Saturday, February 11, 2023

Links - 11th February 2023 (2 - Working from Home)

Meme - "Not allowed to work from home so I don't
My job recently told me that even during the snowstorm we got earlier this week, I am not allowed to work from home at all. Even though I work in IT and do everything remotely, they want me in the office. So I deleted Teams and my email off my phone. I am no longer available after hours. My boss tried to call me for something urgent last night and couldn't reach me. He asked why today and I explained to him what I was told. I am not allowed to work from home."

Opinion: Hybrid offices are creating liability headaches for employers - The Globe and Mail - "The heyday of the hybrid office is coming to an end.  Many CEOs are grumbling that model – a mash-up of remote and in-person work that gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic – is making their employees less productive and corroding corporate culture... Liability headaches are heaping up for companies in a range of industries as large numbers of employees work from home. They involve everything from occupational health and safety issues to privacy and security concerns.  If an employee is hurt while working from home, is it a workplace injury? Should businesses provide workers with ergonomic chairs for remote work? Can health benefits be extended to workers residing in far-flung jurisdictions? What happens if a family member overhears sensitive information during a Zoom call? Are employees leaving confidential documents lying around their homes? Can companies require that employees regularly change the passwords on their residential WiFi routers to prevent cybersecurity breaches?... a 2021 decision by a Quebec administrative labour tribunal sparked a debate about the definition of workplace injuries in the era of hybrid work.  In that case, Alexandria Gentile-Patti, an Air Canada call centre employee who was working from home, fell down the stairs and hurt herself during her lunch break. Although the airline conceded that she was hurt, it questioned whether the accident constituted a workplace injury since she wasn’t at her computer at the time.  Not only did the tribunal rule that her fall was indeed a workplace injury, it also deemed her eligible for workers’ compensation. In making that determination, the tribunal stated her fall, which occurred just moments after she disconnected from her workstation, represented “an unforeseen and sudden event” that occurred during work... A lot of companies embraced the hybrid model to attract and retain workers. But the economy is slowing and executives are concerned about liability risks."

B.C. tribunal decision on ‘time theft’ opens door for firms to track employees more, lawyer warns - The Globe and Mail - "Sandra Robinson, an organizational psychologist at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, says tracking or micromanaging employees with software erodes trust and goodwill.  Organizations should track outcomes, not processes. Even before the pandemic, there was a strong push to make work more results oriented... employers must focus on playing the long game and build a high-quality relationship with their employees through good remuneration and treating them with respect... Surveillance software that records every key stroke and mouse click to gauge whether an employee is working is counterproductive and will end up costing the organization, she said.  “Working adults want autonomy,” Prof. Robinson said. “You don’t want your employees to feel they’re not trusted. It could backfire because the reason most companies are doing remote or hybrid is because they’re trying to attract and retain employees. If you micromanage them, they will leave.”"

Disney CEO Bob Iger tells employees to return to the office four days a week - "Iger’s four-day-per-week stipulation is relatively strict compared with other large companies, which have opted for two or three mandated in-office days for hybrid employees"

From Singapore to Japan, workers get restless as offices call - Nikkei Asia - "Recent research shows that Asian companies are more eager than their Western counterparts to open up offices and bring employees back full time, after more than two years of widespread remote work. But many employers are being met with reluctance or resistance, with some studies showing that large proportions of workers lack a feeling of "connectedness" to their organizations and are likely to quit... A survey EY published in July found that 45% of respondents in Southeast Asia indicated they were likely to leave their jobs in the next 12 months. This was the result mostly of a desire for higher pay, better career opportunities and more flexibility amid rising inflation, a shrinking labor market and an increase in jobs offering flexible work, EY said. The survey covered more than 1,500 business leaders and over 17,000 employees across 22 countries. Yet many Asian companies seem intent on forcing workers back into the office. Earlier this year, when U.S. real estate services firm CBRE surveyed 150 Asia-Pacific companies, nearly 40% of respondents were expecting staff members to work fully on site, up from 26% in 2021. This contrasted sharply with results from the U.S., Europe, Middle East and Africa, where just 5% or fewer expected workers to be in the office all the time... "One of the biggest trends that we saw in 2021 was 'The Great Resignation,' which saw resignations around the world reaching an all-time high," Leung said. "However, another phenomenon has been 'The Great Reshuffle,' which refers to a large swath of workers reconfiguring their careers and focusing on jobs that best fit their personal needs." Leung said that it is "clear that a number of factors are driving general dissatisfaction and restlessness." Companies, she continued, will need "to keep pace with new employee expectations and adopt a more holistic approach to the types of benefits they provide."... the significant majority of expats working in Europe and Australia were confident that they would remain overseas. The same could not be said for Asia, with only 5% of those in India and 16% of those in mainland China confident that they would stay put. Another set of troubling numbers for employers was released in May by the consultancy Accenture. Its survey of about 5,000 workers and 1,000 top executives in a range of countries found that in places such as Singapore, India, China and Japan, fewer than 40% of respondents felt highly connected to their colleagues and companies. One might assume that this was the result of pandemic disruptions and months or years of remote work. But a closer look at the data shows that those who worked on-site felt the least connected, versus their remote- or hybrid-working peers."

A Meta employee paid $300,000 for a cruise ship condo so he can work from home while traveling, report says - "Austin Wells, a 28-year old employee of Reality Labs, Meta's virtual reality arm, will be one of the residents on the MV Narrative.   The cruise ship promises to let guests live permanently at sea – at a price. Permanent 237-square-foot studios went on the market this year for $1 million.  Wells, from San Diego, told CNBC he was enticed by the opportunity to see the world while maintaining a semblance of routine that would allow him to continue working. And the 12-year lease put a cap on the price tag for the soon-to-be digital nomad...   The MV Narrative, run by luxury travel company Storylines, promises residents the opportunity to visit all six continents on a 1,000-day circumnavigation, spending an average of three days in each port.   The price tag includes nearly everything a resident could need, with food, drink, and laundry services provided, alongside all the recreational activities found on a luxury cruise liner like gyms and performances."

Don’t Let Employees Pick Their WFH Days - "about 70% of firms, from tiny companies to massive multinationals like Google, Citi, and HSBC, plan to move to some form of hybrid working... 32% of employees say they never want to return to working in the office... 21% tell us they never want to spend another day working from home...   One concern is managing a hybrid team, where some people are at home and others are at the office. I hear endless anxiety about this generating an office in-group and a home out-group...   The second concern is the risk to diversity. It turns out that who wants to work from home after the pandemic is not random. In our research we find, for example, that among college graduates with young children women want to work from home full-time almost 50% more than men. This is worrying given the evidence that working from home while your colleagues are in the office can be highly damaging to your career... allowing employees to choose their WFH schedules could contribute to a diversity crisis... This would be both a diversity loss and a legal time bomb for companies... managers should decide which days their team should WFH. For example, if the manager picks WFH on Wednesday and Friday, everyone would come in on the other days. The only exceptions should be new hires, who should come in for an extra office day each week for their first year in order to bond with other new recruits. Of course, firms that want to efficiently use their office space will need to centrally manage which teams come in on which days... To encourage coordination, companies should also make sure that teams that often work together have at least two days of overlap in the office."
Some people get very upset when I point out that some people don't like to work from home, for some reason
Diversity means forcing people to do what they don't want in pursuit of equity, resulting in everyone being unhappy

What remote work does to your brain and body - "If you’ve been working remotely for sometime now, you may have already noticed the physical impact on your body. According to Krys Hines, a Washington, D.C.-based workplace wellness and ergonomics educator at KH Ergo and Wellness, the recent shift to remote work has aged our bodies by about 10 to 15 years.   “Quite abruptly people were making workspaces at home that perpetuated postural strain and mechanical stress. Work was happening at the kitchen table, on the couch, in the bed, and from a desk space without ergonomic support specific to the individual,” she says. “Essentially, people fit themselves into a workspace instead of creating a workspace for their body.”  But it’s not just our bodies that are hurting. In a 2020 Microsoft study, researchers found that “remote collaboration is more mentally challenging than in-person collaboration,” but not necessarily in a good way. The study found that “brainwave patterns associated with stress and overwork were much higher when collaborating remotely than in-person.”...   To counter Zoom fatigue and reduce eye strain, experts recommend breaks between meetings. According to the basic rest-activity cycle (also known as BRAC), humans are optimized to pay attention for about 45 minutes, but at 90 minutes, our cognition drops significantly. Need to jumpstart your brain? Try walking through a door to reset your short-term memory."

A boss got angry at employees' Microsoft Teams habits. It didn't go well - "He called a meeting. This was "because the manager is not impressed with our department logging onto teams at 8:35 while working from home when we're supposed to be clocking on at 8:30."  The shame of it. The sheer impurity and impudence.  Yet, as u/Watsis_name pointed out: "This simply means that we're starting our workday at 8:30, and it takes a few minutes for our computer to load up, the same as in the office.""

Remote work could be the reason you're not getting a raise: NBER paper | Fortune - " Remote work has an innate “amenity value,” comparable to company-provided lunch or discounted gym membership, explain the researchers. The value of remote work is taking the time that workers once spent commuting to an office and giving it back to spend with themselves and their family. There’s a price for that, the paper argues, and it could explain this year’s 3% decline in hourly earnings... the NBER researchers said they’re “hard-pressed” to find a positive amenity-value shock as huge as remote work; they peg its amenity value on wage growth at about two percentage points over the past two years. That’s the cumulative, one-time effect of transitioning to persistently high levels of working from home. A whopping 38% of the nearly 600 companies surveyed by the researchers said they’ve offered more remote roles in the past year owing to “moderate wage-growth pressures,” and 41% expect to do so in the coming year. In other words, to alleviate pressure from employees on wages, companies are turning to the “perk” of remote work instead."

Take advantage of in-office ‘anchor days’ to strengthen relationships and build skills - The Globe and Mail - "1. Deep collaboration: One of Mr. Razzetti’s six identified modes is Deep Collaboration (for example, teamwork without distraction, to accomplish a single task together). Not all collaboration is best accomplished in-person – it has been shown that an asynchronous and remote form can mitigate bias and groupthink. However, when we need to focus as a team on accomplishing one common task or goal, being together in the same room can enable quicker alignment and decision making.
2. On-the-job learning: Data from The Power of Proximity study suggests people give and receive more regular feedback when in proximity with people on their teams, even in a digital world. This type of feedback is considered “on the job” and/or “in the flow” learning, which is a critical component of building new skills.
3. Exchanging human energy: Or “casual collaboration,” per Mr. Razzetti. The Microsoft report indicates that:
    85 per cent of employees would be motivated to go into the office to rebuild team bonds.
    84 per cent would be motivated to go into the office if they could socialize with coworkers.
    74 per cent would go to the office more frequently if they knew their “work friends” were there.
    73 per cent would go to the office more frequently if they knew their direct team members would be there."

✨ on Twitter - "Work From Home is overrated. Instead, I propose Work From IKEA. Go to IKEA when it’s absolutely dead during the week and join a video conference from a different mock room every hour until your team notices."

What exactly is the dress code these days? - "Expectations in the workplace changed through the decades, but in the early days they could be easily traced to common understandings of what it meant to be “professional.” For men, the suit is the most enduring symbol of that understanding. “The suit reflected seriousness and practicality; it conveyed a hierarchy of status,” says Richard Thompson Ford in his book Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History. Doing business—making money—was a serious endeavor for serious people, therefore looking the part was key to success.   But even enduring symbols are subject to trends. In the ‘50s, it was suits accompanied by hats and overcoats. In the ‘60s, brighter colors and patterns began to emerge. The ‘70s brought forward more expressive details, like wider lapels. In the ‘80s, power suits emerged, and women got in on the trend—a physical manifestation of the fight for equality. Then casual Fridays arrived, and Silicon Valley became the hub it remains today. The tech world is rampant with hoodies, denim, and famously not wasting time thinking about what to wear, evaporating the assumption that successful people only wear suits to work. And while certain metrics of success do still come swathed in Super 120 wool blends, enough moguls adorned themselves in hoodies and flip flops that the narrative began to erode. Suddenly, an understated look meant something new. You weren’t a slob—you were a creative. That programmer isn’t lazy; she’s just got better things to do than press a shirt"

The Impact of Extent of Telecommuting on Job Satisfaction: Resolving Inconsistent Findings - "Although popular management wisdom has suggested that telecommuting enhances job satisfaction, research has found both positive and negative relationships. In this study, the authors attempt to resolve these inconsistent findings by hypothesizing a curvilinear, inverted U-shaped relationship between the extent of telecommuting and job satisfaction. Using hierarchical regression analysis on a sample of 321 professional-level employees, their findings suggest a curvilinear link between extent of telecommuting and job satisfaction, with satisfaction appearing to plateau at more extensive levels of telecommuting. In addition, task interdependence and job discretion moderated this link, suggesting that some job attributes play an important, contingent role."

Covid News: Remote Work Lets Young Americans Take Road Trips - Bloomberg - "Without kids, mortgages or offices to tie them down, some Americans are city hopping in search of new scenery and open space.
From 2020

The Big Read: Working from home becomes a nightmare when lines are blurred and boundaries trampled - "With “homeworking” taking root amid the Covid-19 pandemic, many employees in Singapore find themselves being pushed to the limits, as the boundaries between work and home become blurred... Stella told TODAY that her work environment was positive and ideal before remote working began. But once it started, “there were no lines drawn and I basically worked around the clock, even on weekends”...   “Sometimes I feel that mandated work from home is a reverse social leveller because it really prohibits the less wealthy from having the conducive environment to work”... some human resource experts told TODAY that it is unrealistic to implement “right to disconnect” legislation in Singapore.  Ms Angela Kuek, director of recruitment firm Meyer Consulting Group, said: “I think they can encourage these kinds of practices, but how much of it is actually put in play or how successful all these can be is another question.  “It comes down to Asian culture and mentality. We work more hours, bosses need more visibility and facetime, and you have to be responsive. This work ethic has been around for decades in Singapore, so one hard and fast rule will not work.”"

No more free coffee as bankers return to Goldman Sachs - "As Labor Day weekend came to a close and bankers at Goldman Sachs shuffled back to the office on Tuesday morning for the mandatory return to a five-day in-office workweek, they found the free coffee cart, which usually sat in the lobby of the 200 West Street office, missing.  The days of the complimentary “grab and go” coffee station, brought in last year as an incentive to get people back into the office, are now over, the New York Post reports, as the banking giant strips away pandemic-era perks... Goldman CEO David Solomon previously called work from home an “aberration” and told Fortune, “I just don’t think the way we work in our business is that different than it was five years ago, and I don’t think it will be different five years from now.”... Goldman is hoping to go back to the way things were before the pandemic. Over the past two years, Goldman had also paused its annual year-end performance reviews, where the company would famously cut 5% of its bottom performing employees—but Goldman executives warned this practice would come back by the end of the year... Goldman is also ending free daily car rides to and from the office, which were introduced at the start of the COVID outbreak to help those who still wished to go into the office. And it also isn’t the only company doing away with perks. Morgan Stanley has taken away free tickets to the U.S. Open tennis championship, which were once available to top performers at the bank...   But as companies aggressively push to get employees back into the office, the best perk a company could offer may just be an option for hybrid work."

New York Times workers pledge not to return to office - "The New York Times expects employees to start returning to the office three days a week starting this week — but more than 1,300 journalists are saying hell no, they won’t go.  It’s just the latest blow in the increasingly bitter contract dispute between the News Guild journalists union — which includes reporters and photographers, as well as some editors and business-side employees — and upper management, over wages.  As of Monday, 1,316 Times workers had signed a pledge not to return to the office. This includes 879 members of the News Guild, but also members of the Times Tech Guild and the union for Wirecutter, the paper’s product-recommendation spinoff... being forced to return to the office during a period of high inflation means workers will have to spend more money on gas, mass transit, clothing and lunches, despite the lack of salary increases... “The @nytimes is giving employees branded lunch boxes this week as a return-to-office perk"... the branded NYT lunch boxes did not have any sandwiches or other lunch food inside. “They were empty,” said one source. “And the lunch box had no handles.”...   Sources with knowledge of the company’s stance previously told The Post that Times management was putting off wage negotiations until many other issues — such as adding Juneteenth, Veterans Day and Indigenous Peoples Day to the calendar — were settled.  But the last wage hike went into effect in March 2020. “The company negotiators are not slow-walking, they are no-walking the wage negotiations”...   In addition to an 8% raise, the News Guild had been demanding a cost-of-living increase of 5.25% — and insisting that all workers who can work remotely retain that option indefinitely, and with no mandatory return to offices before July 2023"

WFH crowd returns to the office and cuts holidays short as recession clouds gather - "The City's financial institutions were forced to come up with outlandish bribes to cajole their employees to return to the office this time last year.  Law firm Slaughter and May offered free breakfast, Goldman Sachs gave its bankers ice cream and investment firm Fidelity International dished out candy floss and popcorn to the workers who made it in.  Those bribes have now been replaced by stern summons issued to workers who still want to stay at home.  Apple has ordered its employees to return to the office for three days a week from September to encourage the “in-person collaboration that is so essential to our culture”. Chief executive Tim Cook wrote a memo to all of his employees last week calling for their return in a sign that managers have still not been able to convince staff to get back to office work... Investment banks are teeing up job cuts already, and top brass are now keen to make sure they are around so they can properly manage “a situation that might get worse”, he says, while younger bankers want to get face time with the people deciding who stays and who goes... people who live close to their workplaces may head into the office to save on energy bills, which are now forecast to soar past £5,000 just as the job cuts start to bite."

Older CEOs hate letting employees work from home - "After one CEO asked a question about the merits of hybrid work, the conversation suddenly became highly emotive. A show of hands revealed most CEOs disliked the policy of remote working. Another showed most were only getting their staff into the office for two days a week at best.   Their dilemma was painfully clear. Should they force staff to return by threatening to fire them, as Elon Musk recently did at Tesla Inc.? Strongly urge them to return, like Wall Street bosses such as David Solomon of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.? Or take the same route as Tim Cook of Apple Inc., who initially demanded curbs on remote work but was forced to compromise after mass protests?  As the debate raged, it turned this economics dinner into something more like a communal corporate therapy session. “It’s the biggest single issue,” the boss of a Midwest industrial group forlornly admitted...   The arguments were intense and driven by culture as much as logistics and economics. As a family therapist might say, the debates showed the generations often “talk past each other.” The same words can mean very different things to people because their assumptions clash... Another theme that emerged from these debates was that most older executives blithely assume it will be easier for them to put an end to remote work when the summer is over — and if a recession hits.  But this assumption may be misguided too; surveys from groups such as Gallup consistently show most people working from home today expect to continue to do so, most of the time. It is a fascinating moment to be a corporate anthropologist and a nightmare for those CEOs."

Civil servants ordered back to work sent home again because office is full

Employers be warned: If you aren't careful, remote work could become a permanent feature of your staff's employment terms - "A study on the productivity of the Canadian workforce by enterprise firm Aternity Inc. found that employees who work from home are 22 per cent less productive per hour worked relative to those at the office and, more alarmingly, found that productivity gap increases the longer employees remain home. This desire to get employees back to the office is juxtaposed with a different competing fear, that ordering employees back to work will result in many resigning at a time when it is already difficult to recruit and retain for most positions."

How a Recession Could Weaken the Work-From-Home Revolution - The Atlantic - "Sometimes, a trend that seems inevitable turns out to be a fragile creature of circumstance. For example, throughout the 2010s, a fleet of consumer-tech companies took venture-capital money to provide subsidized services—including Uber and Lyft for ride-shares and DoorDash and Postmates for food delivery. As I wrote this month, these companies were beneficiaries of a low-interest-rate environment, in which investors were eager for firms with world-conquering ambitions to burn cash and grow. Then, the party ended: Interest rates rose along with nominal wages, investors demanded profits, and now an Uber from here to the end of the block costs about $100. Recently, I’ve been wondering whether the work-from-home revolution might suffer a similar fate. Clearly, the pandemic and the brisk economic recovery helped remote work in several ways. The coronavirus closed offices, and the ensuing tight labor market gave workers power to quit jobs, fight for more money, and reject the purgatorial tradition of a daily commute... management may regain the upper hand from labor, as the Great Resignation becomes the Great Labor Slackening. Company culture will more resemble what bosses want, rather than what workers want—and that could mean a lot more butts in seats... We’re already getting little glimpses of how a bleak economic situation might burst the WFH bubble. Several weeks ago, Elon Musk told his employees to return to the office or else lose their jobs. This initially looked like a straightforward threat by an eccentric CEO with a passion for office-based proximity. But days later, Tesla announced that it would likely have to lay off 10 percent of its workforce, suggesting that Musk was using the threat of return-to-office to get some of his workers to quit on their own, without the indignity of announcing a large layoff. This morally dubious playbook is widely available. Several tech companies, including Apple, have tried out (and in some cases abandoned) a version of this stealth layoff strategy, according to the investor Jason Calacanis. “These companies are too prideful to do layoffs, so instead they say, ‘Come back to the office or quit!’”... from a purely mathematical standpoint, the most rational thing for a zombie-office company to do during a recession is to slash spending on everything related to the office"

As Remote Work Becomes Permanent, Can Manhattan Adapt? - The New York Times - "With more companies settling into a permanent period of hybrid work, the average New York City office worker is predicted to reduce annual spending near the office by $6,730 from a prepandemic total of around $13,700, the largest drop of any major city, according to research from economists at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Stanford University and the University of Chicago... The decline in Manhattan office workers poses a profound threat to the city’s real estate-reliant tax base, money that helps fund schools, the police and parks. Without regular commuters, the region’s public transit systems face service cuts that will disproportionately harm workers who must show up in person. And it has also contributed to the shuttering of coffee shops, dry cleaners and other small businesses that served commuters. Vacant storefronts have increased across Manhattan, according to the city comptroller’s office, and in some parts of Midtown, one in three retail spaces are empty... Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said this month in his annual shareholder letter that about half of his roughly 271,000 employees would be in the office five days a week, a notable shift from one of the biggest holdouts for in-person work. JPMorgan is New York City’s largest private-sector employer.  Mr. Dimon also criticized virtual work, saying that it slowed decision-making and hurt “spontaneous learning and creativity.” But in the current war for talent, with job openings near record highs, many companies say flexible work policies are key to gaining an edge over competitors. Women are also far more likely to cite remote work as a job requirement... Unqork announced it would become a remote-first company, allowing employees to work from anywhere. The company almost tripled in size during the pandemic and has about 600 employees worldwide.  “It’s a more efficient way to find talent,” said the firm’s chief executive, Gary Hoberman. “If they want to work in Antarctica, that’s fine,” noting that one employee did in fact spend a month of the pandemic near the South Pole... Matt Cooper, Skillshare’s chief executive, is reluctant to sign a lease on a long-term office space, worried that everyone would be pressured to use it. Whenever he sees a competitor announce a return-to-office date, he said he directs his recruiters to target engineers at those companies... Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, found in his research that New York City’s office workers plan to cut in half the number of days they spend in the office, the most of any city except San Francisco.  That poses substantial risks to the city’s tax base, which is heavily reliant on full office buildings. Before the pandemic, office buildings in Manhattan supplied more than a quarter of the city’s property tax revenue, according to the New York State Comptroller’s Office... Despite the prevalence of remote work policies, they have not necessarily triggered an exodus out of New York, some employers said.  After announcing a work-from-anywhere policy in December, the number of lawyers at Quinn Emanuel reporting to its New York office remains largely unchanged at around 300. Some lawyers are instead keeping their apartments in the city and spending winters in a warmer location or a skiing destination, said Andrew Rossman, a New York managing partner at Quinn. “It’s almost shocking to me that I don’t have tons of people saying they’re going to live in a less expensive place than New York”"
Yet liberals hate rich people, gentrification and densification. Presumably the public services they demand can be financed by debt indefinitely

Western men turn to Asian beauties

Western men turn to Asian beauties

l am a 25—year-old British woman, who came to work in Hong Kong about six months ago. I secured a job in an office with about 20 Western, good looking young males from the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia, and looked forward to a full social life in Hong Kong.

After six months, not even one man has asked me to go out for a date, nor taken any notice of me at all. All of them have Filippina, Thai or Chinese girlfriends.

When I look at these naturally beautiful Asian women, who don't even have to wear make-up or do any exercise to achieve their good looks and perfect bodies, it makes me feel so depressed and inadequate, I'm afraid the time has come for me to face facts and go back to Britain where the majority of men have never been exposed to the Asian experience and are still content to have a relationship with a pale-skinned plain Jane like myself. I shall never complain about sexual harassment again.

WENDY JONES
Tsim Sha Tsui"

Comments:

"Asian woman are stunning but come with their own issues too. The amount of crazy stories I've heard from friends dating Asian woman is wild. The foreign guy always loses so there is also that.

The foreign woman who date/ marry Asian guys tend to last and the crazy stories are far and few."

"the most boring and/or cray-cray Asians I've seen, and imo statistically as a group, would be Filipinas. Ooh boy, can they be "off"!! Perhaps it's the combo of extreme Catholicism and their ancestral island heritage... not sure, but my advice there is "avoid"."

"I feel like a masculine man in Asia. Where as in my country Australia the woke brigade has taken the spot light"
"M8, your women @ downunder make Mussolini look like a girl."

"I worked with an American woman in Bangkok who basically said almost exactly the same thing."

"Sounds like the salty western women I meet in Bangkok and Pattaya... then when you try to hook up with them they say they won’t do the things that Thai girls will do…so I don’t even bother with them"

"Almost certainly written in the 90s by a bored male sub on the South China Morning Post."
"Wrong typeface"
"Eastern Express?"

"Western anglo women are way too confrontational for most Asian men."

"I drive a cab in England, when an English girl asks what I see in thai women I always respond with go look in the mirror."

"Just like she never saw a single Hong Kong guy attractive, not a single western guy saw her attractive
Strange how the world works eh 🤷🏽‍♂️"

"it’s so nice when western girls face this here in asia as they usually behave as a queen in europe… 🤣🤣"

"I've witnessed this first hand. I've literally seen the attitudes change as the girls realised the guys weren't interested in them. Bloody hilarious!...."

"And in the end, she realized she just wanted to be able to buy pants her size in the shops 🥲"

"Ive been with my Thai wife for 13 years, she gives me money! Just don’t marry the first bar girl you take back to your hotel!"

"I hear white women go to Africa for men"

"Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to see a western woman living in Asia all alone. Now they know exactly what it’s like for men in the west."

"Western women are just men with vaginas"

Related, from 2012 (full article):


"Theme: Dinner with Foreigners
Date: 5th May (Sat) 8-10pm
Places Available: Total: 20
Price: Ladies: 4800. Men: Free for foreigners. Dinner included
Venue: Mandarin Oriental Hotel, HK
Eligibility: Men: 35-48, professionals and Foreigners only.
Ladies: Single Professionals
Details: If you don’t meet anyone that you are interested in, we will follow up and arrange a complimentary date based on your preference.
Details and sign up: www.hkspeeddating.com"

Apparently, an earlier version said:

"Free for foreigners is because we have a 39 years old German banker meet his wife from our event and sponsor few quota for foreigners and hope they are as lucky as like him."

Links - 11th February 2023 (1 - #MeToo)

Sir Ian McKellen is "waiting" for #MeToo accusation against him - "Sir Ian McKellen says he is “waiting for someone to accuse” him of sexual misconduct in the wake of allegations against director Bryan Singer and actor Kevin Spacey...  “Well frankly, I’m waiting for someone to accuse me of something, and me wondering whether they’re not telling the truth and me having forgotten.”"

School bans pupils from hugging or having relationships - "Pupils have been banned from having romantic relationships and hugging at a school in Essex as part of new rules to make them "focus on their learning".  Hylands School in Chelmsford has said they "do not allow" romantic relationships between pupils and that physical contact could lead to "inappropriate" touching.  Parents have been critical of the hands off policy but the school has said most parents and pupils are supportive and that it "engenders mutual respect and encourages pupils to behave professionally as any future employer would expect"... The letter sent by the school said that "any aggressive physical contact, hugging, holding hands, slapping someone, etc." would not be tolerated, adding, "this is in order to keep your child safe".   "If your child is touching somebody else, whether they are consenting or not, anything could happen. It could lead to an injury, make someone feel very uncomfortable, or someone being touched inappropriately""

Don't mind the Hollywood age gap - "was the sight of an older man with a younger woman really such a problem?  Laura Dern and Sam Neill seem to think so. Speaking ahead of the release of their new film, Jurassic World Dominion, the Hollywood stars recently reflected on their roles as a romantic couple in the original 1993 film, Jurassic Park, when Neill was 42 and Dern 23. Dern said that since then she had developed an ‘awareness of the patriarchy’, and that both her and Neill now realise that this age gap was ‘completely inappropriate’.  Neill’s description of Dern being of a ‘tender age’ at 23 is amusing in itself. Thirteen is a tender age. At 23 Dern was an adult. Not only that, she had been acting since she was six, and already had two hugely successful David Lynch films under her belt by the time she appeared in Jurassic Park. So why are both actors suggesting that, at 23, Dern was too young to be involved – even just onscreen – with an older man? Are they suggesting it put her at risk? This seems unlikely. Neither had a bad experience working with the other, as the fact that both are now starring in the new Jurassic Park film together surely attests. So why do both feel the need to suggest that there was something sinister about their onscreen relationship from almost 30 years ago? This is a perfect example of post-#MeToo logic at work. Too often today, we are encouraged to reinterpret our perfectly innocent past experiences in the light of sexual abuse and an ‘awareness of the patriarchy’... The infantilisation of women is one of the worst consequences of the #MeToo panic. We are increasingly encouraged to see ourselves as children, always in need of help, even when we’re well into our adult years. It’s this logic that encourages alleged feminist campaigners to call for laws against wolf-whistling builders, or for policies in the workplace that protect women from sexist comments.   If women want to be taken seriously, we must resist the urge to play the victim at every opportunity – especially when it comes to revisiting the past. Rather than viewing history and culture as one long tale of women’s victimisation and abuse, young women today should be inspired by the victories and achievements of women who lived and worked in times when it really was tricky to be a woman in a man’s world.  If we start accepting that women in their twenties are still too vulnerable to face the world without protection, we might as well give up on the idea of women’s freedom altogether."
Time to "protect" young women by raising the age of consent, as well as stopping them from driving, working and signing legal contracts till they are older
Addendum: So much for "love is love is love"

Dame Joanna Lumley scoffs at ‘fashionable victimhood’ and says ‘women used to be tough’ - "Dame Joanna Lumley has claimed that victimhood is the “'new fashion” for women.  Discussing the Me Too movement, the actress and presenter said that in her early days in the entertainment industry women took a “tough” approach to unwanted advances, but this has now changed.  Dame Joanna has claimed that victimhood is now the “fashion” for modern women and branded it “pathetic”.  She told Prospect magazine: “If someone whistled at you in the street, it didn't matter, if someone was groping, we slapped their hands.  “We were quite tough and looked after ourselves… the new fashion is to be a victim, a victim of something. It's pathetic, we have gone mad.”... the 76-year-old star said that many people were “claiming the mental illness bandwagon” and that “the mental health thing is being overplayed”.  She argued that what many people said were signs of mental illness were simply emotions which are part of “being human”.  She also warned in a 2021 interview that gender parity in the entertainment industry may never happen, as women will always be pressured to be beautiful “because in the whole long time that human beings have been alive, women have always had to look good for men to like them”."
Internalised misogyny!

Female academics’ opportunities ‘cut by #MeToo’ | Times Higher Education (THE) - "The #MeToo movement has diminished female researchers’ careers by inhibiting collaborations at a crucial early stage... A study of female academics at 58 top US economic departments has found that their research productivity almost halved from 2018, after the #MeToo movement focused the world’s attention on sexual harassment in the workplace. The study says that collaborations between female and male researchers had declined sharply. Women had few female alternatives to turn to – unlike men, who simply switched to collaborating with other men. The negative effects were apparent in universities with higher numbers of sexual harassment cases and where harassment policies were “ambiguous”. In organisations with clear policies, the study found no significant decline in collaborations."
We keep getting told that if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. Clearly the only men who would be wary of ambiguous harassment policies are creeps

Columbia Settles a Complicated Sexual Assault Case - The New York Times - "It began as a night of drinking and flirtation between two Columbia University classmates four years ago. It turned into a federal lawsuit with unusually detailed documentation.  And now it has ended in a settlement that underscores the contentiousness of the national debate over campus sexual misconduct cases, a debate that the incoming Biden administration is expected to join soon as it considers whether to overhaul federal sexual assault policies.  Under the settlement filed on Dec. 23, Columbia has restored the diploma of Ben Feibleman, whom a three-member university panel had found responsible for sexually assaulting a female classmate. It has also agreed to pay him an undisclosed cash award and to send a statement to prospective employers describing him as an alumnus in good standing... The case is unusual because Mr. Feibleman willingly sued under his own name, rather than a pseudonym, and because he had made a 30-minute audiotape of the sexual encounter. That recording became a centerpiece of his defense... It paints a picture of a campus culture in which students have become hyper-aware of the rules of academic sexual misconduct and worry about how every intimate encounter is going to look down the road... More than 600 federal and state lawsuits have been filed by students accused of sexual misconduct since April 2011, when the Obama administration instituted its new policies"

Half of single men avoid approaching women for fear of seeming creepy - "this isn’t just bad for men, but also for women if “terrific single men won’t approach them out of fear of being perceived as creepy.”... women regularly experience creepy behaviors. 82 percent of women reported experiencing creepy behavior "sometimes," "often," or "constantly."  Men avoid women out of fear of being creepy. 44 percent of men said the fear of being creepy “reduces their likelihood of interacting with women” generally, which jumps to 53 percent of men who reported that they are single. There are nine creepy behaviors Anderson found that men should avoid: staring, unwanted contact on social media, inappropriate comments, controlling behaviors, won’t accept "no," unwanted physical contact, pressure for sex, clinginess, and physical stalking... “Through coaching more than 1,000 men, I’ve learned that few guys can reliably predict which photos of themselves are, or aren’t, attractive”"

How #MeToo has RUINED dating by making men scared to approach women in real life, expert says - "A dating expert has claimed the #MeToo movement has made men across the world scared to approach women on the street for fear they'll come across as 'creepy' or be accused of harassment.  Kezia Noble, 38, from Chelsea, south west London, an author who appeared as a coach on Celebs Go Dating in 2018, said many blokes have adopted dull 'nice guy' filters that actually repel women rather than attract them.  The divorced mother-of-one, whose YouTube videos offering dating advice have received 75 million views, said while the empowering movement has served a 'very good purpose', she is concerned about its 'trickle effect' which has made men feel they can't talk to or interact with women in real life. Keziadded that most women she speaks to say they are fed up with 'woke' men being 'too nice and bumbling' and want a guy to take the bull by the horns and ask them out... 'I know when I talk to guys now and they approach me, I think, "Oh God this is like some weird filter you've got on because you're scared of #MeToo or something",' she said.   'It's a bit dull. It's watering the guy's traits down - his character, his boldness - to make him this nice, inoffensive, bland, forgettable "nice guy".'  She argued that men can be 'alpha males' without being a 'b*****d' to women, adding: 'Treat 'em mean to keep them keen doesn't mean be abusive, it just means don't be so readily available. 'Show that you have other options, things like that - it's just game strategy which women play on men and men play on women. I just feel like that's getting a bit lost.'... She claims the #MeToo 'fear' has pushed men towards dating apps, which she argues don't work because people are judged purely on how they look in a picture - and often those photos are heavily edited and filtered. She added it's also meant many people now lack engaging conversation and flirting skills because they're so used to communicating via text messages.  'We're not talking to people one-on-one in real life, so our social skills are not in good shape,' she argued.   'A lot of women say, "This guy was so witty in his text messages but when I saw him he was a social freak and it was really awkward".' This is part of the reason she urges singletons to ditch dating apps - something she has never used herself.  'I know that with all my ex-boyfriends, if I'd seen them on a dating app I would never have never swiped right'... 'I always say think about what your three best-selling points are, think about what you've got going for you, and bring that to the forefront of a conversation.  'A lot of guys will say, "She has to get to know me", but no she doesn't, it's not that simple.  'You have to market yourself very quickly. Listen and don't come out with the same c*** everyone does.   'If she says, "I'm from Spain", rather than going "What part, how long have you been here for?" replace that generic with something like, "You know what I've never been there, tell me two things that make it an incredible place to visit"... 'I don't hear women complaining about men approaching them... If she's single and you're going there and having an authentic conversation with her, I think most women are going to be quite engaged with that.'"
Of course the feminists claim that approaching a woman is sexual harassment

#MeToo's Alyssa Milano called a hypocrite supporting Warnock - "Actress Alyssa Milano has been a vocal #MeToo advocate, but some are claiming that the Democratic activist's morals appear to waver when it comes to the Georgia Senate runoffs.  During Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings in 2018, Milano was extremely critical of Kavanaugh, and welcomed all of the allegations against him without questioning them. She wore a sash with the words "BELIEVE WOMEN" on it during Kavanaugh's hearing. She also sat behind Kavanaugh and held up a booklet that read: "I BELIEVE SURVIVORS."... Milano is raising money for Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock, who was allegedly involved in a domestic dispute... "Do you see a hypocrite when you look in the mirror @Alyssa_Milano Asking for a friend #metoo #timesup." The reply included a Rose McGowan tweet, where the actress torched Milano and called her a "fraud" for her silence about the sexual accusations against Joe Biden by former Senate staffer Tara Reade."

Title IX: How Hundreds of Campus #MeToo Punishments Could Get Tossed - "Much like the Baylor case, the John Doe suing Michigan State claims the university used Title IX as a “weapon of law” in order to “distract attention from its own misdeeds” in the aftermath of the very public Larry Nassar scandal, in which the former USA Gymnastics team doctor and MSU physician was unmasked as a serial sexual abuser who victimized hundreds of women and girls.  The Doe case against Michigan State claims the university failed to offer the accused student due process by prohibiting him from being present during a live hearing in which he could question his accuser directly... “I don’t see [the barrage of lawsuits] as a backlash to the #MeToo movement,” Hathaway said. “It’s a backlash to the if-you’re-accused-you’re-guilty movement.”... K.C. Johnson, a professor at Brooklyn College and expert on due process in college sexual-assault cases, told The Baltimore Sun that due-process lawsuits against colleges and universities have increased from about one per year from the mid-1990s to 2011 to about one a week over the past two years... “If you’re found responsible for sexual misconduct at a university in America, your future is arguably over,” said Rosenberg. “The lawsuit is the only way that these students are able to move on professionally and academically.”... Schools enforced Title IX with less rigor before 2011 because of the high standard of proof that was required in such proceedings. But during the Obama administration, federal guidance changed to a “preponderance of the evidence” standard for Title IX cases, meaning the accuser had only to show that the incident was more likely than not to have occurred.   Critics of the Obama-era federal Title IX guidance, including Rosenberg, say those guidelines made it harder for students to defend themselves—and are responsible for the increase in litigation."

Devine: Katie Hill scandal exposed the left’s #Me Too hypocrisy - "Congresswoman Katie Hill’s sexual relationship with a much younger intern is a classic “MeToo” situation, and on Sunday, she belatedly realized the gravity of her offense and now plans to resign.  But it shouldn’t have taken so long — more than a week during which she was aggressively buttressed by hypocritical defenders on the left.  By claiming that Hill was the victim of a political smear, she and her supporters showed no concern for the vulnerable 22-year-old who was preyed upon by her boss and who now, two years later, is bereft, abandoned and a self-described “mess.”  The same people who demonize males for far less gave Hill a free pass for her egregious abuse of power. The Guardian even helpfully has explained the ethical distinction between men and women committing the same offense: “When Hill engaged in an affair with a campaign aide, she did not do so in the context of millennia of men’s sexual violence against women.”... you can bet that if Hill, 32, were a man and, God forbid, a Republican, the “MeToo” crowd would show no mercy.  No man could get away with describing a sexual relationship with a subordinate whose paycheck he controls as merely “inappropriate.”  Hill, described by Elle magazine as “one of the most powerful” freshmen in Congress, and a protégé of her California stablemate Nancy Pelosi, wielded power every bit as potent as any man.  What makes this situation worse is that she prevailed upon her susceptible young staffer Morgan Desjardins to enter an emotionally perilous “throuple” relationship, or sexual threesome, which included Hill’s husband, Kenny Heslep."
Basically feminists believe that men are evil, which is why they are fine with women victimising men

Facing House Ethics Investigation, California Rep. Katie Hill Resigns - "In one California Globe article revealing Katie Hill posing naked with a Nazi-era Iron Cross tattoo on her bikini line while smoking a bong and making out with her young female aide,” we found another photo of Hill holding a sign which said, “Stop Kavanaugh.”  Hill was very vocal during the Kavanaugh hearings calling him a “predator.” She will be afforded due process, which she did not see fit to extend to Justice Kavanaugh – for whom the outrageous allegations proved false... As I reported last year when the California State Assembly investigated groping allegations by Daniel Fierro against Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), there has been a deafening silence from the Legislature’s Women’s Caucus, and legislative leadership. However, they were vocal on the sexual harassment charges against their male colleagues... the same people in the media who wrote thousands of words demonizing males for for their sexual indiscretions with staffers, ignored the Katie Hill scandal, or gave her a free pass for her egregious abuse of power of a young staffer."

Swedish #MeToo activist told to pay damages to man she accused of rape - "A Swedish journalist has been ordered to pay thousands of kronor in damages to a man she claimed raped her, in a series of social media posts that got the #MeToo movement under way in Sweden. Stockholm District Court on Monday found journalist Cissi Wallin guilty of aggravated defamation against Fredrik Virtanen, also a journalist, after she posted on social media in 2017 that Virtanen had drugged and raped her – claims he has always denied"

I thought this guy would always want me and now he's moving on : offmychest - "There's a guy I work with and he's always made it obvious that he's interested in me, he's drunk texted me and told.me he loves me, he asked me out on dates, and he's even gone as far as borderline sexual harassment. I've always done my best to just put space between us and establish boundaries and it's never crossed a line where I've felt I really needed to go to HR but it's got very close. I recently found out he's got a girlfriend now. They've only been together for about a month but she's pretty, she's very well educated, apparently she has him completely whipped, and he talks about her like she's the greatest thing to ever happen to him and I am not interested in this guy at all but I'm feeling kind of upset about it. He was always so into me, he's always showered me with compliments, and now he's in a relationship with some other girl and he's happy? I know it's shitty of me but I always assumed he would always just be pining after me."
Comments: "When a woman gives you mixed signals, they're playing games and need the attention, it's a narcissist disorder"
"You sound like the type of person who believes you are the main character of life and everyone else is just an NPC, like in a video game. Honestly this guy dodged a bullet. You sound very narcissistic and manipulative and should probably seek some sort of counseling. You sound like you're probably an adult, yet you're struggling with basic social skills."
Guess #MeToo doesn't work for all women

The Defenestration of Domingo - "The #MeToo movement has ended the U.S. career of legendary 78-year-old Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, one of classical music’s greatest ambassadors and impresarios...  the AP announced that nine females, all but one anonymous, were accusing Domingo of making unwanted sexual advances decades ago. The accusers—chorus singers, a few small-time soloists, and one ballet dancer—alleged wet kisses, solicitations to rehearse at his apartment, whispered blandishments while on stage, a hand down a shirt or up a skirt in cabs, and persistent phone calls.The latest of the incidents allegedly occurred in the early 2000s; most dated from the 1980s and 1990s. Some of the accusers had had voluntary sexual liaisons with the singer, yet still asserted victimhood... By all accounts, Domingo backed off when told explicitly to do so. None of the accusers alleged quid pro quo pressure to have sex in exchange for a role. Some alleged that their careers plateaued after they broke off relations, without providing any evidence that he was responsible or that their careers were still on an upward trajectory. Nevertheless, the claim that he sometimes “professionally punished those who rejected him,” in the words of the New York Times, has now become a standard feature of the anti-Domingo narrative... Without waiting to hear more, the Philadelphia Orchestra booted him from its season-opening gala because, it said, it was “committed to providing a safe, supportive, respectful, and appropriate environment for the orchestra and staff, for collaborating artists and composers, and for our audiences and communities.” The San Francisco Opera also cancelled Domingo’s upcoming engagements. LA Opera launched an investigation and suspended Domingo from day-to-day management... the story was shifting yet again. Just as it had become received wisdom, contrary to any reported facts, that Domingo retaliated against females who rebuffed him, it is now suggested that LA Opera failed to respond to harassment allegations, even though no one has reported making such allegations to management. The gloating was immediate... There are three possible justifications for Domingo’s scourging, each more unpersuasive than the last. The first is to punish his past behavior. But his alleged infractions occurred decades ago, making punishment too belated to be just or meaningful. None of his accusers brought their objections to anyone in authority. If they wanted to punish him, that would have been the time to do so. Now, the overwhelmingly anonymous nature of the accusations and the passage of time prevent Domingo from mounting a defense. Some of the alleged incidents were undoubtedly more ambiguous than the accusers are disclosing. But without a known accuser, Domingo cannot establish the facts of these incidents, even if he could remember what may have been a fleeting and misunderstood gesture.The second justification is a symbolic one: to demonstrate feminist solidarity... such expressions of piety should not take precedence over getting the facts right, and none of the institutions that pushed Domingo out the door established any factual record.The third justification is the most frequently invoked: safety. Domingo’s mere presence in an opera house or concert hall allegedly puts the safety of that venue’s female employees at risk. The threat extends beyond the stage. It sinks into the orchestra pit like a miasma. It overflows into the audience and the surrounding community... Are we supposed to believe, in this era of “strong women,” that a female chorister is so vulnerable and weak that, faced with someone who is operating under a potential death sentence, she can’t simply rebuff an advance? Domingo’s 20 accusers somehow survived the trauma of being propositioned by one of the opera world’s most charismatic stars... Here is the reality of Domingo’s world: It is shot through with sexual energy and tension. Performers and staff work long hours in an enterprise requiring the passion and willpower to conquer some of the most challenging works in the musical repertoire. Put males and females in any high-pressure, close-contact situation, and Eros will make an immediate appearance—just ask the spouses of lawyers in white shoe law firms or of soldiers in gender-integrated Army barracks. In the performing arts, filled with oversized personalities and appetites, the erotic currents are particularly headstrong. Females threw themselves at Domingo. Young fans pled with his assistants to get their phone numbers into his hands. Wealthy socialites tried to arrange affairs. Singers sought out liaisons. Many of their advances were unwelcome. Does that make his suitors harassers? This kind of female behavior is routinely excised from the #MeToo narrative that presents a world apparently composed exclusively of male rapists and female victims, and which declines to acknowledge the billions of dollars that women invest annually in make-up and clothes they hope will make them more desirable to the opposite sex... He clearly belongs to the “Latin Lover” prototype, a good-natured, charming seducer from the old Hollywood era. Learning to deal with such types used to be part of a woman’s skill set. The instigator of a sexual advance does not know beforehand whether it will be wanted or not; he (or she) is taking a chance. It is up to the target of that advance to signal how it has been received. If the would-be seducer does not back off, the seducee needs to escalate to whatever level of explicitness is required, however uncomfortable it may be to elevate what is unspoken and ambiguous into the realm of language and clarity... An unwanted advance is not sexual assault, despite the fashionable conflation of the two... It is doubtful that the average female would want to live in a world where males remain chastely aloof until overtly invited to engage... the brittle rigidity of contemporary feminism does not recognize nuance or shades of fault and responsibility. It has no tolerance for human diversity. Drunk on its own power, it is turning its massive armamentarium of narcissistic grievance on male success with an ever more neurotic standard of transgression. Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo has been suspended from future performances at the Metropolitan Opera and Britain’s Royal Opera for allegedly sexually assaulting a ballet dancer in full view of the audience during a curtain call in Japan on September 18 of this year. Grigolo had just finished a performance in the title role of Gounod’s Faust, whose staging in the touring Royal Opera production called for a pregnant woman to offer Faust her belly to touch. During the curtain call, Grigolo light-heartedly patted that same dancer’s prosthetic paunch. The dancer protested. Grigolo told her to “fuck off,” by his own admission. The tenor says that he was offered no opportunity to apologize, but was “put on a plane and sent . . . home like a killer.” If such adrenalin-fueled post-performance hijinks now constitutes sexual assault, the show may no longer go on. Federal appellate judge Alex Kozinski was destroyed by a handful of former female clerks, including Slate columnist Dahlia Lithwick, for his juvenile sense of sexual humor... Michael Steinhardt, pioneering Wall Street entrepreneur and now full-time philanthropist, was denounced on the front page of the New York Times for his patently unserious sexual banter... The feminist nostrum that “the personal is political” was false from its inception. It has now become a warhead aimed at the edifice of a civilization deemed too male... I am cutting off my support for the Metropolitan Opera; other donors who care about our musical inheritance should do the same.At least cowardice in the face of feminist grievance appears to be predominantly an Anglo-American affliction. So far, Domingo’s future engagements in Moscow, Vienna, Hamburg, Valencia, Milan, Cologne, Krakow, Berlin, Madrid, and Munich have not been cancelled. The director of the Vienna State Opera, Dominique Meyer, said over the summer that Vienna would honor its contracts with Domingo, who is “valued both artistically and as a human being by all in this house.”... Domingo brought beauty into the world. He inspired and helped thousands of female singers and instrumentalists. His demise won’t placate the resentment brigades; it will only embolden them for the next hit."

#MeToo Survey | Organisations Don't Want To Hire Women | Male Bosses Shying Away From Meeting Them - "While the #MeToo campaign surely scared many men who took advantage of their women colleagues at work, the movement also had it’s share of fake cases or accusations by women which were motivated to blackmail and threaten the men in power. The result of this misuse has become a disadvantage for the women workforce since then. A survey, led by Professor Lean Atwater of Houston University, claims that men are now shying away from giving jobs to women after the #MeToo outburst. According to the survey:
    At least 19 percent of men have said that they do not want to give jobs to ‘attractive women’
    21 percent of the men said that they do not want to give jobs to women in those positions, where they have direct contact with men
    27 percent of men said that they now shy away from meeting women
    Men are more aware of the sexual assaults, that are considered sexual, than women"

#MeToo, Trump and misreading The Handmaid's Tale - "Atwood and her most famous book owe their sanctification, in part, to the political rise of that barrel-bellied, blonde beast Donald Trump. Following the announcement of his presidential candidature in the summer of 2015, feminist paranoia hit the roof... Plucking The Handmaid’s Tale out of the 1980s, and applying its vision to the supposed ‘everyday sexism’ of the late 2010s, is to erase the vast advances made by women over the past 40 years. In fact, there are other important trends informing The Handmaid’s Tale obscured by today’s simplified feminist reading. Atwood’s novel arrived, for instance, towards the tail end of a protracted period of paranoia during the Cold War — Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’, the missile-defence programme, had been announced in 1983. Hence The Handmaid’s Tale plays on distinctly Cold War fears, set, as it is, at a time of unexplained nuclear and ecological disaster.The Handmaid’s Tale was also published slap bang in the middle of the AIDS panic. So, the Republic of Gilead features men who have become inexplicably sterile and women who give birth to ‘shredders’ (severely deformed babies). In the Republic of Gilead, sex and procreation are a risk.Like all good science fiction, then, Atwood’s dystopian world reflects the paranoias, prejudices and panics of the society she is observing. Atwood’s exploration of these contemporary fears – fear of sex, fear of political and religious fundamentalism and fear of impending global doom – turns the The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments into far more than simple-minded feminist handbooks.But that is precisely what too many have argued that The Handmaid’s Tale and now The Testaments are — namely, contemporary feminist handbooks. This interpretation ignores a key part of Atwood’s worldview: her championing of freedom of expression... That is why the contemporary feminist co-option of The Handmaid’s Tale sits awkwardly. Because Atwood’s championing of the importance and revolutionary power of freedom of speech and thought goes against the censorious tendency of today’s feminist politics. At one point in The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred is reminded of the earlier times in which she was free, and reminisces about her life with her partner Luke and her daughter, who was taken from her. Offred considers the difference between then, when ‘women were not protected’ and there were ‘rules that were never spelled out but every woman knew’ with regards to avoiding the dangers of strange men, and her present in the Republic of Gilead: ‘Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us. No one whistles.’ This is perhaps the most politically powerful moment in the book. Offred remembers the tyrant Aunt Lydia’s words: ‘There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from.’ The freedom to speak and act versus the freedom from offence and hurt. If Atwood’s novel is a warning, it is not about sexist old men like Trump. Rather, it is about the danger of giving up the freedom and risks of a liberated life for the sterile regulation of the safe space. The Testaments actually develops this theme, emphasising the importance of freedom of speech... Atwood’s actual political vision tends to be eclipsed by her contemporary deification. She can’t even get a hearing for herself, such is her mythical reputation now. For example, in an article published three months after #MeToo started, headlined ‘Am I a bad feminist?’, Atwood questioned #MeToo’s scalp-hungry nature... for asserting that ‘women are human beings, with the full range of saintly and demonic behaviours this entails, including criminal ones’, Atwood was castigated on social media as a victim-blamer... unlike Dame Ann Leslie, Catherine Deneuve and other high-profile female critics of the excesses of #MeToo, Atwood’s transgression has been politely ignored by most. Her role as the creator The Handmaid’s Tale is too important to allow her to have nuanced views on contemporary feminist politics."

"I want you to be strong & live your life with whole respect, as your husband has not done anything" - "Swaroop, 35, worked as an IT executive at Genpact in Noida for over ten years. In December last year, the assistant vice-president had been barred by the company from taking any official work pending an inquiry of an internal complaints committee (ICC), into the allegations of sexual harassment against him by two female employees. He was suspended temporarily over allegations.Unfortunately, even before the enquiry was complete, Raj committed suicide at his home in Noida"

Friday, February 10, 2023

Links - 10th February 2023 (2 - General Wokeness)

Facebook - "I’d still maintain that the dumbest people - the ones that should make any Singaporean feel a sense of shame for our society - are the ones who were so offended by a rap video that they decided to make a police report. So far, I still would... but man, is it getting harder to hold on to that position. If anything, this interview demonstrates that Subhas is a self-entitled brat (yo, what bro? You want to imply that the vast majority of singaporean musicians are sellouts and shills because they didn’t express their support for your cause? Gtfo. Some of them have their own battles to fight, which they’ve been fighting for some time, and none of them, not a single one, owe you shit) who is so mired in the pseudo-righteousness of his own saviour complex that he seems to have surrendered any semblance of coherent thought. Jesus, fuck."
On the VICE article on Preeti Nair/Preetipls, and Subhas Nair. But of course liberals defended them

Crayola unveils a range of 'racially inclusive' crayons, pencils and markers - "Crayola has released a 24-pack of crayons, pencils and markers with shades that represent a diverse range of skin tones. The 'Colors of the World' packs include newly-formulated drawing tools that represent 40 global skin tones to ensure children can draw themselves accurately"
This is brilliant. Where before you only needed 1 generic colour to represent human skin tone, now you force people to buy 24-40 crayons instead, and they are likely never going to finish all of them

Lockdown has put wokeness on steroids - "It is hard to imagine that the outlandish ideas of the Black Lives Matter movement would have been embraced by the English Football Association if there had been no lockdown. The ritual of ‘taking the knee’ began last September at the start of the 2020 season, when games were played in empty stadiums. When the fans were allowed to return in December, FA officials were shocked by sustained boos... Finger-wagging commentators in the Guardian leapt to the wrong conclusion, claiming the booing was ‘an act of violent disrespect, a handshake met by a punch’. Yet the booing grew louder throughout the season, quickly spreading to other clubs, as fans voiced their displeasure at the ostentatious displays of virtue from players paid to entertain... the English football establishment appears blind to the contradictory message it is sending. Instead, it grows ever more disdainful of its fans. ‘Taking the knee’ purports to establish harmony, but it has instead provoked disunity, widening the UK’s post-Brexit cultural divide. The British experience is not unique. Over the past year and a half, the professional elites all over the world have spent less time in the company of their fellow citizens and more time online, networking with sophisticates like themselves. Wacky ideas that would fail the pub test, if the pubs were open, have become truths few dare to question for fear of being labelled as a denier or a phobic. The radical race-based agenda has taken a different but no less perplexing turn in New Zealand, where the campaign for Maori sovereignty has gained speed under the cover of the pandemic. The argument for a separate Maori parliament with equal authority to the assembly New Zealanders currently elect is hardly strong. Maoris are already well represented in parliament. Winston Peters, whose father is of Maori descent, recently served as deputy prime minister. Public demand for these changes, however, is tame at best. The movement for Maori separatism marches on without a roadblock in sight. To be an English-speaking nation was once seen as a blessing. Today the English language is looked upon with shame in New Zealand, or Aotearoa as we are now expected to call it. The 2013 census found that Maori was spoken by approximately 125,000 New Zealanders, some three per cent of the population. Most fluent Maori speakers were over 65 years old. In the past year, however, Maori has challenged English as the language of preference for government agencies. Earlier this year, a 180-page draft report by the government-funded He Pou a Rangi – or the Climate Change Commission, as some ageing dinosaurs insist on calling it – advocated the adoption of tikanga, or Maori values, to tackle the existential challenge of a warming planet. Manaakitanga (‘a deep ethic of care towards people and the whenua [land]’), Whanaungatanga (the awareness of the relationship between all things), and kotahitanga (the art of working collaboratively) are advocated as the framework for climate action. The Maori economy will be treated as an entity separate from the rest of the economy for carbon-accounting purposes to ensure Maoris maintain mana motuhake, or control and autonomy, over their own data. Writing official documents in a language incomprehensible to most might seem anathema in a liberal democracy. Yet like the draconian powers the Ardern administration granted the police to enforce Covid-19 restrictions, there has been next-to-no pushback from the opposition or the mainstream media. Up to now, the creation of racially based wards to elect Maori representatives to local government was a step too far for voters, who repeatedly rejected such proposals when they were put to a referendum. Yet the Ardern government, pumped up with hubris, is so determined to press ahead that it has abolished the right of citizens to vote on the matter. Maori wards can be created by decree. The pandemic has taught us that the removal of fundamental liberties can be easily justified in a crisis. Declarations of emergency have always been part of the modus operandi of illiberal regimes. The catastrophisation of race relations is implicit in BLM and present in a more passive form in the movement for Maori rights. Like the catastrophisation of the climate debate, it is used to justify extreme and untested solutions. Don Brash, former governor of the NZ Reserve Bank and former leader of the National Party, is one of the few people in public life prepared to risk the false charge of Maori-phobia by decrying the push for indigenous sovereignty"
From 2021

Meme - Canada: AMELIA TU
France: FLORIANE BASCOU
Great Britain: NOKY SIMBANI
Italy: VIRGINIA STABLUM
Netherlands: ONA MOODY
Bolivia: MARIA CAMILA SANABRIA PEREYRA
Colombia: MARIA FERNANDA ARISTIZABAL
Guatemala: IVANA BATCHELOR
Honduras: REBECA RODRIGUEZ
Peru: ALESSIA ROVEGNO"
If white people make up 90% of the population of a country and 80% of the candidates from that country are white, liberals cry racism. It's racist that there are no blacks on the Argentine football team even though only 0.37% of the country identify as black). But here white people make up an overwhelming proportion of the population of those countries (85% in France - more if you include North Africans who are white passing, 82% in England and Wales [I can't find primary documentation for the whole UK but it would be even higher based on secondary accounts], the Netherlands is 81% white Dutch alone and Italy is 92% ethnically Italian alone) but all the candidates from those countries are not white.

Opinion: National Gallery mess shows what happens when decolonization goes awry - The Globe and Mail - "The messy and rancorous upheaval at the National Gallery of Canada is the result of efforts to “decolonize” the institution at the pinnacle of the country’s museum hierarchy. But it is hardly an isolated case. Similar battles are playing out at museums across Canada and the West as institutions conceived as repositories of the collective memory are morphing into agents of social change and redefining themselves in the name of reconciliation. What could go wrong? Plenty. The saga unfolding at the NGC shows what happens when good intentions are undermined by a mixture of naiveté, overzealousness and political score-settling. And make no mistake, the decolonization exercise – aimed at correcting curatorial errors of the past by placing an obsessive emphasis on inclusiveness and Indigenous perspectives – is steeped in politics. We have entered an age of curatorial activism. Indigenous and minority artists are being co-opted into this exercise to satisfy the agendas of museum directors and, in some cases, their political masters... The new approach was evident in the NGC’s Rembrandt in Amsterdam exhibition that ended in 2021, which juxtaposed the 17th-century Dutch master’s work against the crimes of colonialism committed in his era. The museum “took a new curatorial approach by integrating newly commissioned and acquired works from Indigenous and Black artists, bringing multiple voices to contextualize the period in which Rembrandt lived and the devastating impact of colonialism then and now for Indigenous and Black people... There would be something wrong if major cultural institutions did not seek to question their practices in the face of evolving societal expectations. Things start to go awry, however, when decolonization takes the form of erasure and leads to the purging of those who question its methods, pace and consequences. That, along with an archetypal power struggle among those leading the decolonization effort, is what now appears to be happening at the NGC. “It is literally a coup d’état. It resembles the Russian Revolution; the methods are the same,” former NGC director Marc Mayer told La Presse... Seven former high-level NGC staffers wrote to Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez to denounce the recent dismissal of four senior museum employees by interim director Angela Cassie, as well as the departures of at least half a dozen others during Ms. Suda’s three-year tenure. They warned the NGC risks falling into “irrelevance” as it neglects core aspects of its mandate. “The message conveyed to Canadian and international audiences in recent years has been sadly devoid of celebrating art, the Gallery’s collections, and its artists, without which there is no National Gallery of Canada,” they wrote. “The newest dismissals of senior staff will impact the security of the artworks, the development of knowledge of the collections and future acquisitions, and the delivery of a world-class exhibition programme.”... The decolonization of museums is a culture war for the highbrow set. The International Committee for Museology last year devoted a virtual symposium to the topic, hosted by the Université du Québec à Montréal. The academic papers presented at the event highlighted the tensions within the museum world that decolonization has unleashed.”

Opinion: Royal BC Museum has no real plan and needs to pause exhibit closures - "World-class museums rarely disassemble their galleries without releasing a plan, budget, or timeline for what will replace them. However, that is exactly what the Royal BC Museum (RBCM) in Victoria is doing as it rushes to shut down its human history galleries, including the acclaimed Old Town exhibition, in the name of modernization and decolonization... RBCM has taken heat for offering euphemisms over transparency and accountability. Its website says: “Closing and disassembling the third-floor galleries is an important first step on a journey to broaden historical narratives and foster inclusivity.” While these are both praiseworthy aims, especially in light of the museum’s June 29 apology for internal anti-Indigenous racism, the logical first step is to plan how best to put them into practice. RBCM’s “destroy first and figure it out later” approach is ill-considered. Right now, no one knows how many years the third floor will be closed, what the replacement galleries will look like, or how much this will all cost."
In the end they closed the whole museum

Meme - "Yes, I support LGBT
Landlords
Gamers
Billionaires
Trolling women and minorities"

Meme - Misa on Wheels: "Opposers to wheelchair-accessible dungeons in "Dungeons aren't supposed to have ramps! This isn't realistic at all!" Also opposers to wheelchair-accessible dungeons in "My character is an undead wizard warlord who can literally cast magic and FLY.""
In-universe logic, coherence and immersion are not as important as pushing the liberal agenda. If you think those are important, you're a bigot. Fiction means you can write anything you want even if it's illogical
Comments: "I can 100% fucking guarentee you that anyone making a character in a wheelchair has no fucking disability whatsoever. No actual wheelchair bound person would want to fucking be in one as their fantasy character that is supposed to be a fun escape for themselves."
"Who the fuck is adventuring in a wheelchair though? If your magic fantasy campaign world can do wheelchairs it can do spiderlike golem chairs, or how about a belt of levitation or something? Fucking seriously, they come across like someone who'd burn down their own house and the forest it was in just because they dropped a piece of pasta on the floor"
"So it’s also a world where you can get someone to cast greater restoration on your character so they can FUCKING WALK"
"What can you expect from people who cant separate real life from fantasy with gender dysphoria"

Sha'Carri Richardson is EJECTED from American Airlines' flight after fight over using her phone - "American track and field star Sha'Carri Richardson was kicked off a flight following an altercation with a flight attendant Saturday. Richardson, 22, shared a video to her Instagram profile and story in which she claimed the American Airlines flight attendant, who she identifies as 'John', was disrespecting her. In the clip, Richardson spoke to the camera, alleging that the flight attendant had 'disrespected' her while she was speaking on her phone before takeoff. She explained in her Instagram post that she did not like the tone he had used when asking her to get off the phone, before claiming that he then proceeded to stand over her and demand to look at the mobile to check it was in Airplane Mode... 'I'm recording me but you jumped in my video, so I caught you, because you jumped in my video,' Richardson told the flight attendant. 'You're harassing me at this point, so I think you should stop. I think you should stop.' Other passengers could then be heard telling her to stop arguing with the attendant, getting aggravated. Richardson got into a heated exchange with one passenger, telling her to stop yelling at her. 'Y'all see him right? Y'all see him right? Y'all see him right? I'm sorry, it's not me,' Richardson responded. 'Talk to him. No ma'am. Do no talk to me like that. I'm an adult. Do not talk to me like that. Do not talk to me like that. Tell him to stop. If you do not know what's going on, do not yell at me.' Richardson was then escorted off the plane to applause as she continued to exchange shouts with passengers and flight attendants. 'Tell me if I'll be wrong to pursue legal actions against the airline @americanair not only did the man threaten me but also an innocent bystander who simply just wanted a picture with me. In the beginning of the video you can hear a Caucasian male state that he doesn't give a f as a man that male flight attendant is intimidating a woman,' Richardson later posted. 'Also the captain not doing anything to help the situation and this flight attendant has the applause when I exited the plane when I'm pretty serious the disrespect I received would not have happened if I was a one of them.' It is not the first time Richardson has made headlines for controversy after she tested positive for marijuana in 2021... Richardson said she used marijuana in an 'emotional panic', leading to the failed drug test that was revealed after her 100-meter win."
Of course, she blamed sexism. I'm surprised she didn't blame racism

White narrators on nature programmes could stop ‘ethnic minorities’ from watching - "Nature documentaries presented by “white, male voices” could put off ethnic minority views, according to a report funded by Britain’s major environmental agency. Last year, the Environment Agency financially supported the study by an international climate change group which said the use of white narrators could make the sector feel “inaccessible to people from ethnic minorities”. The research was uncovered by Conservative Way Forward, a Thatcherite pressure group, which found that Natural England and the Environment Agency - which have a combined annual budget of £1.3 billion - have been increasingly focused on issues of equality, diversity and inclusivity. Last year, Natural England commissioned a report to examine the “Diversity in images of England’s green and natural spaces”, which suggested photographs of the countryside were not inclusive enough... the quango’s chief executive Sir James Bevan expressed guilt over the low number of ethnic minority staff working for the agency and vowed to “do something about it”. He said he felt “angry that people of colour still experience racism in this country on a daily basis” and that the proportion of ethnic minority staff in the agency is “only 4.4 per cent when if we were truly representative of modern Britain it would be 14 per cent”."
For all the talk of "white fragility", it seems "minorities" are a lot more sensitive
Often the narrator never shows his face. So this is just an attempt to shoehorn affirmative action in

Rebel Wilson has been called out for attending Beyoncé's concert in Dubai - "Kendall Jenner, Liam Payne, Ellen Pompeo, Sonia Kruger, Jules Robinson and Natalie Bassingthwaighte were also in attendance, according to the outlet. During their stay, the hotel reportedly paid around $34 million for the legendary singer to perform. However, as homosexuality is illegal in Dubai, the actor has been labeled a ‘hypocrite’ over her trip."
Islamophobia!

Kris Van Cleave on Twitter - "LA County Sheriff says 10 dead and at least 10 more wounded in a mass shooting at a Lunar New Year event in Monterey Park, CA. Suspect is on the loose. Initial description of shooter is very limited—Asian Male."
jimtreacher.substack.com on Twitter - "White supremacy is so insidious that now Asians are shooting each other.""
I saw someone claim it might be internalised racism. Of course, racism is never a factor when white people get shot

Meme - "ARTIFACTS iN BRITISH MUSEUMS *crowded and people seeing them*
ARTIFACTS NOT IN BRITISH MUSEUMS *smashed*"

Meme - Andrew Trask @iamtrask: "If you were dropped 2000 years back in time with nothing but the knowledge you have now - what would you do?"
Tim @TimothySnediker: "Easy, I would find and assassinate Jesus of Nazareth. FYI, anti-Semitic replies will be blocked and reported."
From a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Berbère Télévision - Posts | Facebook - "Nordin Amrabat : « J'ai grandi dans une famille stricte. À la maison, le néerlandais, c'était interdit. Pour communiquer, c'était le tmazight et rien d'autre. »"
Les échecs de l'intégration, c'est la faute des sociétés occidentales !

Meme - Angela Belcamino @AngelaB...: "Was having the best date last night... everything was going perfect until I got up after dinner to use the bathroom and noticed he took me to a restaurant without gender-neutral bathrooms. I went out the back door and left.
To all those asking: yes, I peed in alley."

George Takei - Posts | Facebook - "Ballroom Dancer Sparks Debate After Showing Just How Dark She Makes Her Skin For Competitions "
"This tradition needs some serious reconsideration."
Comments: "So much for people who don't understand theater. Stop thinking everything is a racist act."
"I thought dancers darkened their skin for the same reason Broadway actors use dramatic, dark makeup: because the spotlights wash you right out…? Shouldn’t an actor know this…?"
"1) That level of tan is normal for ballroom competitions
2) It categorically did not "contain...a Black woman"."
"I’m pretty sure this woman doesn’t really care about the opinions of people who don’t understand the nuances of the sport. I don’t even know why this is news-worthy."
"Stage Actors, Dancers, beauty contestants, news anchors ALL darken their skin with makeup so they don't shine or washout under the bright lights. It has NOTHING to do with race."
"What saturated mop-head wrote this gobbledegook. Tan skin shows up on screens better and shows muscle/curvature with more definition. George needs to think about hiring adults if he’d like to be taken seriously."
"This is what you post when you run out of things to be offended about."
"In competitive ballroom dancing the judges can tell if you're using proper technique if they see your muscles engaging. If you're familiar with what Cuban motion if you know it's works every dang muscle in your core. Short answer they can tell if your phoning it in. That's why being able to see the muscles matter."
Of course, there were idiots too:
"So instead of allowing dancers of color to keep their natural advantage in this 1 arena they mandate light skin competitors to improve their skin. Interesting..."

Meme - BLACK COMIC LORDS @blac...: "These visuals [smdh]... blonde haired, blue eyed, super-soldier, wrapped in the American flag, putting the African icon of Black Excellence in his place. There are no words of how seeing this affects fans of this character. Particularly Black fans. When does this end @Marvel?" FallingOutsideNormalMoralCons... @FConstraints: "Fragile blackulinity"
Black fragility strikes again

Meme - FischerKing @FischerKing64: "It's popular now for people to elevate themselves by saying 'my ancestors did such and such, I'm ashamed.' This costs a person nothing. They are throwing their own ancestors under the bus to gain points in this depraved race towards false morality. Discount anyone who does this."

Meme - "Some reminders for you racists:
- 67% of black men have never been convicted of a felony
- 52% of black women don't have genital herpes
- 51% of black men aged 23 have never been arrested
- 23% of black children are born to married parents
- 58% of blacks are not on welfare"

Meme - "NY Times Best Seller: All Whites Are Racist"
*Brown man imagines white woman dominating him*
*Match with white woman on Tinder*
White woman crying: "PLEASE FoRGivE ME FoR BEING WHITE"

Social Justice Begins with Me (Equity and Women's Services) | ETFO Voice - "Social Justice Begins with Me (formerly We’re Erasing Prejudice for Good) is a new literature-based curriculum resource released at ETFO’s fall leadership conference... The resource also promotes the teaching of critical thinking and advocacy skills"
For elementary school, from 2011. We're still told that indoctrination is a right wing conspiracy. I wonder how much critical thinking that goes against social justice gospel will be allowed

Race, Gender and Liberal Fallacies: The Black Scholar: Vol 22, No 1-2 - "Implicit in these hearings was an overdue questioning of the legalistic, neo-Puritan and elitist model of gender relations promoted by the dominant school of American feminists. We must face certain stark sociological realities: in our increasingly female, work- centered world, most of our relationships, including intimate ones, are initiated in the workplace; gender relations especially new ones, are complex and invariably ambiguous; in our heterogeneous society, the perception of what constitutes proper and effective male- female relations varies across gender, class, ethnicity and region; and in keeping with our egalitarian ideals, we take pride in the fact that the WASP boss may legitimately desire or want to marry his or her Puerto Rican aide or chauffer. One revealing feature of these hearings is the startling realization that Judge Clarence Thomas might well have said what Prof. Anita Hill alleges and yet be the extraordinar- ily sensitive man his persuasive female defenders claimed. American feminists have no way of explaining this. They have correctly demanded a rigorously enforced protocol of gender relations in the workplace. But they have also demanded that same intimate bonding that men of power traditionally share, the exclusion from which has kept them below the glass ceiling. There is a seri- ous lacuna in the discourse, for we have failed to ask one fundamental question: how is non-erotic intimacy between men and women possible? Clarence Thomas emerged in the hearings as one of those rare men who, with one or two exceptions, has achieved both: in general, he rigorously enforced the formal rules of gender relations, and he had an admirable set of intimate, nonerotic relations with his female associates. And yet, tragically, there is his alleged failing with Professor Hill. How is this possible? While middle-class neo-Puritans ponder this question, the mass of the white working class and nearly all African Americans except their intellectually exhausted leaders have already come up with the answer. He may well have said what he is alleged to have said, but he did so as a man not unreasonably attracted to an aloof woman who is esthetically and socially very similar to himself, who had made no secret of her own deep admiration for him. Now to most American feminists, and to politicians manipulating the nations' lingering Puritan ideals, an obscenity is always an obscenity, an absolute offense against God and the moral order; to everyone else, including all professional social linguists and qualitative sociologists, an obscene expression whether in Chaucerian Britain or the American South, has to be understood in context, I am convinced that Professor Hill perfectly understood the psycho-cultural context in which Judge Thomas allegedly regaled her with his Rabelaisian humor (possibly as a way of affirming their common origins), which is precisely why she never filed a complaint against him. Raising the issue 10 years later was unfair and disingenuous: unfair because, while she may well have been offended by his coarseness, there is no evidence that she suffered any emotional or career damage, and the punishment she belatedly sought was in no way commensurate with the offense; and disingenuous because she has lifted a verbal style that carries only minor sanction in one subcultural context and thrown it in the overheated cultural arena of mainstream, neo-Puritan America, where it incurs professional extinction... The great achievement of these hearings, then, has been, first, to bring us to a greater awareness of the progress in racial and gender relations already achieved by this country. Second, superficial liberal stereotypes of blacks as victims or bootstrap heroes are seen for what they are: a new form of racism that finds it hard to imagine African Americans not asa monolithic group but, as several of the African American panelists on TV correctly informed the nation, a diverse aggregate of perhaps 30 million individuals, with all the class differences, subcultural and regional resources, strength, flaws and ideologies we find in other large populations. Finally, the hearings have also highlighted the need to go beyond mere legalistic protocol in gender relations at the workplace. If women are to break through the glass ceiling, they must escape the trap of neo-Puritan feminism with its reactionary sacralizaton of women's bodies, and along with men develop at the workplace something that America still conspicuously lacks: a civilized culture of intimate social intercourse between men and women that recognizes, and contains, the frailties of male and female passions"
From 1992, on the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings.Sadly, over 30 years later, liberals have not resolved the problems with anti-racism and feminism the author pointed out

Meme - APStylebook @APStylebook: "We recommend avoiding general and often dehumaniging "the" labels such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college-educated. Instead, use wording such as people with mental illnesses. And use these descriptions only when clearly relevant."

US news agency AP backtracks after advising that writing 'the French' is 'dehumanizing' - "Science reporter Dan Robitszky asked the nagging question: "Man, what did people with French ever do to you?" Nothing, absolutely nothing, as confirmed by email by Lauren Easton, vice president of AP corporate communications. "The reference to 'the French,' as well as the reference to 'the college-educated,' is an effort to show that 'the' labels shouldn't be used for anyone, whether they are traditionally or stereotypically viewed as positive, negative or neutral"... Why did AP choose the French as an example? Let's reflect on this. Finding a nationality that offends nobody is not seem so easy. It could not have been a non-Western country, to avoid any suspicion of racism or colonialism; nor former enemies like the Germans, which would have been awkward; and the Poles or the Italians are too numerous in the United States. The French are perfect: they are official allies since Lafayette, under Louis XVI's France, and helped George Washington conquer American independence, but also eternal unconscious enemies, for multiple reasons detailed in Slate's 2011 article "Why Americans hate the French" (in French)"

Meme - French Embassy U.S. @franceintheus: "I guess this is us now..."
"Embassy of Frenchness"

Ivan Provorov Jersey Sells Out After Media Crucifies Him For Not Wearing A Pride-Themed Jersey - "Just a few short days after most in the mainstream media crucified Ivan Provorov, his Philadelphia Flyers’ jersey has officially sold out online at both the NHL Shop and Fanatics. Both websites are advertising their Provorov jerseys as ‘almost gone’ as the only men’s jerseys lefts are size extra-small. Provorov has dominated headlines throughout the week after deciding not to wear a Pride-themed jersey during warm-ups ahead of Philadelphia’s game against the Anaheim Ducks... ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski expressed his anger by pointing out that Provorov had worn military appreciation jerseys in the past, which he believes is a bad thing. He also labeled anyone not up in arms about Provorov choosing not to wear a jersey as “homophobes.”... Canadian news anchor Sid Seixeiro said the Flyers should be fined $1 million for Provorov’s decision and then went on to attack all religious people... NHL Network’s E.J. Hradek went on a patently absurd rant and suggested Provorov “get on a plane,” return to his home country of Russia, and “get involved” in the war with Ukraine."
When inclusion becomes compulsory. So much for the "myth" of the slippery slope. Maybe in the future, men who have never tried gay sex will be "homophobes"