Category Archives: Supposed Social Justice

Politics, Social Issues, Supposed Social Justice

Playing Cops ‘n’ Teachers

2024-08-27 PeBeFri Leave a comment

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think. That axiom from Margaret Mead is one by which I have always abode when working with kids, in positions from librarian to tutor. If a child inquired about a controversial issue, I’d reply, “Well, that’s something that even adults have trouble agreeing on,” and leave it at that. The main reason I published my kid’s book under a pen name is because of this very blog — I would not wish for young fans of my fictional works to be unduly influenced by my political writings here, so I created a separate personal brand for such works.

Not all people subscribe to this ideal, however. This first became obvious in the mid-twenty-aughts with the release of children’s books with titles such as Why Mommy is a Democrat and Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!. The ad copy for those books openly and unabashedly touted them as means by which parents could impress their political beliefs upon their children. But at least it wasn’t as if children were coerced into reading such books and accepting their teachings by a governmental authority figure.

Times have changed. Nowadays children are prone to being fed sociopolitical talking points from their own teachers. One has openly admitted during a campaign rally that she considers education an instrument of “social justice,” which seems to translate to teaching students that all that is white and male is at the root of everything wrong with the world.

Political cartoon depicting an SJW teacher — Courtesy @GPrime85

Let’s compare the public school teacher to another type of public servant: the police officer. Both professions are entrusted to wield authority over others, but the police face far more public scrutiny and criticism, especially over the last decade. By contrast, it seems almost heretical to question the trustworthiness of teachers. But is such immunity from criticism warranted or deserved?

One of the points made about the profession of law enforcement is that the people who are drawn to it as a career are precisely the sort of people whom you wouldn’t want as law enforcement officers. They relish the idea of being in a position of authority and the the ability to force others to submit to it. So what draws a person to the profession of teaching children? The starry-eyed will of course wax poetic about nurturing young minds and preparing the children that are our future, but there may be ulterior motives.

A noted way that children learn and behave (which is coincidentally mentioned in my book) is that they tend to accept the commands and teachings of adults whom they regard as authority figures without skepticism or second-guessing. There is an evolutionary advantage to this, evident in cases where a child’s hesitation to obey these adults would lead to unfortunate outcomes (“Get away from those train tracks!”). But another consequence of this behavior is that children will accept these teachings uncritically, regardless of the benefits or truth behind them.

As is the case with law enforcement, people may not have the purest of intentions at heart when they seek a career in early education. Some may view it as a means to impose their own social and political views upon their students, brainwashing them into believing claims however radical and baseless (“All white people are racist and nonwhite people can never be racist”) or demonstrably false (“Gender is just a social construct”) they may be. (Apologies for only using talking points from the far left as examples, but I’ve never heard of instances of teachers from the other side of the political spectrum doing this. Make of that what you will.)

When they can’t back up their claims in a good-faith debate, they resort to cheating to ensure the next generation will agree with them and vote the same way they do, no debates necessary. And they can do it without the approval or perhaps even the awareness of the students’ parents.

If we value children’s ability to think critically about controversial topics without undue influence from people who were not even selected for their job on the basis of the merit and validity of their political convictions, there needs to be more oversight of the ways in which teachers teach. If the “Defund the Police” movement can enter the national political stage as something that warrants serious consideration, surely it wouldn’t be verboten to suggest a fraction of such pushback be applied to teachers.

Masculism, Supposed Social Justice

Twenty-five years in the men’s rights movement

2021-02-14 PeBeFri Leave a comment

How are MRAs inducted into the movement? I’d imagine the bulk of them nowadays were sucked in after hearing about it online and realizing how much it made sense. But there had to have been the trailblazers who started the movement in the first place, those who realized the necessity of masculism when it was apparent that feminism didn’t offer all the answers (or simply didn’t care about answers when it was only men who were demanding them).

I myself fall somewhere in the middle. I only adopted the label of MRA after learning about the movement on the internet, but I first got the inkling that such a movement was necessary a long time before — specifically, on the 14th of February, 1996.

And no, this has nothing to do with the gender politics of Valentine’s Day or how I was expected to pay for a date. The inciting incident took place in my sixth grade science class.

It was the first of a few capital-E Experiments we conducted in the class, goggles and all. The safety guidelines had been gone over the day before, with me arriving during the middle of the period after just getting braces.

The classroom was split into tables with four students each. I shared mine with two boys and a girl. We were further split into pairs for the experiments, and I was paired with the girl. The teacher announced that we would be graded on a check/check-plus/check-minus basis, and stressed that each student would receive the same grade as their partner.

I don’t remember too much about the experiment, only that it featured water dyed pink to observe the holiday, a chemical reaction that changed it to a different color, and an inverted jar (all of the experiments featured inverted jars for some reason). What I do remember is that my partner repeatedly flouted the precise instructions given to us by the teacher, and the experiment suffered as a result. Though I had followed the directions to the letter, we both got a check-minus.

Every error from my partner was met with a protest from me, supported by the other boys at our table. My partner, however, dismissed all our concerns, and refused to admit to any mistakes even after being given the check-minus.

One of her comments resonated with me. After finally being cornered by our criticisms, she declared that boys did not automatically know more than girls.

Neither I nor the other boys had made any mention of our gender. At no point had we implied that we were better judges of how the task at hand was to be completed by virtue of our gender.

This comment dumbfounded me, but more so it led to an awakening. How many other girls, women even, were inclined to falsely accuse boys and men of sexist thinking when facing criticism from them? It’s a devious ploy, after all, as such an accusation is difficult to disprove.

Eventually, it became clear to me that this debate strategy was not employed solely by my lab partner. In fact, it can be found in the uppermost echelons of my country’s government, where a perfectly valid criticism of a female senator by a male one can be twisted into a feminist rallying cry against evil, chauvinistic men.

Just as many women are, my female classmate seemed to be aware of how to take advantage of conventional wisdom holding men to be the oppressors of women. Why bother engaging in honest debate when you can simply accuse your male opponent of thinking the way he does because of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity?

Of course, years after the incident I realized that if a crime is believed by society to be committed frequently by men against women, and is difficult to disprove having had occurred, women could use that to their advantage. False accusations of misogynist talking points are relatively benign when compared to false accusations of sexual harassment, domestic abuse, and rape.

While it may be verboten by mainstream society to oppose the modern feminist and social justice movements, as long as they’re as prone to tip their hand as quickly as my lab partner did, there will always be MRAs. As I’ve learned a quarter of a century ago today, all it takes is one glimpse into the inner workings of the feminist’s mindset to understand their power should not go unchecked.

Masculism, Politics, Supposed Social Justice

Why the Men’s Rights Movement?

2017-11-19 PeBeFri Leave a comment

Today marks International Men’s Day, a day for societal introspection regarding the current state of the welfare of men and boys. Needless to say, there are a lot of pressing concerns, from high rates of suicide among men to lower lifespans in general to a growing gender gap in academic performance. But as to be expected, plenty of screeching can be found about how in order to tackle these problems, the “patriarchy” must be dismantled first.

As I’ve noted before, feminists have trouble recognizing when double standards hurt men more than women. Perhaps the narrative with which they’re familiar causes them to see things through such a distorted lens. All differences in which the genders are treated by life society are due to a vast patriarchy designed to oppress women; any evidence of men having it worse off is due to unintended consequences of the patriarchy’s actions.

For those of you fortunate enough never to have heard of a blog called “Shakesville,” here is a rather revealing piece about an ugly incident. A man was murdered by another man who was recently hit by a woman. His assailant refused to strike a woman, even the one who struck him first, so he vowed to attack the next man he saw instead. The column is titled “Today in Misogyny.”

A woman hits a man. Said man does not retaliate against her, as he was raised never to hit a woman. A man is attacked, and killed, in her stead. According to Shakesville, this serves as an example of sexism… against women. And this is the same site that has mocked the idea of a men’s rights movement. How exactly can one’s personal mindset become so hideously warped?

Their insistence that a men’s rights movement is unnecessary seems to be this: The goal of feminism is gender equality. If the goal of the MRAs were really gender equality as well, they would simply become feminists. Their refusal to do so is proof that their goal is not gender equality at all, and must be something else — presumably a patriarchal society.

So what sort of campaigns for equality can masculists look forward to by being welcomed into the folds of feminism? How about something such as the incredibly high rate of incarceration of men when compared to women? Surely the feminists are up in arms over such a gender gap?

Not really. I’ve never heard of any self-professed feminist declare that the discrepancy in male and female incarceration rates are a problem.

Well, perhaps that’s understandable. Surely it’s self-evident that men are different than women in ways that mean they are more likely to break the law. Men take bigger risks, are more prone to violent behavior. So it’s understandable that their greater rate of imprisonment is due to natural differences in gender rather than any issue that can be solved with a change of policy, right?

So let’s look at something that does raise the ire of the mainstream feminist movement: The gender gap in regards to salary. Conventional wisdom holds that for every dollar a man earns, his female counterpart only earns about 75 to 80 cents.

Well, “counterpart” may not be the right word. The statistic doesn’t take into account the fact that women and men tend to work different jobs. Men work more hours in higher-paying jobs, and women tend to favor careers that are less demanding with a salary that reflects that.

Not that feminists are assuaged by such an explanation, however. Why are men and women drawn to different careers in the first place? One theory holds that the omnipresent patriarchy has instilled a set of gender roles in people. Women are not as ambitious in seeking high-paid jobs because they’ve been conditioned to think of themselves as the homemakers and men as the breadwinners. Therefore, say the feminists, the gender pay gap is a problem, even if it doesn’t take such factors as different career paths among the genders into account.

And so, one of the main current goals of the feminist movement is to force companies to hire women through mandatory quotas. As a majority male board of executives in a company must be an indicator of sexist hiring practices rather than a majority of men seeking and qualifying for such positions, the only fair thing to do is to force the companies to hire more women.

(It’s interesting to note, however, that when feminists speak of hiring quotas, they’re always referring to quotas for positions in boardrooms, rather than, say, sewers or oil rigs. They seem to lack any interest in changing the workplace fatality gap, which is far more glaring than the pay gap. But I digress…)

But… Wait.

There seems to be a conflict in this line of thinking. We’ve already dismissed the incarceration gap as rooted in biological differences between men and women. So why can’t sexual dimorphism explain the pay gap as well? What if whatever drives men to commit more crime also drives them to earn more money? Why is the feminist movement demanding that laws be passed to force the closing of one gap but not the other?

(It’s worth noting, though, that even aside from men committing more crime, women still receive more lenient sentences when committing the same crime as men. Unlike the pay gap, the imprisonment gap doesn’t significantly diminish when accounting for other variables… And the pay gap is still regarded as a more pressing problem. But again, I digress…)

It would seem that the feminist movement isn’t as steadfastly determined to fight for men’s rights as those insisting that MRAs should be feminists would have us believe.

But I am reasonable. I am perfectly willing to accept this modern feminism as legitimate. All I ask is that feminists do at least one of the following:

• Lead a campaign to instill quotas for the percentage of female prisoners, urging stricter sentences for female offenders and even demanding that male prisoners be released if necessary;

• Abandon their calls for gender quotas and efforts to close the “gender pay gap,” instead letting the chips fall where they may in terms of who is hired for which job and how much salary they receive, and give equal attention to the issues facing men;

• Cease all claims that their brand of feminism is also beneficial to men, and allow separate men’s rights movements to continue unabated with no further hindrance on their part;

• Provide a logically sound, highly compelling explanation as to why they will not do any of the above.

I think that’s more than fair. Until that happens, I will proudly call myself a men’s rights advocate and refuse to apologize for being one.

Supposed Social Justice

“I’ll Be Progressive on Your Behalf”: Silencing Diverse Voices for Their Own Good

2015-10-25 PeBeFri Leave a comment

I suppose there’s something of a silver lining in this news item from San Francisco.

It used to be that whenever I was asked why I held “Social Justice Warriors” in such disdain, I wouldn’t know where to begin. I’d probably start out with their consideration of their own feelings before the facts, or their unending quest to censor speech they consider offensive, or their tactic of handling dissenting opinions by demanding they be disallowed rather than engaging in honest debate.

If only there was a single story out there that succinctly illustrated the flaws in SJW logic because it was so utterly ludicrous, I might have thought. Well, it seems that wish has now been granted:

The principal of Everett Middle School in San Francisco tells KTVU that the results of the school election have been publicly announced.

The results had been withheld immediately after the election because the principal felt that the winners weren’t diverse enough.

We’ve learned that the majority of the winners were white, despite the fact that the student body is 80% students of color.

The incident happened at Everett Middle School in San Francisco’s Mission District. The voting was held Oct. 10, but the principal sent an email to parents on Oct. 14 saying the results would not be released because the candidates that were elected as a whole do not represents the diversity that exists at the school.

The email went on to say they were thinking of ways to value the students who won, while increasing the diversity of the group.

Long story short: A diverse student body was allowed to vote for which classmates to represent them in a democratic election. The students democratically elected candidates, most of whom just happened to be white. The school’s principal halted the election process, because the elected candidates do not “represent the student body” due to their lack of racial diversity.

They don’t “represent the student body”? They were democratically elected by the student body. How much more proof do you need that they represent the students?

The principal says she wants “to make sure all voices are heard from all backgrounds.” THEY JUST WERE.

A common SJW tactic (that has been repeatedly used against yours truly) is to conflate criticism of their talking points with prejudice against the groups they are [claiming to be] helping. Do you support the right of people to write and publish hate speech? Then you must agree with said hate speech. Are you against programs and institutions created with the intention of providing assistance disenfranchised groups (regardless of their actual results)? Then you must be prejudiced against those people.

But this principal seems to have finally tipped the hand of the social justice movement. She, like so many SJWs, considers diversity for its own sake of higher importance than democracy. She wants to force her students’ government to be as diverse as the overall student body, over the wishes of those very students.

In other words: In the interests of giving minority students a voice, she is silencing the voices of those minority students.

And yes, the principal in question is white. That doesn’t necessarily make her actions any more or less wrong. But I suppose it does make them more ironic.

The most laugh-or-cry moment in this news story is her describing her actions as a “learning experience.” An experience of learning what? That decisions made via democratic elections can be altered by another governing power, and this is not to be questioned? Or that minorities are so ignorant they can’t be trusted to vote in their own interests?

I know enough about the SJW mindset that I can probably guess the principle’s rationale. The minority students must have been brainwashed or gaslighted (gaslit?) into believing that the white students were the best choices to represent them. They must have internalized the prejudice against them to believe that it should be white students on the student council… Because the factor of race trumps all others when considering a leader. (That last sentiment may not have entered her thought process to the point that she was conscious of it, but it’s a concept that is heavily implied in the SJW philosophy. Especially where arguments for affirmative action are concerned.)

There’s a panel from Plebcomics that’s strikingly accurate in its depiction of the Social Justice Warrior’s line of thinking:

In light of this latest news, however, they seem to be stepping up their game in claiming to speak for minorities in a way that silences their own voices.

They’re being progressive on their behalf.

I now have my own blog! Careful now, you only have two wishes left.