Blowhard, Esq. writes:
- How Japan keeps Muslims at arm’s length.
- A short interview with Nassim Taleb. (H/T Paleo Retiree)
- The Cathedral begins the smearing of Ed Snowden.
- 25 Things to Know About Sexism & Misogyny in Publishing. The incoherence is telling. What exactly is he upset about? The fact that guys hits on girls? (Point #9) Sexy book covers? (Points #10, 11, 12) That there aren’t enough women in publishing? (Points #4, 18) That people aren’t nice enough to each other? (Points #5, 6, 23, 24, 25) Honestly, though, my first thought after reading this was, “I wish people got this worked up about the financial crisis.” But I guess the point is to signal to his readership that he Really Cares A Lot.
- VICE profiles Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Key quote: “Right, and whenever I’m speaking at a Rotary Club or a Lion’s Club, and I ask the same question, not a hand goes up – nobody. I say, then let’s be honest. There will never be a drug-free America. Drugs are always going to be a part of our culture. So, the question becomes: Who do you want to control the marketplace – gangsters, thugs, and terrorists, or licensed businesspeople with regulation and control? That’s the only discussion we can have, and it’s the one we’re not having.”
- A portrait of an optimist:
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
Snowden: best not to forget that the Founding fathers were all traitors.
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From the Taleb interview:
What would you like to own that you don’t currently possess?
Nothing.
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Wow, that “sexism in publishing” piece is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever read. Is that what’s become of young men these days? How pussified can a young man be? I worked in and around book publishing for 15 years, and it’s impossible to find a more feminized world this side of kindergarten teaching, or maybe NPR, or maybe Sweden. But I suppose the point is that THINGS CAN NEVER BE FEMINIZED ENOUGH!!! Has someone sent the URL of that piece to Roissy/Heartiste? Eager to see what kind of fun he could have with it.
I don’t love the fact that I’m advancing thru the upper reaches of middle age, but there really are moments when I’m glad I’m not a young man today. How do y’all put up with it?
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Chuck Wendig is, like, totally not gonna take any of society’s bullshit, man:
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The self-righteous, “Look how EVOLVED I am, everyone!” tone is so off-putting. Talk about preaching to the choir.
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Maybe it’s also a stupid new form of peacocking?
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Yeah, for sure. White Knight peacocking.
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For what it’s worth, that sexism in publishing article represents a phenomenon that’s fairly confined generationally. He was born in 1976, and so was going through high school horniness right at the peak of the man-hating witch hunt / date rape hysteria of the early-mid 1990s.
You had two choices when you saw the majority of your female peers treating you like a crypto-rapist: 1) Loudly and constantly signal that you’ve castrated yourself as a show of good faith to prove you’re not a crypto-rapist, or 2) Break away from the idea of connecting emotionally with women, whether that meant only dating them once in awhile or going through them more frequently with no thought toward long-term commitment.
Of course those are the extreme forms of the two choices. The first one didn’t necessarily lead to the pathetic level of auto-emasculation seen in Chuck Wendig. But you see its effects everywhere that good old fashioned masculinity is absent these days, and fearfulness has taken its place. Using “vagina” instead of “pussy”. Carving out a man cave in the wife-controlled domestic space. Dressing like a drab schlub to assuage her worries that you might be interested in attracting other women. Using time-out and taking away toys to “discipline” children, rather than ever use force. And so onnnn….
Those who didn’t want to neuter themselves as part of the requirements for marriage these days, went in several directions. Some withdrew into video games, etc. Those with a higher sex drive and assertiveness took the churning-through-’em approach, as distinct from a somewhat earlier time when they would’ve sowed their wild oats but then settled down a little bit. Those in between regarding libido dated every now and then, nothing very serious, and filling in the gaps with flings.
I’d say the date rape witch hunt struck the heaviest blow to those who were in their prime years of horniness and desperation, say 15-24. Google’s Ngram thingie shows that the phrase “rape culture” peaked in 1996 in its library of print media, and the date rape panic first caught fire circa 1991 (although there were signs of it growing even in the late ’80s). So that created a cohort born between 1967 and 1981 who got slammed in the face for, as far as they could tell, no good reason at all. What choices did they have, in that social and cultural milieu, other than those outlined above?
That would’ve been the strongest for those born in the early-mid ’70s, who spent the largest fraction of their horny years being targeted as crypto-rapists.
If you were a small child or a mature adult during the witch hunt, it wouldn’t have meant that much to you personally. Boomers escaped its effects, for example, and Millennials grew up in the aftermath rather than the hysteria. Millennial males are even more socially and emotionally distant from females, but it’s kind of assumed that that’s how things should be. The sexes had already split apart by the time they were going through adolescence. They’re semi-aware that boys and girls ought to be closer to each other, and mildly resent being so far apart, but there’s no real anger deep down there.
Even with the Chuck Wendig type, you can still feel the anger burning in his voice. He’s still bitter that he had to castrate himself in order to get dates and get married, and that his female peers thought of him as a crypto-rapist back then, despite being an obviously non-threatening doofus type. The less resentful of his type are the schlubby, unassertive beta-male provider Good Dads who’ve inaugurated this whole “family-friendly” culture of the past 20 years. They don’t get fuming like Wendig does, but you can tell they’re still resentful at having to cower in their little man caves, listen to sensitivity experts berate them in the office, etc etc etc.
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That seems really smart and useful, tks. What weird times we live in.
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I’m not sure even a whole bottle of red pills could help Chuck Wendig. The saddest thing about the piece is that you can just sense how he’s puffing his chest up over it. He thinks he’s striking a blow against some great force of oppression rather than simply chiming the PC bell for about the eight billionth time this week.
I’m not even sure what people mean by “rape culture.” A culture that encourages rape? Or just a culture that has a lot of rape? That term only seems applicable to prisons, where rape actually seems to be semi-condoned, and no one lifts a finger to do anything about it.
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We were talking about buzzword conversation-enders the other day and “rape culture” is one of mine. Once someone says it, I can’t take them very seriously.
According to FBI stats, in 2009 there were just over 88,000 rapes in a population of 307,000,000. Feminists say that rape is vastly underreported, though. OK, let’s say instead there were 880,000 rapes that year. Even with a ten-fold increase, you’re talking about a crime that affects 0.2% of the population. That’s enough to tar American society as a “rape culture”?
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Who on earth is pro-rape? And how is putting a metal bikini on a girl on the cover of a sci-fi novel promoting an anti-woman culture? Has anyone looked at the covers of romance novels in the past seven or eight decades? The men in those images are ALWAYS in the supporting role. The images (and the books) star and highlight the women, and their feelings. Hey, the books are female fantasies. Enjoy, ladies. But please allow us guys to enjoy our fantasies too.
If you want to make sure no straight men ever reads a book again, you couldn’t do better than follow Chuck Wendig’s guidelines.
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In the old days, if you depicted women as being sexy or catering to male fantasies, you were guilty of objectification or at least of being a slave to that horrible male gaze. Now they’ve gotten rid of that whole perception phase and leapt straight to its presumed outcome — rape.
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