It's fascinating to me how slavery, given its ubiquity, has come to be seen by certain individuals, and especially academics and students, as somehow an American transgression. Actually, an Anglophone one.
If I am not mistaken, one of the unusual things about American slavery is that practically from the start there were abolitionist critiques voiced by Quakers. This was not one-off manumission, but wholesale takedowns of the practice.
This is probably the finest synoptic study of slavery in English. Do recommend others if you have them.
Millions of women believe a bear has more "humanity" than a human male. Wow. Something I have discovered in the past few years is that hatred makes people stupid.
Women are apparently vulnerable to the temptation to signal membership, at high cost, in the social group of highly online women. So vulnerable, in fact, that we get these utterly stupid claims … (queue absurdly falsetto voice) “I’ll take the Bear”.
A bear could take off one's head with a swipe of its massive and powerful paw, but it is more likely to bite, tear the flesh from one's body, and/or eviscerate its victim before possibly crushing the skull of the screaming victim in its equally massive and powerful jaws. But if she is standing in front of the bear, she might have the opportunity to look down and see her entrails spilling out of her belly before the rest of her body is turned into ground meat. Which brings up another point - if it attacks her, the bear will not see her as a harmless human woman, it will see her as a threat or as prey. If the former, no amount of "trigger warnings" will save her from offending the bear and possibly being "cancelled". If the latter, she is simply not going to survive, but she will provide a free range denizen of the wild with a glutton-free, organic meal. As one wounded veteran who had been in IED explosions reported after surviving being mauled (by a mother bear with a cub that he didn't see until she attacked), it was the most painful and terrifying experience of his life. But sure, choose the bear. She might survive, require hours of surgery and then years of reconstructive plastic surgery so that other humans will be able to see her as a human one day.
I mean it's not likely she'll be attacked by the bear (unless it is protecting its cubs, protecting it's territory, is startled, is hungry, or is having a bad day and feeling irritable). On the other hand, it's even more unlikely that anything bad would happen if she were in the woods with a man like me, courteous, kind, skilled in woodcraft, and uninterested in abusing her in any way (except making dad jokes until safely out of the woods).
Really? Any man is more dangerous than any bear? Is this misandry because we are all, every damn one of us, vassals of the elusive, Illuminati-like Patriarchy? I seem to have misplaced my membership card, I must get it replaced soon or they won't allow me to attend the Patriarchy meetings where women are not allowed to besoil our testosterone-fueled activities.
Haha, that was a vivid but accurate description. Again, guys don't seem to get this one wrong. Nor, I have noticed, do women get it wrong if they happen to come from societies that do not teach people that all men are dangerous, or guilty of toxic masculinity, or that they live in a rape culture, or that the global patriarchy is real. Further proof of what I've said previously on the degree to which Marxism has subverted our society.
Our favorite bedtime story when Grandma visited from upstate New York, was how an ancestress, isolated in a cabin with a dirt floor, used an axe to chop the paw off a bear digging its way inside. It was thrilling! When I recounted this piece of family lore to my own child, I had to pause and explain that log cabins in the 19th century didn’t have telephones and you couldn’t call the Humane Society.
Ps. I later learned that afterwards, this ancestress insisted on moving back into town; imho this increases the chance the story is true.
Pps. The only bear I’d prefer to to meet in the woods is made by Vermont Teddy Bear
What a cool story. And yes, anyone who knows how to camp in bear country knows to hang a bear bag at least 200 feet from camp and 15 feet off the ground or lock your food in your car because the last thing you want is a visit from a bear. Even just a 120-pound black bear can flip a baby grand piano with a single arm and run faster than Usain Bolt.
“First-wave feminism” is a retcon. It was not called “feminism” at the time. Rather, the first feminists wanted to legitimize their horrible ideology by attaching it to things that people supported.
“Feminism” began with the sexual revolution, and it has never had any redeeming qualities whatsoever. I am most certainly not a “feminist” in the slightest, and no intelligent person should be.
The first mention of the term roughly coincides with the writing of the Communist Manifesto, but just as the Manifesto didn't become a significant movement until Lenin, the word "feminist" didn't take off until far after someone first thought it up. Notice how all of the mainstream "histories of feminism" take pains to use the word as often as possible in their narration, but can't quote any use of it in the periods they're describing.
And yes, I understand that the analogy isn't perfect; Marxism at least had some organized following before Lenin, but it was very fringe.
It's fascinating to me how slavery, given its ubiquity, has come to be seen by certain individuals, and especially academics and students, as somehow an American transgression. Actually, an Anglophone one.
If I am not mistaken, one of the unusual things about American slavery is that practically from the start there were abolitionist critiques voiced by Quakers. This was not one-off manumission, but wholesale takedowns of the practice.
This is probably the finest synoptic study of slavery in English. Do recommend others if you have them.
https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Social-Death-Comparative-Preface/dp/0674986903/ref=sr_1_1
Millions of women believe a bear has more "humanity" than a human male. Wow. Something I have discovered in the past few years is that hatred makes people stupid.
Very well laid out argument! Thanks for being a voice of sanity in our absurdly rage-filled society.
Women are apparently vulnerable to the temptation to signal membership, at high cost, in the social group of highly online women. So vulnerable, in fact, that we get these utterly stupid claims … (queue absurdly falsetto voice) “I’ll take the Bear”.
A bear could take off one's head with a swipe of its massive and powerful paw, but it is more likely to bite, tear the flesh from one's body, and/or eviscerate its victim before possibly crushing the skull of the screaming victim in its equally massive and powerful jaws. But if she is standing in front of the bear, she might have the opportunity to look down and see her entrails spilling out of her belly before the rest of her body is turned into ground meat. Which brings up another point - if it attacks her, the bear will not see her as a harmless human woman, it will see her as a threat or as prey. If the former, no amount of "trigger warnings" will save her from offending the bear and possibly being "cancelled". If the latter, she is simply not going to survive, but she will provide a free range denizen of the wild with a glutton-free, organic meal. As one wounded veteran who had been in IED explosions reported after surviving being mauled (by a mother bear with a cub that he didn't see until she attacked), it was the most painful and terrifying experience of his life. But sure, choose the bear. She might survive, require hours of surgery and then years of reconstructive plastic surgery so that other humans will be able to see her as a human one day.
I mean it's not likely she'll be attacked by the bear (unless it is protecting its cubs, protecting it's territory, is startled, is hungry, or is having a bad day and feeling irritable). On the other hand, it's even more unlikely that anything bad would happen if she were in the woods with a man like me, courteous, kind, skilled in woodcraft, and uninterested in abusing her in any way (except making dad jokes until safely out of the woods).
Really? Any man is more dangerous than any bear? Is this misandry because we are all, every damn one of us, vassals of the elusive, Illuminati-like Patriarchy? I seem to have misplaced my membership card, I must get it replaced soon or they won't allow me to attend the Patriarchy meetings where women are not allowed to besoil our testosterone-fueled activities.
Haha, that was a vivid but accurate description. Again, guys don't seem to get this one wrong. Nor, I have noticed, do women get it wrong if they happen to come from societies that do not teach people that all men are dangerous, or guilty of toxic masculinity, or that they live in a rape culture, or that the global patriarchy is real. Further proof of what I've said previously on the degree to which Marxism has subverted our society.
Our favorite bedtime story when Grandma visited from upstate New York, was how an ancestress, isolated in a cabin with a dirt floor, used an axe to chop the paw off a bear digging its way inside. It was thrilling! When I recounted this piece of family lore to my own child, I had to pause and explain that log cabins in the 19th century didn’t have telephones and you couldn’t call the Humane Society.
Ps. I later learned that afterwards, this ancestress insisted on moving back into town; imho this increases the chance the story is true.
Pps. The only bear I’d prefer to to meet in the woods is made by Vermont Teddy Bear
What a cool story. And yes, anyone who knows how to camp in bear country knows to hang a bear bag at least 200 feet from camp and 15 feet off the ground or lock your food in your car because the last thing you want is a visit from a bear. Even just a 120-pound black bear can flip a baby grand piano with a single arm and run faster than Usain Bolt.
“First-wave feminism” is a retcon. It was not called “feminism” at the time. Rather, the first feminists wanted to legitimize their horrible ideology by attaching it to things that people supported.
“Feminism” began with the sexual revolution, and it has never had any redeeming qualities whatsoever. I am most certainly not a “feminist” in the slightest, and no intelligent person should be.
Actually, the term "feminism" was in use long before the first wave even began.
I will say that my other grandmother, b 1891 and extremely active in women’s rights from youth to old age, never called herself a feminist
That's the retcon.
The first mention of the term roughly coincides with the writing of the Communist Manifesto, but just as the Manifesto didn't become a significant movement until Lenin, the word "feminist" didn't take off until far after someone first thought it up. Notice how all of the mainstream "histories of feminism" take pains to use the word as often as possible in their narration, but can't quote any use of it in the periods they're describing.
And yes, I understand that the analogy isn't perfect; Marxism at least had some organized following before Lenin, but it was very fringe.