January 27, 2015

"Nearly every time I have mentioned the subject of p.c. to a female writer I know, she has told me about Binders Full of Women Writers..."

"... an invitation-only Facebook group started last year for women authors," writes Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine.
The name came from Mitt Romney’s awkwardly phrased debate boast that as Massachusetts governor he had solicited names of female candidates for high-level posts, and became a form of viral mockery. Binders was created to give women writers a “laid-back” and “no-pressure” environment for conversation and professional networking. It was an attempt to alleviate the systemic under­representation of women in just about every aspect of American journalism and literature, and many members initially greeted the group as a welcome and even exhilarating source of social comfort and professional opportunity. “Suddenly you had the most powerful women in journalism and media all on the same page,” one former member, a liberal journalist in her 30s, recalls.

Binders, however, soon found itself frequently distracted by bitter identity-­politics recriminations, endlessly litigating the fraught requirements of p.c. discourse....

On July 10, for instance, one member in Los Angeles started a conversation urging all participants to practice higher levels of racial awareness. “Without calling anyone out specifically, I’m going to note that if you’re discussing a contentious thread, and shooting the breeze … take a look at the faces in the user icons in that discussion,” she wrote. “Binders is pretty diverse, but if you’re not seeing many WOC/non-binary POC in your discussion, it’s quite possible that there are problematic assumptions being stated without being challenged.” (“POC” stands for “people of color.” “WOC” means “women of color.” “Non-binary” describes people who are either transgender or identify as a gender other than traditionally male or female.)

Two members responded lightly, one suggesting that such “call-outs” be addressed in private conversation and another joking that she was a “gluten free Jewish WWC” — or Woman Without Color. This set off more jokes and a vicious backlash. “It seems appropriate to hijack my suggestion with jokes. I see,” the Los Angeles member replied. “Apparently whatever WOC have to say is good for snark and jokes,” wrote another. Others continued: “The level of belittling, derailing, crappy jokes, and all around insensitivity here is astounding and also makes me feel very unsafe in this Big Binder.” “It is literally fucking insane. I am appalled and embarrassed.”

The suggestion that a call-out be communicated privately met with even deeper rage. A poet in Texas: “I’m not about to private message folks who have problematic racist, transphobic, anti-immigrant, and/or sexist language.” The L.A. member: “Because when POC speak on these conversations with snark and upset, we get Tone Argumented at, and I don’t really want to deal with the potential harm to me and mine.” Another writer: “You see people suggesting that PMs are a better way to handle racism? That’s telling us we are too vocal and we should pipe down.” A white Toronto member, sensing the group had dramatically underreacted, moved to rectify the situation: “JESUS FUCK, LIKE SERIOUSLY FUCK, I SEE MORE WHITE BINDERS POLICING WOC AND DEMANDING TO BE EDUCATED/UNEDUCATED AS IF IT’S A FUCKING NOBLE MISSION RATHER THAN I DUNNO SPEND TIME SHUTTING DOWN AND SHITTING ON RACIST DOUCHE CANOE BEHAVIOUR; WHAT ARE YOU GAINING BY THIS? WHAT ARE YOU DETRACTING? YOU NEED SCREENCAPS OF BURNING CROSSES TO BELIEVE RACIST SHIT IS HAPPENING? THIS THREAD IS PAINFUL. HUGS TO ALL THE WOC DURING THIS THREAD”
Much more at the link. Chait, a liberal, does a lot of hand-wringing over the horrible anti-free-speech ways of liberals. (This has been a big topic of mine since long before I started this blog.) There's some interesting stuff about speech repression at the University of Michigan in the late 1980s and early 1990s and the role of Catharine MacKinnon. In Chait's view, political correctness had a big heyday back then, but "went into a long remission," and now has returned.

I missed that remission... or Chait missed the nonremission. Anyway, you can go over there and see Chait's version of the history of liberal speech repression and why liberals are supposed to care about it now. It might be that he's worried that the general public is tired of all the claims of victimhood. It doesn't help liberals win political power. Or it might be that women and POC are getting really cranked up and free-speaking and it's making him feel threatened. In which case: Oh, the irony! He's for free speech because he's against it.

You can go over there and read that if you like. I just wanted to excerpt this hilarious Binders Full of Women business.

102 comments:

Unknown said...

What's a "douche canoe"?

Michael K said...

"one member in Los Angeles started a conversation urging all participants to practice higher levels of racial awareness. "

Hilarious. The white Jewish women who think this is a big deal are about to find out how poisonous the PC environment is.

Pearl clutching to follow.

Birches said...

I read the Chait article earlier today and found the Binders full of Woman excerpts the most astonishing as well.

#1 These women are supposed to be professional writers? Yikes

#2 The idea that someone (or apparently a lot of people) took offense to the gluten free Jewish WWC joke.

#3 These women are supposed to be professionals. Again. Unless that Toronto member is Lena Dunham in a rage spiral, I can't believe that person has paid employment. All caps? It's like my father-in-law forwarding weird Obama conspiracy emails. Just don't do it.

TennLion said...

Or it might be that he thought PC was a weapon to be used only against evil conservatives, forgetting that revolutions always end up eating their own.

Birches said...

Hint: the reason all these women need a "laid-back" and "no pressure" environment to share is because they're awful writers, not the Patriarchy.

Sigivald said...

“Non-binary” describes people who are either transgender or identify as a gender other than traditionally male or female.

How are people supposed to tell someone is that from the user picture she told them to interrogate?

You can't see someone's "identity".

("Racial Awareness" is a bad idea, guys. Being "aware" of race is how you perpetuate racism.

"... not be judged by the color of their skin...", indeed.)

Ann Althouse said...

"What's a "douche canoe"?"

At Urban Dictionary, the top definition for "canoe" is: "vagina" (the definer probably intended "vulva" (based on the shape)).

Seems to go with the old expression "little man in the canoe" for clitoris.

Ah, but wait, Urban Dictionary defines "douche canoe":

"Someone who exceedes [sic] the limits of being a normal douche or douche bag. "

LYNNDH said...

Interesting. I was just reading some of the same material on Ace Of Spades blog. Confluence of Great Minds?

Brando said...

It's the main reason I don't like to call SJWs "liberals." If you need to shut others up and judge them by their race/gender/class, then you're something, but don't call it "liberal."

It's nice to see this fissure on the Left--those who tend towards collectivism but aren't SJW drones are finally starting to call out this fascistic movement, bred by weakness and intellectual laziness. I can see why, too--it's not healthy for development of ideas, and the rest of the Left knows that the SJWs can turn on them any moment. The rest of us just don't care what those nuts think of us.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

The "binders full of women" example was a quick IQ test on 2012. Anyone who used it could never explain why the statement was wrong. Just pure stupidity and pack following without thought.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I can never tell if you 2nd-handedly "scoop" these things on your own or get them from Sullivan.

chuck said...

We should invite them all to a party and hand out loaded guns.

If Chait is in favor of free speech, he has no business being a lefty. I had that figured out by age 15.

Anonymous said...

The first step in overcoming your dudgeon addiction is acknowledging that you have a problem.

Meade said...

I'm not sure Jonathan Chait isn't about to find himself up the pc creek without a douche canoe paddle.

Brando said...

Bill--the bigger problem with the "binders" gap was it glossed over just how inane Obamas response to that question was (when he went on about the Lily Ledbetter law, as if extending the statute of limitations on sex discrimination claims would reduce the wage gap).

Romney could have made a better point about how encouraging telework and more flexible hours would reduce the gap, and his "binders" point was weaker--it had to do with his own personal hiring decisions, which is nice but didn't address the question. But the ado about "binders" was as juvenile as one would expect from the coalition of children that reelected Obama.

Spiros Pappas said...

I love the term "binders full of women." It's so anti-technology and reactionary. It was Mitt Romney as a neo-Luddite. I wish I had come up with such a descriptive and awesome term. Also, if Mitt Romney had said his assistant had handed him a tablet full of women, well, you know everyone would joke (or lament) about porn.

Scott said...

The article noted in passing...

A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas. These sorts of episodes now hardly even qualify as exceptional.

Dear God. The norm is insanity.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

It's good to see Althouse deviate from her usual language policing long enough to notice relevant writers doing effective battle against the ideology police.

David said...

Bill, Republic of Texas said...
The "binders full of women" example was a quick IQ test on 2012. Anyone who used it could never explain why the statement was wrong.


Let me, a person who likes George Romney, give it a try.

The "wrong" was the crazy phrasing of Romney's response. Plus the image of all those tiny women squished into binders. Men running for president are not supposed to say things that sound ridiculous. Or look ridiculous. Think Dukakis and Tank.

YoungHegelian said...

And, yet again, the moderate Left discovers that it is the first, & often, only victim of the insanities of the hard Left.

Folks forget that of the triumvirate (Reagan, Thatcher, Mitterand) that placed medium range nuclear missiles in Europe to counter the Soviets, Mitterand was not conservative, but was a socialist. I can well understand how a French socialist who had dealt extensively with the French communist party would entertain fantasies of nuking their paymasters in Moscow.

Never, ever, give the hard Left a break, or they will take over the organization first chance.

rhhardin said...

It's a romantic comedy without any men.

Wince said...

Compare that "Binder" gibberish to this satirical "Sarah Palin Ad for 2016" put out by "Bloomberg Politics" from Palin's Iowa speech.

Maybe it's me, but I know what Palin is talking about despite -- maybe because -- of the editing.

glenn said...

Actually I'm thinking Sarah Ganim covered that whole
"journalism gap" thingie all by herself with the Jerry Sandusky story.

rhhardin said...

I've stumbled onto "Romantic Favorites" DVD with zero-insight plots, no clever dialogue, but no diseases, tears and weddings either.

It's a middle ground between ones I like and ones "women" like.

It's sort of a sexual difference place-holder.

tim in vermont said...

As long as they never get the power to force us to read the stuff they write.

If they manage to take over mainstream publishing, they are just creating a market for a new samizdat. Parody and satire need a rigid system of rules and self important 'authorities' to play off of, like a sailboat needs the wind and the water.

Think of the outrageous laughs that underground comics will get when anything that could possibly be construed to offend the transgendered is forbidden.

In fact, spellcheck is transphobic because it ran bloody red wavy lines under the words transphobic and transgendered as if it were calling for their murder in the streets!

Scott said...

Amanda Marcotte on the Chait article.

tim in vermont said...

There is an additional wrinkle, though. An accusation of bias can serve to shut up a liberal. That serves to restrict the discussions to the radical left, and the people who don't care about being called bigots by the radical left (IE- conservatives.) Which is fine for us Republicans.

From the comments.

Big Mike said...

It might be that he's worried that the general public is tired of all the claims of victimhood.

No f**king sh*t.

Crunchy Frog said...

As long as they never get the power to force us to read the stuff they write.

What they want, what they compete for, is the power to force us to buy the stuff they write.

They want to replace the old dead white men as assigned reading in university curricula.

Robots of the world, unite!

Curious George said...

"Ah, but wait, Urban Dictionary defines "douche canoe":

"Someone who exceedes [sic] the limits of being a normal douche or douche bag. "

That's also a douchenozzle.

tim in vermont said...

We Republicans will happily accept into our party people who think that the idea that, for example, having a child is transphobic because women without uteri can't do it, is a laugh riot!.

Even having an abortion is transphobic!

This is why conservatives love these kinds of articles, even Amanda Marcotte's response was fun to read!

Chait, though, should have said, let the prigs spout, just don't let them shut you up. (I can say whatever I want in front of liberals, even give them good advice, because they can't hear me and I am invisible to them.)

Bob R said...

Kevin Williamson loves the sweet, sweet taste of Chait's tears

Brando said...

Marcotte is priceless, as usual. But I've long accepted that she's actually a right winger doing a great parody of a nutty leftist. Well done, "Amanda," if that is your real name!

Brando said...

Williamson may be right that this is rich coming from Chait, but I still welcome those on the left who are starting to recoil at the fascistic nature of their SJW brethren (whoop, there's another microaggression! Trigger warning, you nerds!).

Lucien said...

After reading Marcotte's piece, I think she missed the canoe.

MaxedOutMama said...

This is just straight Marxist reeducation with a slightly different bent. Chinese "struggle" meetings.

Of course it's as bad as Chait thinks it is - it's even worse!!

This is also the reason why people won't care that Walker doesn't have a college degree. Fairly or unfairly, the public that has experienced this suffocating anti-intellectualism despises it, and has contempt for those who push it.

People who have been trained to think and act in this way are completely incapable of functioning in a competitive environment. They've been trained to be useless.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Marcotte's reply is so joke-worthy that it's hard to believe she even takes herself seriously.

Gahrie said...

So where's the Facebook men only group for writers..I want to apply...

traditionalguy said...

Great material for blog wars. I can't wait to use, "being appalled" and , " I am being tone commented against."

Those chicks (whether they are binary or trinary) would never make it through Stanford where Richard Sherman learned how to stand up to being tone commented against and being accused of making appalling comments create to unsafe place.

Mary Beth said...

They don't sound any different than the 13-year-old SJWs on tumblr.

I liked the phrase "binders full of women". I knew what he meant and I prefer weird, even awkward phrasing to cliches.

Clyde said...

Sounds like some of those wacky WOCs need to take a Midol.

tim in vermont said...

(Trigger warning: References to vaginas and midol)

References to Midol are transphobic. They are just one more microaggression against women without vaginas.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Does rape perpetrated by a guy with a 1" penis count as a "micro aggression"?

chickelit said...

Summer's Eve, makes me feel fine,
Blowing through the jasmine in my mind

Craig Landon said...

At 68, I can (and do) count myself blessed I have yet to make the acquaintance of even one such strident women.

I'm equally blessed to have met a large number who lubricated their unbending spines with a dollop of honey.

We all benefited.

John Christopher said...

I think this is much more about Chait feeling like an outcast from the cool kids on twitter than anything else.

I could tell last December that he was really stung by how many people that he thought were on his team did not feel the same way about The New Republic that he does. People that he respects even called the magazine racist. Hanna Rosin (who he mentions in the article) seemed to have the same reaction.

I think this essay is that hurt simmering over to a boil.

Michael said...

Wow. Momma run and get a lampshade, the light came on!

But if Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine is willing to write about this now, maybe there is some hope of sanity returning. I suppose we should be pleased.

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

I've been sober for many years and worked with a lot of people who were trying, or pretending to try, to get sober. (Not so much lately but in my first 10ish years).

You quickly figure out, or you should anyway, that victims don't get well. I don't debate with professional victims about anything. It's a complete waste of time.

Biff said...

Tying together EDH's 6:14 quip about knowing "what Palin is talking about despite -- maybe because -- of the editing." and Michael's 7:25 wondering that "if Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine is willing to write about this now, maybe there is some hope of sanity returning," I offer this:

Today, I had a conversation with a very liberal colleague of mine who normally delights in ridiculing every breath that Sarah Palin takes. Palin's Iowa remarks came up, and, in hushed tones, this colleague said, "Is it a bad thing that I understand what she's seems to be saying and more or less agree?"

I don't think I've ever heard her say a less expected thing.

Paco Wové said...

"I think this is much more about Chait feeling like an outcast from the cool kids on twitter than anything else."

The Revolution has moved on, leaving Chait behind, like it left Althouse behind a decade or two ago. Just be glad the firing squads and guillotines are out of service (for now), J. C.

Tank said...

Did I get called out for something?

???????

bleh said...

There's a fair amount of closed-mindedness on the right, but most if not all respectable conservative opinion is "liberal" in the sense that it takes ideas seriously without resorting to intimidation or assertions of outrage. It is also relatively more liberal in the classical sense, but that's another issue.

A difference between the right and left is that the sort of nonsense Chait identifies now qualifies as respectable liberal opinion.

Sebastian said...

"I missed that remission... or Chait missed the nonremission. Anyway, you can go over there and see Chait's version of the history of liberal speech repression and why liberals are supposed to care about it now. It might be that he's worried that the general public is tired of all the claims of victimhood. It doesn't help liberals win political power. Or it might be that women and POC are getting really cranked up and free-speaking and it's making him feel threatened. In which case: Oh, the irony! He's for free speech because he's against it."

All of the above. But not enough "liberals" feel "threatened" just yet.

robinintn said...

He thinks there was a remission because he wasn't a target. Now he is, or sees that he will be soon, so he's switched positions. When victim classes collide!

cubanbob said...

Rhythm and Balls said...

Marcotte's reply is so joke-worthy that it's hard to believe she even takes herself seriously.
1/27/15, 7:01 PM "

Maybe there is hope for her after all.

Doug said...

As Al Bundy told his son, Bud:"Don't waste your time trying to understand women; women understand women ... and they hate each other."

madAsHell said...

... an invitation-only Facebook group

Groucha Marx ignored the invitation.

Freeman Hunt said...

The cries that bind.

Freeman Hunt said...

Douche kayak being the lesser and douche catamaran the greater.

Freeman Hunt said...

The zenith of douche-osity to be expressed by the term douche barge. Example of usage: "That sure was a douche barge of a thread on Binders Full of Women Writers yesterday."

YoungHegelian said...

I just read the NR article linked at Bob R's comment above, and its reference to both Chait & Lena Dunham getting called out by the PC police has given me an idea.

I have long noticed that the brain trust for the Left is heavily, heavily Jewish. What if this PC attack is simply another way of shutting up the Jews, who are all "white" &, as the best educated & wealthiest ethnic group in America, "privileged"?

The Left has always had a problem with the Jews, as Hannah Arendt points out, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the large number of Jews found amongst them. The Left never used the language of racial or religious anti-antisemitism to persecute the Jews. They just found words to classify them other than "Christ-killers" or "those dirty Kikes" to allow for their persecution. I suspect that what we're seeing here is simply another example of "fuck the Jews" in the history of the Left.

mccullough said...

Leftists. It always ends with Trostky getting an ice pick to the brain.

n.n said...

Only activists care about "racial awareness". Normal people care about mutual respect, which is a racial, class, gender, etc. agnostic standard.

Anyway, principled tolerance or selective exclusion. Liberalism has passed its expiration date. It doesn't prepare people to cope with, and does, in fact, sponsor dysfunctional "diversity".

Laslo Spatula said...

Blinded by the white,

revved up like a douche canoe,

another women writer in the night

Madwomen drummers, women without color,

Trans in the summer

with a non-binary diplomat

in the dumps with the humps

as the problematic pumps

her way into her iPad

With a binder on her shoulder,

feelin' kinda colored,

She tone-argued the merry-go-round

With this very unpleasin',
bitchin' and wheezin,

the conversation crashed to the ground

The conversation crashed to the ground

Well she was

Blinded by the white,

revved up like a douche canoe,

another woman writer in the night

I am Laslo.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Ann Althouse said...In Chait's view, political correctness had a big heyday back then, but "went into a long remission," and now has returned.

I missed that remission... or Chait missed the nonremission.


No, you had it right, Prof, there wasn't a remission. The only difference now is that some of the victims are people like Chait--good lil' liberals who assumed they were Left enough not to get burned. White and liberal won't cut it anymore, and (as lots of us on the not-Left have been warning for years) the bad faith arguments and defaulting to unanswerable accusations of oppression, victimization, etc have poisoned the well for everyone now. Worried you might be misinterpreted (deliberately or otherwise) or unfairly accused of thoughtcrime and face the end of your career? Welcome to the party, buddy. Good luck getting those evils back in the box.

Meade said...

LOL. Layer upon layer of macro and micro-aggressions. Splendid work, Laslo. No trigger warning?

The Godfather said...

So, do we think that a good way to promote women writers is to mock a phrase used by a person who is prominent and powerful in business and politics, describing how he tried to increase the number of women he hired? I'm glad I'm not still interviewing prospective associates for the Big Law Firm; if some candidate had started on about non-binary thises and thats, I would not have been able to keep a straight face.

I am binary, but not a binary robot.

Seeing Red said...

Those shrews, harpies, nags, hags, Gorgons have never left the 7th grade mean girl mental level.

richard mcenroe said...

"It's like my father-in-law forwarding weird Obama conspiracy emails."

Which ones are the weird ones? It would help me organize my file cabinets, thanks.

David said...

It was an attempt to alleviate the systemic under­representation of women in just about every aspect of American journalism and literature . . .

But it may have revealed one of the reasons why they are underrepresented. Men tend towards a useful ability to find ways to cooperate with their competitors, and with persons they disagree with. Women might study and emulate this patriarchal skill to their benefit.

richard mcenroe said...

"The only difference now is that some of the victims are people like Chait--good lil' liberals who assumed they were Left enough not to get burned."

You can never be left enough....

David said...

Freeman, the concept of "douche barge" is brilliant. It could catch on.

Xmas said...

"Douche Canoe" comes from Eliza Douchecanoe, that famous actress from 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Tru Calling'. Most of her characters are notoriously bitchy.

Gahrie said...

Most of her characters are notoriously bitchy.

But hot.

very, very hot.

Michael K said...

""little man in the canoe" for clitoris."

It was "Little man in the boat."

Clyde said...

Speaking of WOCs, for the first time in six years, I'm proud of our First Lady. Went with the President to Saudi Arabia for the king's funeral and didn't wear a headscarf or black robes. Good for her. We shouldn't go out of our way to offend other people, but neither should we compromise who we are to cater to another society's neuroses.

Mrs Whatsit said...

Althouse says: "[Victimhood] doesn't help liberals win political power."

I don't agree with this. The glorification of victimhood may make a lot of us tired, but it still works on a fair number of American voters. For instance, the ginned-up "War on Women" was a huge factor in Obama's 2012 re-election, and it worked precisely by persuading middle-class, mostly white, mostly affluent women that they were victims of an evil male Republican plot to return them to the kitchen. "Binders full of women" was part of that, and it worked.

Laslo Spatula said...

Marginalization, like margarine, can only be spread so thin.

I am Laslo.

Brando said...

Marcotte's silly response boils down to "your intolerance of my intolerance is unacceptable!" But I suspect she's putting on an act and is just staying in the good graces of the SJWs, or just trying to rile up the normals and get page hits.

This extremist intolerance on the Left is mostly a problem for leftists, but it does affect others wherever the SJWs have influence (academia, media, politics). It's good to see a backlash brewing.

Laslo Spatula said...

They are all crying out for scented candles and a lingering foot-rub, but are afraid to ask because the world is unfair.

Rejecting scented candles and foot-rubs are their hairshirt.

I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

I bet some of these women are so uptight that Lena Dunham could not insert even one pebble into their vaginas.

I am Laslo.

Bobber Fleck said...

There is a tight bond between the perpetually offended and the humor impaired.

Fandor said...

"The name came from Mitt Romney’s awkwardly phrased debate boast that as Massachusetts governor he had solicited names of female candidates for high-level posts, and became a form of viral mockery."

I don't agree.
It was not awkwardly phrased.
It was succinct.

What was awkward for liberal feminists was the fact that a Republican Governor had books, binders, if you will, of resumes from women qualified to fill high-level posts in his administration.

That fact had to be denigrated in the most adolescent of ways. It was, and ignorant women and men, who wanted to see positive outreach to accomplished females as some sort of slight, did.

Tank said...

I went over and read (tried to read) Marcotte's response. I find it too much work to read people like her, because their underlying assumptions about ... everything ... are so different than mine, to read them, I really have to take apart every sentence to see what the underlying assumptions are so I can figure out what is really going on.

I don't think she's valuable enough to do that. And it's not that I won't work at reading some things, because I do that sometimes. But what she has to say, other than knowing your enemies, is not worth it.

I'm amazed (and sometimes amused) at how most leftists talk, it's like their entire world view is about victimhood and the search for being insulted by something, anything. Who has time for that? The opposite, gratitude for what you have, and the willingness to work for more if you want it, is the secret (or one) to a happy life. Lots of people who are actually victims or were dealt a bad hand, or have had real bad luck, live happy lives. They don't do it by searching for reasons to be insulted.

Scott M said...

Tank,

Your anglospherical patriarchy-privilege is getting in the way of your coming to terms with your cisnormative intersectionals.

dreams said...

Women have a strong herd instinct.

Anonymous said...

Birches: These women are supposed to be professional writers?

Since "standards" are tools of oppression, these tantrum machines have probably never been exposed to the notion that maybe, just maybe, they're not all that talented and intelligent. Maybe, just maybe, they've got nothing to contribute as "writers".

Still, even the most cosseted mediocrity, Dunning-Kruger effect notwithstanding, must have an uneasy, if only visceral, grasp of the truth. "...[E]ndlessly litigating the fraught requirements of p.c. discourse...." is a handy way to quell that demon for fun and profit.

I can't really think of any other reason why people like this seem to be getting crazier and crazier by the day.

Ann Althouse said...

"Althouse says: "[Victimhood] doesn't help liberals win political power." I don't agree with this. The glorification of victimhood may make a lot of us tired, but it still works on a fair number of American voters..."

I didn't say "[Victimhood] doesn't help liberals win political power." I said Chait "might be that he's worried that the general public is tired of all the claims of victimhood" and thus he's repositioning on the subject of whether the political correctness movement should be criticized right now. If he believes that, he's motivated by the desire to "help liberals win political power."

It's a separate question whether he's right about liberals getting power -- and continuing to get power -- through the politics of victimhood.

I give 2 reasons why Chait might be attacking PC, and that idea about helping mainstream Democratic Party politics is the first.

Tank said...

Scott M said...

Tank,

Your anglospherical patriarchy-privilege is getting in the way of your coming to terms with your cisnormative intersectionals.


Exactly !

jr565 said...

Scott wrote:
The article noted in passing...

A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas. These sorts of episodes now hardly even qualify as exceptional.

Dear God. The norm is insanity.

the left is so inclusive they include people who aren't women in their list of women.

Mrs Whatsit said...

Ann: thanks for the explanation. In that case, I don't disagree -- though I have a hard time imagining that Chait really does think that glorifying victimhood doesn't win political power. That tactic is almost the only thing liberals have had to offer for years now. It propels pretty much all of their arguments and campaigns, from the ACA (uninsured people dying in the streets) to foreign policy (terrorists act that way because they're victims of the West's imperialism) to the current rape-on-campus brouhaha (female students are victims by virtue of being female). However, thanks for clearing up your meaning.

Susan said...

The trouble with traveling enmass with ones fellow douche-canoe riders is that the nozzles only have one setting, and it isn't stun. After a while the stench of Summer's Eve becomes so over-powering that everyone in the binder gets the vapors.

chillblaine said...

Egads. It's like the Women & Women First Bookstore from an episode of Portlandia.

Unknown said...

It is really weird to me that because Romney referred to women in the same way he might have referred to men that he is somehow discriminatory.

I can't help but wonder what the response would have been had Romney said "binder full of qualified and competent men and women."

furious_a said...

They just found words to classify them other than "Christ-killers" or "those dirty Kikes" to allow for their persecution.

Not so long ago it was "Zionists", now it's "Neocons".

furious_a said...

"Little man in the boat."

You mean, this guy?

Ann Althouse said...

"Ann: thanks for the explanation. In that case, I don't disagree -- though I have a hard time imagining that Chait really does think that glorifying victimhood doesn't win political power. That tactic is almost the only thing liberals have had to offer for years now."

But he claims to observe that the general public is getting tired of it. It works until it doesn't work. How early do you need to pivot?

tim in vermont said...

It's like the Women & Women First Bookstore

Without the charm.

damikesc said...

A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas. These sorts of episodes now hardly even qualify as exceptional.

Perhaps anatomy should be required now.

Hint kids: If a vagina is missing, then it isn't a woman.

Think of the outrageous laughs that underground comics will get when anything that could possibly be construed to offend the transgendered is forbidden.

Most will just stop. As Chris Rock pointed out, almost nobody does comedy on colleges nowadays because it's too much of a headache.

Known Unknown said...

I tried stuffing a woman full of binders.

Didn't work out, so I fired her.

Revenant said...

Ambrose Bierce defined "misogynist" as "a man who hates women as much as other women do".

Smart man.

n.n said...

Yesterday's liberal, the classical liberal; yesterday's progressive, the classical progressive; are today's conservatives. Hilarious. Generational liberalism is a degenerative ideology. They may want to review their selective principles.