Links - 15th June 2019 (3)

Smiling men less attractive to women: study - "Women find men less attractive when they smile compared to when they take on swaggering or brooding poses, a Canadian study has found.In contrast, men find women more attractive when they smile, and least attractive when they look proud and confident... While previous studies have shown that women are judged more attractive when they smile, the researchers believe this is the first study to show that men are judged less attractive when they appear happy.They suggested it was because smiling men were judged to be more feminine and less dominant.The study "helps to explain the enduring allure of 'bad boys' other iconic gender types" and may "inspire online daters to update their profile photo""

Danish nightclubs 'ban' reufgees using language rules after sexual harassment complaints - "The trend started in Sønderborg, where a local military base was converted into refugee housing last year.... The Local.Danish media has reported complaints by women who say they have been harassed and groped by male asylum seekers in Sønderborg and several other towns. Rafi Ibrahim, a Syrian man who owns a nightclub in Haderslev, said refugees moving in since 2014 have “made their mark”. “Many of the refugees and asylum-seekers who go out at the weekend do not know the rules,” he told TV Syd. “When they see a girl, they go crazy, trying to grope her or grab her clothes.”"

Danish clubs use language rules to keep refugees out - " The Buddy Holly discotheque in Sønderborg has a rule that no one can enter the premises unless they can prove that they speak either Danish, English or German. According to the industry group Danmarks Restauranter og Cafeer, which has over 1,500 members nationwide, several other night clubs are considering a similar move.“If you have a group of guests that comes in and displays threatening behaviour then it presents some security-related challenges if you cannot enter into a dialogue”... women in Thisted, Haderslev and Sønderborg reported that some refugees and asylum seekers display aggressive behaviour, touch women inappropriately and refuse to take no for an answer."

William F. Buckley had a way with words - "Buckley never stopped at the surface, equivocated about his positions, or suffered fools gladly (“I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said,” he once quipped when presented with a viewpoint in opposition to his own). Buckley was no friend to the left (“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views”)

Bernie Sanders: Students Silencing Speakers ‘a Sign of Intellectual Weakness’ - "1) Students are too proud to admit their own intellectual weakness; 2) Most of these students are incapable of clearly articulating and defending ideas beyond a superficial level, and most of them know this (which means they'd get shredded by a seasoned speaker). The latter is the bigger problem today. Students feel certainty in the righteousness of their ideas, but not in their ability to express them. Fear and a weird mix of intellectual pride and insecurity are at the heart of this movement. The solution? Don’t bother exposing yourself or your ideas to such scrutiny; just silence the blasphemers.The tragic part is that universities are letting students get away with it."

Humanist Perspectives: issue 202: Social Justice – the new totalitarianism? - "whereas my views would once have been considered centrist, even a bit to the left, they are now considered right-wing and I’m told someone even referred to me as a “right-wing radical.” What happened?Our society has changed – radically – and I would dare to say this has been driven by radicals... I am a strong advocate of social justice, which by my definition means that every person is equal before the law, is entitled not to be discriminated against based on sex, race, ethnic group, religion or sexual orientation, and is free to live her life as she chooses, provided that it does not infringe on the rights of others. But that is not what social justice means in our society today. Social justice today does not mean equality of opportunity for all, but equality of outcome for groups... Any “under-representation” of whatever group in a desirable field of employment is to be attributed to discrimination and the inherent racism, sexism or colonialism of our society. No questions asked, and if you try to ask them, you’ll be vilified, “deplatformed,” and maybe lose your job... The demand for equality of outcome has serious implications for our freedoms. The first freedom to be lost is freedom of speech, that is, the freedom to express ideas that do not align with society’s progressive orthodoxy. In the war of ideas, words are the weapons, and you partially disarm your opponent when you force him/her/xer to use only words that you approve of (as Professor Jordan Peterson could explain). As an example of the enforcement of verbal orthodoxy, in its 2017 Stylebook, the Associated Press directs its journalists not to use the term “illegal alien,” which is a term with a clear legal definition, but “undocumented immigrants.” (And one AP article even used the term “undocumented citizen,” which would seem to be an oxymoron.) And of course, it isn’t going to stop with words. We are now seeing demands to tear down statues that reflect our “racist white capitalist” history in the United States and in Canada, where in August the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario passed a resolution urging school boards to consider removing Sir John A. Macdonald’s name from elementary schools. This demand to rewrite history actually reminds me of the Islamic concept of Jahiliyya, or the obliteration of any evidence of non-Islamic societies, as exemplified by the Taliban’s blowing up the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Ansar Dine’s rampages in the shrines of Timbuktu, the destruction of Palmyra by ISIS, and the desire of Egyptian Islamists to destroy the pyramids, among many other examples. It is not surprising to me that the totalitarians in the social justice movement should make common cause with the Islamist totalitarians, as the goal of both groups is to destroy Western civilization. This is promoted by destabilizing society, and undermining the family and fostering the identification with particularist groups that distrust one another is a very good start"
Addendum: So much for the "myth" of the slippery slope

The first culture war - "In today’s political landscape, where the obsession with identity is so prominent, it is easy to forget that the politics of identity is a fairly recent development. Concern with identity first emerged in response to the cultural confusions that took shape during the increasingly bloody but apparently pointless slaughter on the battlefield of the Great War. The traumatic upheavals unleashed during the course of this four-year-long conflict called into question the moral and intellectual premises of Western culture and civilisation. For many, the war served as the ultimate symbol of moral exhaustion and Western decline. In the immediate aftermath of the war, writes a contemporary historian, we can see the ‘gradual disintegration of Christian confidence in Western cultural values’... the interwar cultural elite was far better at discrediting received roles and identities than developing new ones through which they could endow their personal experience with meaning. Roles and values associated with the past were hastily rejected as redundant. At this point, confusion about identity was sublimated through a one-dimensional renunciation of the values and cultural practices of the pre-war world."

What happened when I wrote about Islam in Britain | Spectator USA - "It was called ‘A Visit to Islamic England.’... Britain’s multicultural policies have produced what the Nobel-prize winning economist Amartya Sen calls, ‘plural monoculturalism.’ That is, different communities, or monocultures, existing side-by-side with little to no interaction with one another.This is the reality I witnessed and described in parts of Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, and Luton. Media commentators can refute it all they like, but I’ve spoken with many Britons and British Muslims from those areas who agree with my portrayals. Plus, the data suggests it is a larger phenomenon across the UK. According to a 2016 survey by ICM Research for Channel 4, more than 50 percent of British Muslims live in areas that are at least 20 percent Muslim. Of that, around a fifth had not even entered the home of a non-Muslim in the past year... Her father began to regularly beat her.At 14, state authorities finally intervened after Halima’s boyfriend called the police. According to the 2014 court hearing, her father beat her with a tennis racket and said he would kill her ‘before the community finds out [about her non-Muslim boyfriend].’ Her father was later convicted of child cruelty and given a suspended sentence. Halima alleges that the police officer who fingerprinted her belonged to the same ethno-religious community and actually worked with her uncle in taking her to her grandfather’s home, where she was further punished... She says Britain’s fear of offending the religious is causing it to turn a blind eye to abuses happening from within. ‘I feel let down by mainstream British society, especially the authorities,’ she says. ‘If I was white my dad would’ve gotten prison time. [Society is] quite oblivious to what happens in spheres other than white middle class circles.’... The few surveys conducted on British Muslims show shockingly regressive attitudes on homosexuality, gender norms, and sex. A 2009 Gallup poll found zero percent of British Muslims believed homosexuality was ‘morally acceptable.’ ICM’s 2016 poll found that 52 percent believe homosexuality should be illegal in the country.These beliefs have implications for other groups in a society. According to a 2018 survey by NatCen, Britain’s largest independent social research agency, Londoners are actually less tolerant of homosexuality and premarital sex than the rest of the country. How could this be so in one of the most modern, cosmopolitan and diverse cities on earth? The survey’s researchers attribute this to ‘religious differences’ — and surely London’s 12.4 percent Muslim community contributes to those, along with black Evangelicals and Eastern European Catholics"

Why people think Germans aren’t funny - "this ability of the German language to be extremely concise perhaps explains why even a good German speaker of English might sound a bit overly precise in English – which can add to the impression that Germans are more earnest than funny... “I think when you try to speak with a literal translation from German to English, you lose a lot of meaning that makes a joke funny. And when you have to explain a joke, it just isn’t funny anymore,” Baumann said. “So naturally, they didn’t think I was funny.”... Fully aware of the stereotype the Germans are labelled with, he writes in his new book, Zum Lachen auf die Insel (To England with Laughs), that Germans are too honest to be polite and the English are too polite to be honest."

43% des Français ne prennent pas de douche tous les jours - "seulement 57% d'entre eux prennent une douche tous les jours, 24% 1 jour sur 2, 11% 1 jour sur 3 et 8% moins souvent"
"Les stéréotypes"

How Often People in Various Countries Shower - "One reason early-20th-century Americans ramped up their weekly baths to daily showers is that marketing companies capitalized on the insecurities of a new class of office drones working in close quarters. As Gizmodo wrote last week, to sell products like "toilet soap" and Listerine to Americans, "the advertising industry had to create pseudoscientific maladies like 'bad breath' and 'body odor.'"... In general, the world's women shower more than men. The exception, according to a 2008 study by hygiene-products company SCA, is Sweden"