So that’s how it’s done.
In other words, “the vast majority of responses to this are bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch women”…who are pointing out that women as a class are more vulnerable than men.
Simon Curtis is doing this ever-more-popular trick of stacking up privilege-pejoratives in front of the word “women” so that we’ll know to hate them by the time we get to the noun. Oh oh oh they’re middle-aged and white and British and cis, they are KARENS. Women who are middle-aged and white and British and cis don’t get to say they are part of a subordinated group of any kind ever, because they are Karens. (Applies also to American, French, Swedish, Australian etc women too of course. Bitches.)
There are of course plenty of women who have a lot of privilege of various kinds – but they’re still women. They’re still subject to misogyny, they’re still subject to the kind of dismissive contempt shown by this Simon Curtis fella.
Also, it is in fact simply a literal truth that women as such are more vulnerable than men as such. Politically speaking women are of course not always the most vulnerable group in a given situation or conflict, but literally speaking – yes, sadly, we are.
Comments
28 responses to “Gold medal in vulnerability”
Her legacy is “on fire”? First I heard of it, the misogynists aren’t having the impact they think they are, even if they have the oh-so-woke “terf” and “cis” and “Karen” slurs to throw around. It’s ok for them to use what is essentially sexist hate speech, but they want protection from women who defend themselves. A cowardly pack they are.
Musicians! (lol)
Perhaps he could point me to the place where JKR said women are the most vulnerable people on earth? I didn’t see that…oh, wait, she implied they are vulnerable, and that men who think they are women are not more vulnerable than they are. So, if you are the most vulnerable people on earth (prove that assertion, please. Even one piece of actual, real, robust evidence would help), and a group claims to be more vulnerable than you, by definition that means you are saying you are the most vulnerable people on earth. So cue billionaire hating…how can a rich person ever possibly be vulnerable? (Anyone want to call Henry Gates and ask him? Wealth protects you from a lot, but not from being a woman or a minority…oh, maybe some, but there is still hate. Call Oprah and ask her if billionaires can be vulnerable.)
I mean, he’s not wrong—within the woke ideological framework. Their belief system defines vulnerability as a function of oppression, and oppression is an analytic rather than synthetic fact. Oppression can be determined entirely a priori by examining the relevant intersecting identities. So transpeeps are the most vulnerable people in the world because that’s what the calculus shows. Never you mind that it’s not tethered to reality. That’s the sort of thing a white supremacist, cissexist, heteronormative, patriarchal, epistemically bigoted Karen would say.
Karen.
You gotta love the projection there, too. “All to prove to the entire world that you are also very, very oppressed.” No, Simon, that’s how you and the woke flock view the world. To you, all human interaction is reducible to oppressor and oppressed. Your minds have been corrupted by a quasi-religion that places all existence within a Manichean binary of Sacred (oppressed) and Profane (oppressor).
Well by sheer numbers, women make up roughly half of the population, so vulnerable women would significantly outnumber any other group. “Most vulnerable” requires a little more unpacking. I think you mean Bill Gates, Ikn?
I agree. Rowling is totally on fire.
Oh, wait, that’s not what he meant.
My favorite reply so far:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EceT00aWoAEriYp?format=jpg&name=small
https://twitter.com/indigobuffalo1/status/1281155159230484480?s=20
I’m pretty sure that children would be considered the most (if you want to use ‘most’ in a more empirical sense) vulnerable people on Earth anyway, a group that JKR has been very good to in particular.
And of course JKR never said that say billionaires as a group are particularly vulnerable or oppressed. She’s been saying that women are, and she’s been using the platform that her success has afforded her to stand up for the rights and interests of other women (most of whom are definitely not billionaires. Far fewer, in fact than the number of male billionaires) at significant personal cost. If these people were consistent (crazy idea, I know…) they would be arguing that rich black people should not be speaking out against racism as long as they personally don’t suffer any immediate distress.
twiliter, I meant Henry Gates, who in spite of being a successful scholar, and wealthy enough to have a home in a good neighborhood, was arrested for trying to enter his house while black. I realize he had forgotten his key, and I think the police were fine checking on that, but arresting him was sheer wrongheadedness. If he says it’s his house, get some proof of that (ID, title deed, etc), which he almost certainly possessed. Then he gets called “some criminal” by the current monster in the White House.
Even being wealthy, successful, intelligent, well read, and articulate didn’t protect him from the bigotry, just as being Oprah didn’t protect Oprah from being treated badly when she went into a high class store to buy a purse.
Ah, gotcha. I think I missed some of that. Thanks!
I think he goes by Henry Louis Gates as opposed to just Henry. Informal is Skip Gates and formal is Henry Louis. Easier to recognize that way.
Fun fact: I have not one but two friends named Mary Ellen, and they go by Mary Ellen.
I can’t think of any other examples offhand, but there must be lots.
Yeah, I was thinking of him as Henry Louis Gates while I was typing, but sometimes my fingers have minds of their own. Bad fingers! Bad!
I thought since you were saying billionaires you meant Bill, Henry’s a few million shy. ;) Good point anyway, noone is immune to abuse, not even billionaires. Look at how much abuse Donnie gets, poor thing, can’t get a break. :D
Yeah, I couldn’t think of any black billionaires off the top of my head…except Oprah. So I reached for a convenient millionaire who has been treated like he was less than human in spite of his wealth.
“Mary Ellen” must have been a thing. I know a woman named Mary Ellen, and after years of seeing her write it both with and without a space, I asked her why she did that. She told me “Mary Ellen” (with the space) was actually her first name, not her first and middle name, so she’d sometimes drop the space with people who didn’t know her well so she didn’t get turned into “Mary”.
Would it be mean to suggest that they should have chosen less-easily-invalidated experiences?
Double first names seems more common with women, in my experience.
I had a work colleague whose first name was Helen Ann, and she had no middle name. The computer system was not set up to handle double first names, nor missing middle names, so she became Helen, with middle name Ann. She accepted being called Helen at work, but she didn’t like it.
Skeletor, no, it would be funny. You made me laugh! Age of miracles not dead etc.
Liza Jane. Someone was Liza Jane. In a song I guess.
It’s an old folk song. The refrain is “O Eliza, little Liza Jane”. That’s all I remember.
Yes that’s how I know it. I can hear a male group singing it in my head, but I’m not sure who it is. Kingston Trio maybe? They sound white, I’ll say that.
Woody Guthrie is one who sang it, Google tells me. Maybe Pete Seeger did too – it sounds Pete Seegerish in my (feeble) memory. Pete Seeger sang pretty much everything.
Ruth Anne is another common one. Sometimes Ruth Anne, sometimes Ruthanne.
The three daughters in the old TV show Petticoat Junction were named Bobbie Jo, Billie Jo and Bettie Jo. (“Owed to Billie Jo” was originally about a IOU from Bettie Jo, but the song changed over the years, I hear.)
The Liza Jane song goes at least back to 1916:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li%27l_Liza_Jane
It might pre-date the Civil War.
I know a Mary Rose (first name). She tends to introduce herself as Maryroseyesliketheship.
I’m having The Waltons flashbacks. Good night Jim Bob.
I had an Aunt Mary Rose, or Maryrose. She passed early this year and even my cousins weren’t entirely sure which since there were documents where it was spelled both ways. She was always “Mary Rose” to everybody and never just “Mary”, which was all that mattered. Maybe the nicest person I knew, I have nothing but fond memories.