“Politics” is just Gossip

(Except when it’s just social status whoring. Then it’s even worse than gossip. But I’ll talk about that later.)

When Sweden is having the same issues with immigration as France and the US, I find it hard to believe the problem is Obama.

It’s probably the Hajnal Line.

All my life (or at least since I was 12,) I have been surrounded by people claiming that it is immoral not to closely follow politics. So as a middle schooler I dutifully memorized the Supreme Court Justices, my Congressmen and Senators, all of the candidates for President and Vice President, members of the state government, even our ambassador to the UN (even though that guy probably has zero independent decision-making authority.)

I went on to major in political science, which has to be one of the most trying to prove you follow politics majors out there. But I realized rather quickly that I was more interested in what makes countries (and people) tick than in the exact names of the guys in charge. I would rather read about hunter gatherers, neurology, or genetics than about what Congress did yesterday. The Supreme Court changed and I forgot the names. I moved, Bakunin in hand, and failed to learn my new Senators. Political economy and philosophy were my constant companions, not the news.

Throughout, I felt guilty. Yes, I followed all of the latest online trends, yes, I participated in daily, often quite vociferous political discussion with literally almost everyone I knew, but I couldn’t be bothered to learn my Senator’s name and so I must be failing my duty to be an informed citizen. Sooner or later, I was bound to be uncovered for the politically ignorant immoral bum I am.

And yet, somehow, so much seemed not to really matter. Primaries came and went, and what was the point of learning all of the names when I was just going to vote for one of the two guys at the end? I remember my friends who loved Dean, only to have their hopes crushed when he didn’t get the Democratic nomination. So why bother?

So the other day, an older conservative relative sent me Ben Carson’s book, “One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America’s Future,” which I began reading out of politeness. I find Dr. Carson an affable writer–he seems like a well-intentioned guy.

The book calls (among many things) for people to pay more attention to politics.

Since almost 100% of people I know are already quite vociferously following politics, to the point where “outrage fatigue” is a real thing, what is the bloody point of asking us to follow it more?

Of course, the exhortation isn’t meant for people like me; it’s meant for people who don’t follow politics. Saying you should know the names of the people in charge is trying to translate politics into a form that will be recognizable to people who watch TV or read magazines in order to learn more about Kim Kardashian’s ass. It’s politics as gossip: OMG did you hear what Senator so-and-so wore to the Senator’s event? OMG  did you know that the President had sex with someone? Hey did you hear what Congressman so-and-so said about stuff?

Unfortunately, this is a terrible model for understanding politics. Politics is not socialite gossip. It’s fine if you want to memorize all of the names and personalities–whatever floats your boat–but this is not the same as understanding the political system. Why do the US and Sweden have very similar political movements, with very similar effects? Do we have the same president? The same Supreme Court? No. And people who try to understand politics as gossip aren’t going to figure this out.

And since all of the smart people are already following politics so much that you can’t goddamn escape it, we’re talking about trying to get a bunch of dumb people to vote more based on the assumption that somehow thinking about interest rates in the same way they think about celebrity butts will lead to good public policy.

Jesus effin’ Christ, no it won’t.

I am through with feeling guilty.

Of Course your Enemies are Organized

Organization is a spontaneous feature of all human societies. Heck, bees are organized.

There is a myth, routinely proposed by those who know no better, that other people are acting completely independently. Independent action, flowing spontaneously from one’s sense of morality or injustice, prompting sudden, wide-spread social change.

Then people discover that, contrary to this ignorant assumption, other humans actually put in a bunch of effort to organize, choosing carefully when and where they should act or at least helping each other out, and they are shocked, just shocked.

Somehow, spontaneous action is regarded as purely motivated, whereas organized action–the natural result of all human socializing–is impure, some kind of dastardly conspiracy.

Don’t be dumb. Of course your enemies are organized–whoever your enemies happen to be.

The Rosa Parks story comes immediately to mind, as analyzed by Herbert Kohl in Should we Burn Babar? Kohl, I should be clear, does not regard Mrs. Parks as an enemy–he wants her story to be told accurately. Kohl examines school textbook accounts of Mrs. Parks’s story, finding, IIRC, that most were inaccurate.

One of the most common inaccuracies Kohl found in the textbooks was the description of Mrs. Parks as a totally normal person, (just like you and me!) not involved in any political movements, who was just really tired one day and didn’t want to move.

This is wrong, of course. Rosa Parks was an active member of a civil rights organization. Her refusal to move was not the spontaneous result of being tired one day, but a planned protest against segregation. Mrs. Parks was not the first black person who refused to give up her seat on a bus, but civil rights leaders chose to publicize her case and not earlier cases because they thought the American public would find Mrs. Parks a more sympathetic character–you see, the other lady who did the exact same courageous act as Mrs. Parks but hasn’t received any credit for it was divorced.

If you find this surprising, please ask yourself Why? Do you really think the March on Washington or Montgomery Bus Boycott happened without organization? At the very least, people had to get to work.

Kohl offers unsatisfying explanations for the inaccuracies in textbook accounts of Mrs. Parks’s story, mostly because he doesn’t quite understand the writers’ motivations. Here’s what I think happened:

In Mrs. Parks’s time, liberals tended to be on the side of the Civil Rights movement, and conservatives tended to be against it. Both sides knew darn well that the Civil Rights movement was organized.

Today, even conservatives are generally in favor of Civil Rights–conservatives I know wax rhapsodically and frequently about how much they love Dr. King. I shit you not, I know white, southern conservatives who actually see themselves in solidarity with Blacks and Hispanics against evil white liberals.

But these rather conventional, mainstream conservatives do not believe in radical, organized protest against the state. That is a liberal thing. Mainstream conservatives like the status quo and generally seek to protect it (and supporting Civil Rights is now status quo, so they do,) but organized protest is anti-status quo, so they don’t like it.

To make Mrs. Parks an appropriate conservative hero, capable of appearing in children’s history texts without inspiring parental protest that the texts are teaching politics instead of history, Mrs. Parks’ associations with organized liberalism have been scrubbed. A conservative hero like Mrs. Parks couldn’t possibly do something so controversially liberal as join a social organization in favor of her own self-interest.

 

The recent riots in Baltimore and elsewhere are another example. People report, most conspiratorially, that these riots were organized. Of course they were organized! We call them campus organizations for a reason. Heck, I know people who can’t get together with their friends to play video games without setting up a treasury and by-laws, but people are surprised to learn that folks who’ve been in Social Justice organizations for years might donate money to help protesters with legal fees or organize transportation together.

It’s one thing for people to just spontaneously decide to protest. It’s a totally different matter to carpool.

 

Conservatives organize too, btw. Evangelical churches, talk radio, and various conservative think tanks have been organizing conservatives for decades. Conservatives are quite good at organizing, as they tend, even more than liberals, to like being part of an organized social hierarchy. These organizations have had a pretty big effect on the American political scene, because they are very effective at getting their members to vote in lock-step for whatever policies and politicians they support. Thus, four decades years after Roe V. Wade, conservatives still pose a real threat to legal abortion. (Evolutionist X believes abortion should be free and easily available.)

 

Whoever your enemies are, of course they are organized. Organization is a basic feature of all human societies. Stop acting surprised.

Nature Observations

Just some observations, attempts at making sense of the world. I may be wrong. I admit that these are opinions, based on my experiences.

 

Liberals tend to believe that people are inherently good. Conservatives tend to believe that people are inherently bad. Liberals believe that evil is a result of negative environmental conditions that cause people to deviate from their inner badness. Conservatives believe that goodness is a result of negative environmental conditions that cause people to repress their inner badness.

Compare, for example, “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” to, say, any liberal parent you’ve ever met.

Or compare the conservative reaction to ISIS (“Bomb them until they convert to Christianity or all die,”) to the liberal, “To defeat ISIS, we need more jobs for people in the Middle East.”

Liberals are generally more pleasant to be around, even if they are occasionally delusional.

In general, both sides tend to act like there exists one single, agreed-upon definition of what “good” is, even though a conversation with virtually any other human being on the face of this planet will quickly reveal that this is entirely untrue, as that other person holds forth that all sorts of horribly dumb ideas are good and that all of your best traits are really really bad.

Conservatives claim they know what “good” is because “God said so,” and anyone who doesn’t agree with them about what God says is Obviously Evil. It’s not much of a position, but at least you can defend it if you accept the initial premise.

Liberals think that everyone else sees “good” and “bad” the same way they do just because to do otherwise would meant that other people are doing things that liberals see as “bad” even without negative environmental effects, which blows the whole shebang out of the water. Which is really kind of annoying when someone really and truly doesn’t get that you actually do see XYZ as good rather than the result of some horrible trauma that made you do bad, though that’s still not as bad as conservatives dropping bombs on you.

Of course, in reality, most people try to do “good” as they themselves see it, moderated somewhat by their genetic inclinations and culture. The guys in ISIS really and truly do see themselves as good guys, while homeless people fret over the sin of stealing a shopping cart so they have a place to put their stuff.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all morality is relative, you can’t judge anyone else, etc. etc. I would say that our basic understanding of “good” and “evil” people/actions/behaviors is very specific to our own particular culture/subculture/immediate group of friends & family, and probably just isn’t a very meaningful way of understanding the actions of people outside of those groups.

A complicating wrinkle of uncomplicating insight via two images:

So I happened to be browsing Stanford Magazine, and happened across two articles immediately in a row on religious issues. Each had a picture:

  
The contrast between the level of respect for the religion/religious believers in question really couldn’t be starker.

The respectable lady is Jane Shaw, Stanford’s new Dean of Religious life, notable for being both the first woman to hold the position and the first gay person. A few quotes from her article:

“Q. At Grace Cathedral and at Oxford, you led programs far afield from what might be considered religious: Hosting forums with politicians, activists and authors; bringing in atheists and believers; and commissioning artists-in-residence to create plays and installations. What’s your guiding light?

A. I don’t think I am a very churchy person, if that makes sense. I have always been interested in how you engage people in discussing questions of ultimate meaning, really—values, ethics, spirituality, all that stuff.
…

Q. But do you also value the “churchy” side of faith?

A. Ritual and liturgy? I love it.

Q. What new directions will you bring to Stanford?

A. …It is certainly my desire to make sure that Memorial Church is a place for extremely lively intellectual engagement, a place where possibly difficult issues can be discussed, a place where ethical and spiritual issues can be discussed. I am hoping we’ll have different sorts of people preaching here as guest preachers, not just clergy.”

The second photo is most likely a van owned by an unmedicated schizophrenic. You’d be forgiven if you therefore assumed the second article had something to do with mental illness.

It’s actually an interview with Stanford alum Kathryn Gin Lum about her new book, “Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction.”

Right. So whoever put the picture on this article equates the faith of the Founding Fathers (and many Americans today) with literal mental illness.

To be clear, Lum herself does not appear to be condescending toward the people/beliefs she studied, but her interview reveals that respect for the views of 60% of Americans is not common in our nation’s most respected centers of academic thought:

“Separate from any personal considerations, hell seemed to offer the best intellectual grist. ‘People in the academy,’ says Lum, tend to dismiss the notion that any consideration of hell could drive ‘how rational people think.'”

“Does hell have contemporary relevance, despite its lousy reputation in higher education?

“Strongly, thinks Lum. Much of her analysis highlights the connection between ‘people who believe in hell’ and their impulse ‘to damn other people to it.’ It’s that sensibility about calling out the world’s evils, says Lum, that suffuses today’s hot-button issues, including abortion and same-sex marriage.”

(Note that whatever insights she may have about rational people who believe in hell, or any potential good sides to the belief, the article does not mention them. It only mentions the ways in which people who believe in hell are problematic for the rest of the country. Those darn hell-believers, mucking things up for everyone else.)

“Writing about hell’s pertinence, Lum notes in her epilogue, ‘is to invite raised eyebrows.’ Her interest in the subject, she adds, has stirred reactions like ‘But you look so well-adjusted!'”

All right, so let’s review:

According to Stanford, a gay woman who isn’t very “churchy” but likes discussing ethics is one of the country’s best religious leaders, and the 60% of Americans who believe in Hell are literally insane and make trouble for everyone else.

One set of religious views is respected. The other is not.

Now, let’s try to imagine a contemporary article from any sort of respectable college or university (not one of the ones that make you mutter and stare at your feet while admitting that one of your relations was interested in the school,) that conveys the inverse: respect for people who believe in hell; disrespect for gays, women, and people whose faith isn’t based on Biblical inerrancy.

Can you? Maybe Harvard? Yale? Oberlin? CalTech? Reed? Fine, how about BYU? No, probably not even them.

I can’t imagine it. A hundred years ago, maybe. Today, no. Such notions are completely incompatible with the beliefs of modern, upper-class people.

I know many perfectly decent folks who believe in hell, and think they should be respected, but “be decent to people who hold denigrated religious beliefs” is not actually my point. My point is that the American upper class, academia, and the people with a great deal of power and influence over the beliefs of others clearly agrees with Pastor Shaw’s religious beliefs (when it is not outright atheist). Upper-class liberals in America are their own ethnic group with their own religion, culture, morality, and endogamous breeding habits. Conservatives are the out-group, their religious views openly mocked by the upper class and banned from the halls of academic thought.

Thing is, we happen to live, more or less, in a democracy.

One of the intended effects of democracy is that even groups with no real power can still express themselves via voting. If you have the numbers and bother to go to the polls, you can get someone in who more or less kinda sorta might represent your views.

As a result, even though conservatives are low-class and not cultural or intellectual movers and shakers, they can still influence who gets to be president or in Congress, and thus pass laws on things like abortion and stem cell research.

As a result, a group that has very little power in real life may end up with a fair amount via elections.

Think of it as a for of political power redistribution.

The Other Side Believes it is Moral, Too

I’ve gotten to the point where I just tune out people’s criticisms of the president. Not necessarily because I think those particular people are annoying, nor because I have any affection for the president, but because “politics” has involved ceaseless presidential criticizing for about as long as I can remember. By now, it’s just buzzing white noise. After all, the internet is full of people just blowing off steam and signalling social membership, not making rational arguments.

But when confronted with an actual, live human being, seemingly rational, who insists that “liberals”–by which he means “Obama and maybe some guys in Congress/the Senate”–are  motivated 100% by lust for power and 0% by morals, I admit that even I stared in shock.

No, I responded, liberals really believe their rhetoric. They actually think the things they are doing are moral. They think they are good.

He did not believe me. I think he also did not believe me that there are “liberals” outside of elected politicians. Ordinary mortal humans just vote for these totally evil guys because they have been deceived, I guess.

No, I said, ordinary humans vote for these guys because they actually agree with them. They agree on moral issues. Liberals have morals, they are just different from conservative morals.
Conservatives aren’t the only people with this issue. I know plenty of liberals who also believe that “anyone who believes X is a deeply immoral and horrible human being.” Feminists who insist that anyone who disagrees with them “hates women” come immediately to mind.

 

Honestly, people, how hard is it to just listen to each other?

Liberals and Conservatives have Stopped Talking to Each Other

They aren’t talking to each other; they aren’t even talking about the same stuff anymore.

I normally hang out with liberals, but this past weekend I spent around some of the more traditionally conservative members of my extended family. Since I spend a fair amount of time critiquing liberal ideas, you might think we’d have a ton to discuss, but no. The things I’m concerned about and the things they’re concerned about are totally different things.

Think about it: how often do you hear liberals make an impassioned defense of Obama’s actions in Benghazi?

Personally, never. I’ve never heard liberals discuss Benghazi at all. The only time I’ve heard the word cross their lips, (or keyboards,) is in the context of, “Oh god, my conservative relatives ae going to rattle on endlessly about Benghazi at Thanksgiving dinner.” It might as well be a hemorrhoid treatment for all liberals want to talk about it.

Now take the conservative side. When’s the last time you heard your conservative relatives talking about “white privilege”?

Probably never.

Some stuff makes it into both communities–riots, for example–but a ton of political debate, discussion, philosophy, development, etc., is going on in total isolation from the other side.

The reason, quite simply, is the internet.

Once upon a time, there was no internet. Everyone watched TV and/or read newspapers, and even if you hated Fox News or MSNBC, you probably still encountered it occasionally or knew people who watched it. In other words, there were only a few news sources, and chances were good that you were watching/reading them.

Then came the internet. Many young people today get most of their news/political discussion from internet sources like Tumblr and Facebook. Many of them do not take a newspaper or watch the evening news, and neither do the majority of people they know.

Older people still get their news primarily from TV and newspapers. (One older relative claimed to spend $190 a month just so he could watch Fox News–a news source he very adamantly vowed to never give up.)

So young people progress ever leftward, largely oblivious to what old people are thinking and talking about. And old people, in their own information-bubble, have no idea what young people are thinking and talking about.

Conservatism tends to be pretty bad at making coherent counter-arguments to liberalism, (mostly, I think, because conservatives tend to operate on an emotional basis of “I like it like this because I’m used to it,” rather than on rational arguments,) but if the two sides aren’t even talking, the chances of getting the two sides to agree on anything or debate their way to a rational consensus seems even less likely than usual.

I think it likely that some new form of conservatism may spawn from the depths of the internet.

X will be more like Y if X just acts more like Y

Due to some basically random and kinda funny only to me things that the modern internet does to people’s information networks, I stumbled across this article:

Why white evangelicals rule the midterms

I can’t speak for the factual accuracy of the article, or whether you’d find its aims desirable. But I found it amusing that it basically boils down to recommending that if Liberals want the same outcomes as conservatives, they should act more like conservatives.

If liberals act like conservatives, then do they become conservatives? (Questions of acting and being, I suppose.)

It is tempting to see religion as an organizing principle within people’s lives, but the causality may go the other way–people who are prone to organized community life tend to join/form religious organizations.

As for the article’s general recommendation that liberals build more community from the ground up–well, I like community, or at least the idea of it. But I also think there are some strong impediments to liberals actually building community. Liberals are more likely to be young people, who simply haven’t lived in one place long enough to form communities. Liberals are more likely to be folks from small, diasporic ethnic groups, who don’t have a big group of people to join with. They are more likely to come from communities where factors like crime and poverty have large negative effects on people’s ability to have nice public spaces where they can hang out. Etc.

Beyond their ethnic enclaves, the far left seems to be having trouble with effective organization. Someone has said that trying to get liberals to do anything is like herding cats; much mention is also made of the circular liberal firing squad, and of course the metaphor of everyone jockying for position on a doomed, sinking ship.

Still, despite it all, communities that care about each other and provide basic social support and friendship for their members, without falling prey to some of the violent excesses of certain communities I could mention, seem like a good thing.

Morality is what other people want you to do

This is morality from a game theory perspective.

Let’s say Person B and Person C are playing the Prisoner’s Dilemma. We ask B, “What is the moral thing for C to do?” A of course responds, “Cooperate! If C cooperates, we get highest net utility!”

Now we ask Ayn Rand, “What should C do?”
“Defect,” she answers. “Defection gets C more money than cooperation, and C doesn’t have any obligation to care about B.”

B then responds, looking a bit nervous, “I think C really should cooperate. Caring about others is moral.”

Rand: You’re just making a deontological argument with no backing. Morality, hah! You just want C to do what’s in your interest instead of his interest.

B: But obviously this kind of thinking leads to everyone defecting, and then utility is crap! Trustworthiness makes society function!

Ayn Rand: Look, what if C just lost his job? He has a dozen children to feed, and cooperating will not get him enough money to survive. If he doesn’t defect, he and all of his children will die.

B: Well… I guess then it’d be okay…

Ayn Rand: In that case, by your own reasoning, you ought to encourage his defection, because that saves lives!

B. Well… Um… But wait a minute! What if I also have 12 children to feed and no job? My first obligation is to my kids, not C’s kids. C should cooperate so that I can defect!

And, in fact, in extreme cases like famines, people sacrifice their own lives–go without food–to save the lives of others. And people have been known to literally kill and eat other people. It’s gruesome, but it is generally agreed that saving lives trumps most other concerns. (See previous post on morality for why.) People in wartime will also go to extremes, though this may be less justified.

But most of the time, we are not in a famine. B and C aren’t facing death if they cooperate–C’s life will just be marginally better if he defects, (and vice-versa).

B wants C to always cooperate–this is the best possible thing for B, even if B has secret plans to defect. So publicly, at least, B will always insist that the most moral thing is for C to cooperate–even if it harms C.

Some people actually care about the greatest possible good. Many just care about encouraging people not to defect on them. The net effect, of course, is a general message that the “Most moral thing possible” is to completely sacrifice oneself for others. People who, say, run into burning building to rescue people, or give up their lives for their children, or donate kidneys to strangers, or spend all of their time helping disabled orphans, are generally hailed as heroes, the epitome of morality.

We might shorthand this to “Morality = the greatest good to society.” (The cost to you be damned).

Obviously a society that manages to convince people to cooperate in no-famine situations will be better off than a society that fails to do so. In fact, this is the kind of society you want to live in–the alternative would be kind of awful.

The downside to this kind of morality is that people who take it too far tend to weed themselves out of the gene pool, leaving society less moral in their wakes. We might laud people who give up their fortunes to help the poor, but try announcing your plan to give all of your excess money to starving third worlders and begin sleeping in a cardboard box to your parents at [holiday of your choice] dinner, and see how it goes over.

We might even argue that there are two kinds of morality at play, one mitochondrial, the other viral. Mitochondrial cares about the survival of your genes, and people who don’t share your genes be damned. Viral morality cares about the well-being of society, and your particular genes be damned. The connections to liberals and conservatives should be obvious.

If a conservative says, “X is moral,” and it makes no sense to you, they likely mean, “X is in my genes’ interests.” If a liberal says, “X is moral,” and that makes no sense to you, they likely mean, “X is in society’s interests.”

The correlation is not absolute, though, as the vast majority of people employ both sets of morals, and not just hypocritically.

If you want to live in a nice society, you need both approaches. You need people to basically cooperate most of the time, so that you can do business with strangers or live remotely near them. You also need to exert a little interest in your own self-interest, so you don’t die.

Some people lean too far in the self-interested direction, and need to be reminded to cooperate.

This is one of religion’s good points–almost all religions generally try to encourage people to cooperate and make sacrifice for the common good, and religion tends to be effective at doing this because it can say, “Do it because GOD SAYS SO,” which has historically been pretty effective. So in a religious ceremony, we vow, “Until death do us part,”–promising, before god, not to defect on each other, which probably makes people actually less likely to break their marriage contracts than merely promising before a gov’t bureaucrat. Likewise, in many of the most destitute parts of the world, (like the DRC or your local homeless shelter,) the only people doing anything to help are mostly religious folks.

Even many of the world’s most successful “communist” ventures were religious, because “god says so” is an effective motivator to get people to share–but more about that later.

By contrast, some people lean too far in the societally-interested direction, and need to be reminded that it is okay for them to look after their own interests, too. Women who’ve become the primary caregivers for elderly relatives, for example, often end up sacrifice excessively, nearly killing themselves in the process. They may need to be reminded that it is okay to value their own lives, too.

Aristotle posits his virtues as the middle between two extremes–Bravery between Cowardliness and Rashness, for example. I suggest an optimum morality as taking the middle path between these two extremes of social and genetically-interested morality, so that you can have a nice society without all of the nice people dying out and being replaced by jerks.

Princesses all the way Down

Doing my Chanukah/Christmas/Festivus/whateverthefuck I’m celebrating shopping. [Note: I wrote this post a while back.] Looking at the toys. Thinking about what the kids would like. Remembering my own childhood. Reflecting on Barbies, Lammily, Bratz, Princesses; Ninjago, Thomas, Super Mario Bros.

Once upon a time, I was the kind of person who stressed out a lot about the kinds of messages society sends kids, the way parents force their kids into particular molds, etc.

Then I actually had kids, didn’t get enough sleep for about 8 years and counting, and mellowed the fuck out because my priorities became things like, “What do you mean you didn’t eat lunch?” and “oh no there are no wipes in the diaper bag” and “GO TO BED IT IS PAST YOUR BEDTIME.”

I have also learned some things like, “Even though we own tons of dolls, the boys never touch them,” and “the girl likes to do everything her brothers do, but always seems to append ‘princess’ to it.”

I’m going to go out on a very sturdy limb and say that gender roles are part socialization, and part innate. Some things do appeal more to boys, on average, than to girls, on average, and vice versa. Some activities appeal more, too. And in my limited observations of my small-N and their companions, girls and boys do seem to have different basic, instinctual ways of moving and relating to the world. (Basically, boys fling themselves into action, ignore you, and get in trouble more. Girls move smoothly and thoughtfully, are responsive, and generally only need gentle reprimands because they actually seem to desire to be good.)

For the past god knows however many decades, at least two as far as I’ve been aware, there’s been a fairly constant discussion, especially on the left, about the terrible terrible ways things like Barbies and Princesses and the genderization of toys socialize girls into feminine roles and give them eating disorders and generally perpetuate all of the ills of Patriarchy. Some of these arguments have been valid; many have been very silly. (You think Barbie’s bad? Seriously? Have you visited a toy aisle lately? Let me show you some Monster High Dolls’ dimensions. Or Bratz or a half-dozen other lines that are even less realistic and skinnier than Barbie.)

Despite this, these views have gotten very popular. Take the recent success (so far) of the Lammily doll, marketed as the “realistic Barbie”. You can even buy, I shit you not, stickers to simulate stretch marks, cellulite, and acne for your kid’s doll.

(You know what I suspect kids don’t really want in their toys? Realism. That’s why bright purple ponies sell better than realistic looking toy horses. The whole point of play is that it’s imaginary.)

Despite how this might sound, this is not actually progress. (Let’s assume that we want progress, where progress = fixing all of the stuff feminists complain about.) Why? Because Lammily is a single blip in the ocean of dolls that have become even less realistic than Barbie over the past 20 years.

Once upon a time, Legos were marketed (and sold) as a basically gender neutral toy. I had Legos; you probably did, too. Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, all sorts of toys featured girls and boys on the packaging and were bought by parents of all genders. Sure, girls liked dolls and boys liked trains, but there was a lot of stuff in between. Even Disney movies aimed to be gender neutral, with such exciting flops as The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under.

Disney animation almost shut down completely under the weight of such crappy movies, until the release, in 1989, of The Little Mermaid, the first modern “princess movie” and the movie that saved Disney animation. Since then, they’ve released the occasional “Lion King”, with cross-gender appeal, (and the occasional dud, like The Hunchback of Nortre Dame, Jesus, what the hell were they thinking?) but their core success has revolved entirely around the Princesses.

Little girls love princesses. I don’t know why. I think it’s because princesses get awesome clothes and look pretty.

Lammily gets boring ass clothes and stretch marks.

When I was a kid, “princesses” were not a thing. There was She-Ra, Princess of Power, but she was a very different phenomenon. Today, it is totally normal for little girls to wear sparkly princess tutus literally everywhere. Ballet and dress-up clothes have become completely normal.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Lego released its Star Wars lines, Ninjago, etc., until finally I suspect someone looked at the shelves and said, “Gee, all of this is explicitly marketed to boys.” So to make it up, they started a line explicitly aimed at girls, the Lego Friends.

Tinkertoys comes in pink. So do Lincoln Logs. But rare is the successful Disney animation with a male lead.

My theories:
1. Little kids don’t give a crap what grownups argue about online, and marketers have figured out some successful marketing scheme.
2. The people who complain about kids’ toys aren’t generally the people with kids. People with kids don’t care, and will buy their kids whatever.
3. People who tend to complain about kids’ toys have also chosen to have very few children compared to people who are explicitly anti-feminist and pro-genderizing of toys. As a result, the current crop of kids may actually have a tendency (socially and/or genetically induced) to want to be more gendered and play with more explicitly gendered items than previous generations.

The one exception is masculine toys linked to conservative culture, like b.b. guns. Those are probably way less popular.

Throwing Women Under the Rotherham Bus

If you haven’t heard of Rotherham, it’s a town in Britain where a major scandal recently occurred: Muslim immigrants kidnapped about 1,400 girls over the past decade, raping them and selling them into prostitution. The police had plenty of information coming in about this, but decided it was better to cover up what was happening than to actually bother to rescue anyone, out of fear that doing so would make them look racist.

If it weren’t so goddamn tragic, it’d be hilarious.

The important lesson here isn’t that immigrants are bad. Most immigrants are not bad. The important lesson is that all of the people who claim to be looking out for women did and have done jack shit about the systematic kidnapping and raping of over a thousand girls.

And, look, speaking as a female, I take that kind of personally.

So, what were the feminists doing when this broke? Oh, right, they were too busy talking about a handful of women who were sent death threats over Gamergate to pay attention to the actual violence done to over a thousand women.

A liberal, feminist acquaintance who lives in the UK recently posted, perhaps rhetorically, ‘Why are so many Brits are becoming hostile to immigrants?’ I responded, ‘Well, there was that business in Rotherham,’ and he responded that the media has been under pressure to dig up anything negative they can find on the immigrants.

Later I looked back on this exchange and thought, “Wait a minute, this person, who no doubt considers himself a good person, who believes that he cares about women, just responded to a case of over a thousand women being kidnapped and raped with some twaddle about the media looking for ways to make immigrants look bad? What the fuck?”

As far as I am concerned, feminism is fucking done. I sincerely hope that someone steps up to the plate to help women, because god knows we need it, but it certainly isn’t feminists.

The rest of the liberals are just as negligent. They have completely abandoned the notion of giving a shit about women, except when they want our votes against Republican candidates.

And conservatives, when they pop up, are still blathering on about outlawing abortion, as though this were the 1970s.

Enemies to my right, no friends to the left–what’s a girl to do?

(Incidentally, the Sierra Club recently came out in favor of increased immigration. Increasing the US population is a fine position, if you don’t happen to have trees as your supposed priority.)

(To be fair, my conservative relatives would have put a bullet into anyone who tried to kidnap me when I was a kid. That counts for a little something in my book, though it is balanced by them nearly killing each other when I was a kid.)

As for Rotherham, the lesson there is that if our ability to interact with outsiders is so bad that we’re too scared to arrest them for kidnapping, then we should not be dealing with outsiders. Let someone who is confident that they are not racist and whom you are confident is not racist handle the arresting. And if we can’t be confident that people are capable of being non-racist, then we need to seriously rethink our immigration policies, because why would we let people into our country if we think we (or our neighbors) are going to be racist toward them? People deserve to live in places where they are warmly accepted by those around them, not subject to racist assholes. And people deserve to be protected from criminals, not to have a special class that gets a free pass from the police.