How about a sense of proportion? Hmm?
Let’s see. 1-7 dictators and semi-elected heads of state who caused the deaths of millions. 8 & 9 assassins, 10 a cynical and ruthless senator who helped 6 get away with his many crimes.
Dawn Ennis is suggesting these ten are all comparable to a popular author who wrote an essay about why women’s rights matter and how they depend on grasping that women are not men and men are not women.
Not really a very good comparison, I think.
Comments
21 responses to “Tiny exaggeration”
“Not really a very good comparison.”
Says it all really.
The British hate them some Napoleon. And no Mao?
Even on its own terms this is a poor list, and suggests Ennis (of whom I had not previously heard, and hope not to hear of again) lacks both knowledge and imagination. If I were compiling such a list, I’d be sure to include some of the names that really do make British flesh creep: the Moors Murderers, perhaps, or Fred and Rosemary West. I really don’t think Mitch McConnell has much shock value over here.
Trying again as I did something wrong the first time.
Well yes, but only because he wasn’t on our side, and he wasn’t really a bad guy compared with some. He’s quite popular in France, and there is a Place Bonaparte within walking distance of where I’m sitting.
I think you’re missing the point that by far the most important threat to civilization of this time is not Covid-19, or Donald Trump, or global warming, but the systematic suppression of trans women’s right to have everything that real women have.
I hadn’t heard of him either, but he has a web entitled “13 interesting things about managing editor Dawn Ennis” (can you imagine having a page called that?) Among those interesting things we learn
So was I, but it never made think that deep down inside I was really a girl.
A woman, maybe, in terms of the current woke orhodoxy, but in no way female. I wonder if his all-boys Catholic high school understood that he was really a girl.
Maybe, but the other ten things are not interesting either.
LOL. “BFA”. And we who have earned a doctorate are supposed to shut up.
Further in the JK Rowling owns the Transphobia brand. Advice from Slate:-
Q. Conflicted on Harry Potter: I am a mom of three, and my oldest son came out as a trans boy when he was in first grade. He is now 15, and everyone has tried very hard to support him, including his younger brothers. My youngest is 8, and his third-grade teacher read to his class the first Harry Potter book. He loves it and has been asking to read the other books with me and to get him his own wand for Christmas. I read the whole series to my older sons when they were that age and they both used to love it. But my oldest has asked me not to read the books to his younger brother and not to buy Harry Potter merchandise because it would feel to him that I was supporting J.K. Rowling’s horrible anti-trans comments.
I do not agree with Rowling at all and don’t want to invalidate my older son’s feelings, but is it possible to separate art from artist here? I suggested maybe talking about how and why what Rowling said was wrong before reading Harry Potter, but my son said that still meant I was supporting Rowling by letting his brother read her work anyway. Is there anything I can do? I want to let my youngest enjoy the world of Harry Potter without supporting a bigot and disappointing my oldest.
A: This seems fairly straightforward and comparatively low-stakes; you’ve got a trans kid who’s made a specific request of you about financially supporting a living artist who’s made transphobia a significant part of her career, and I think you should honor it. (Besides which, there is no shortage of books for kids about magic, wonder, etc.) Your 8-year-old is old enough to handle a conversation about transphobia, especially since he has a trans brother and it’s likely to come up again in the future. You don’t have to make your youngest feel guilty about having enjoyed the book, or that he should only read authors with unimpeachable characters, but that as the parent of a trans kid, you want to draw the line at buying a living author’s merchandise who’s made transphobia part of their brand. Tell him you’re going to get him something else for Christmas, then ask around for some alternatives.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/12/is-it-wrong-to-read-harry-potter-dear-prudence-advice.html
“Transphobia a significant part of her career” of about 20 best-selling novels turned into films and television.
Athel, #6:
Well, yes, so why mention it at all? I cannot understand why these people demand to be accepted as their target sex yet still remind us all at every opportunity that they are not what they want to be accepted as.
KBPlayer @8,
The current author of the Dear Prudence column at Slate is Daniel Lavery, a trans man who is married to Grace Lavery (she of the recent Foreign Policy article that mangled the Tavistock ruling, as well as that ridiculous picture on her university’s bio page).
But JK Rowling is, like, literally advocating genocide of trans people (in a figurative sense, which you can see if you stand on one foot at a forty-five degree angle, close one eye, and squint just right at the reflection of the sun in a pool of oily water).
Notice the stupid switch that “Daniel” Lavery makes in that answer – the questioner asked about reading the book to the youngest kid and Lavery replied saying not to support Rowling by buying them. Ding ding ding! The questioner has already read the books to the oldest kid so the books are in the house – there’s no need to buy them. Rowling will not get a single penny from the questioner’s reading of the books to the younger children. Lavery is demanding pure disinterested non-financial censoring, as opposed to a boycott to hit the demon in the wallet.
They don’t think so good.
ScreechyMonkey@10
Oooh, I didn’t know that. So that’s why transgenderism is such a big topic on the Slate problem page.
Daniel Lavery is not a patch on his predecessor, Emily Yoffe.
I had my disagreements with Yoffe — for example, she was a complete prude (no pun intended) about anything to do with alcohol — but yeah, she was generally solid.
Lavery is bad not just on trans issues, but on anything relating to jobs/corporations/capitalism generally. He used to constantly advise people to go to HR with every little issue with a co-worker, until enough HR professionals yelled at him that HR isn’t your friend or your mommy or your kindergarten teacher, they’re there to protect the company’s ass. His “advice” recently to a private school teacher was “quit your job, because nobody should work for a private school because private schools shouldn’t exist.”
Slate recently went to a “X free articles per month, then paywall” model, and I’ve discovered I really don’t miss it.
What you’re forgetting is that refusing to completely agree with a transgender person’s description of themselves is now considered actual violence, so JK Rowling has committed an unimaginable number of acts of violence. The comparison to Hitler may in fact be unfair to him. #BelieveScience
OB@12
I didn’t notice that. So unless Mama has had a ritual book burning, the little perisher will be furtively seeking out these forbidden volumes, as we furtively sought out [NAME].
Speaking of trans narcissism, apparently all siblings are now denied Eldest’s permission to read certain books.
Holms@17
So we can expect in a few years time Youngest writing to Slate’s problem page, that he has long been resentful that Eldest was the favoured sibling, allowed access to experiences that Youngest was denied. Youngest thinks that the blatant favouritism shown to Eldest is the root of his difficulties in forming relationships, and he and his mother are barely speaking. Eldest, though supposedly male, is acting like a bossy oldest sister.
@ KBPlayer
If there’s ever a time I’ve desperately wanted a turn as a guest columnist . . .
“Dear Mom of Three:
You say that your “son” “came out” as a “trans boy” in first grade and that you “supported” “him.” Translated, this means that you indulged the wishes of a six- or seven-year-old child by setting that child down the path to a lifetime as a medical patient. Very supportive indeed! So why is it that you can’t also indulge the perfectly reasonable wish of an eight-year-old child who wants to read a harmless work of popular children’s fiction? My advice: worry less about the thought crimes committed by middle-aged women and more about the life expectancy of female teenagers planning to inject testosterone for the rest of their lives.”
As the Smoke Rises Upward
I had a similar thought. A first grader “coming out”? WTF. That is just delusional and a failure of parenting. Certainly, if the little girl was a (old school term) “tomboy”, support that. But don’t cater to delusions that the little girl is REALLY a “boy”.
Why would a child even have to “come out”? I thought the signs of transness in children were obvious, what with the refusal to wear the right clothes, play with the right toys, display the right behaviours, and the the insistence on actually being the other sex. Isn’t that how we all know that getting them medicated ASAP is definitely the only way forward?