their numbers will grow.

One last thing: I also looked at the comments of his other defenders. I was horrified to see how many of them are comparing Neil deGrasse Tyson to Brett Kavanaugh — I am not going to be one of them. I hope Dr Tyson is also appalled, and recognizes that this is a sign he’s going in the wrong direction.