Category Archives: culture

Is Satire

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…a proper style for what’s claimed to be a serious, scholarly journal?  Here, via The Wall Street Journal, is the abstract of Teresa Lloro-Bidart’s When ‘Angelino’ squirrels don’t eat nuts: a feminist posthumanist politics of consumption across southern California [sic] in the journal Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography [also sic]:

Eastern fox squirrels (Sciurus niger), reddish-brown tree squirrels native to the eastern and southeastern United States, were introduced to and now thrive in suburban/urban California. As a result, many residents in the greater Los Angeles region are grappling with living amongst tree squirrels, particularly because the state’s native western gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus) is less tolerant of human beings and, as a result, has historically been absent from most sections of the greater Los Angeles area. ‘Easties,’ as they are colloquially referred to in the popular press, are willing to feed on trash and have an ‘appetite for everything.’ Given that the shift in tree squirrel demographics is a relatively recent phenomenon, this case presents a unique opportunity to question and re-theorize the ontological given of ‘otherness’ that manifests, in part, through a politics whereby animal food choices ‘[come] to stand in for both compliance and resistance to the dominant forces in [human] culture’. I, therefore, juxtapose feminist posthumanist theories and feminist food studies scholarship to demonstrate how eastern fox squirrels are subjected to gendered, racialized, and speciesist thinking in the popular news media as a result of their feeding/eating practices, their unique and unfixed spatial arrangements in the greater Los Angeles region, and the western, modernist human frame through which humans interpret these actions. I conclude by drawing out the implications of this research for the fields of animal geography and feminist geography.

Unfortunately, the full article is behind a paywall, but the abstract is sufficient unto the day.  And it raises a question: how much of the…research…behind this piece was done with the proceeds of a Federal grant to California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where Lloro-Bidart is an Assistant Professor in the Liberal Studies Department?  Is our tax money funding satire, now?  If so, Congress does need, indeed, need to revisit funding for the NSF and similar entities.

YGTBSM

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…again.  Grant High School history teacher David Lickey wrote an essay and distributed it to the school’s students and teachers.  In it, he wrote

“I find assertions of rape culture dubious,” and “The very wording of ‘rape culture’ seems to me a bit hysterical.”

And

“Rape culture” is a theoretical construct that is ill defined. What exactly is “rape culture?” I don’t see it in my life or the lives of any of the men and women I have known. I have never met a person who believes rape is anything other than a heinous crime.

His boss, Principal Carol Campbell, was upset at his effrontery.  Grant’s essay, it seems,

included some statements that run counter to the way we approach this important subject. The perspective of the teacher does not reflect nor support our approach to educating students on sexual assault. A strong contradictory argument should be accompanied by counter arguments from credible sources.

And

We are working with students and some staff members to organize listening sessions and opportunities for adults and students to get support. It is our primary goal to ensure Grant is a safe place for all.

At least the “all” who comport themselves with the approved viewpoint.  Because fragile snowflakes need to be protected from the heat of disagreement.

The Apocalypse is Upon Us

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Or so Lauren Collins would have us believe in her fearful piece in the New Yorker, titled The Future of Europe Hinges on a Face-Off in France about this weekend’s money round of the Presidential election in France.

After all, this election is a referendum between a globalist economy and a globalist identity (Macron) and a nationalist economy and a nationalist identity (LePen).  That does sound apocalyptic, but really, it’s more apocryphal.

As a practical matter, and as is the case with most democratic-oriented governments, French government power is divided between an executive, the President, and the legislative, which elections are next month.  French government power is divided further: the legislative branch’s majority party appoints the Prime Minister, who has serious executive authorities of his own.

A President Le Pen will face two obstacles to her agenda: a Prime Minister from another party (Front National is unlikely to win more than a few legislative seats) and a hostile legislative.  A President Macron may well have to work with a Prime Minister from another party (his En Marche! is all of a year old and unlikely to win many more seats than Front National), and while he would face a not particularly hostile legislative, its agenda most assuredly will not be his.

Either President will find Executive ambitions greatly dampened.  That’s a purely domestic matter, but it spills across French borders.

As a (n international) political matter, Europe’s political future is not much influenced by either President.  Aside from the domestic dampening, which must also dampen these potential Presidents’ influence externally, both Europe and the European Union are made of sterner stuff.

I’ve written of the lack of long-term viability of the EU, but that weakness stems from weaknesses internal to the EU as an institution, not from pressures from within this or that member State, for all that France is an important member State.  No, the EU is good for several more years, the British departure won’t hurt it or Europe, German continued prosperity definitely won’t hurt Europe or the EU, not even the continued brink-of-bankruptcy state of Greece won’t hurt it.

And neither will a staunch EU-supporting President Macron significantly enhance the viability of the EU, nor will a staunch anti-EU President Le Pen significantly diminish the EU.  Indeed, Le Pen has promised a referendum on French membership in the entity, and the French citizenry are strongly more in favor of Remain than of Exit.

What is a threat to Europe is the aggressively acquisitiveness of Russia and most of Europe’s timidity in responding to that.  Nor Macron’s election nor Le Pen’s will have much impact on Europe’s attitude or what France might do about either that timidity or Putin’s acquisitiveness.  Even with Le Pen’s affinity for all things Putin.

FGM

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This piece will be, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali put it,

disturbing but it is crucial that we speak openly about what is taking place rather than shroud it in euphemism so as not to cause offence.

This piece is about female genital mutilation, the deliberate butchery of a woman’s—even a five-year-old little girl’s—genitalia for the woman’s, the child’s, own good.  And for the egos of the men of Islam who approve and perpetrate this atrocity.

This is, in Hirsi Ali’s plain language, what female mutilation truly is, in order from the “mildest” version to the outright butchery form:

  1. The ‘nick’: The girl is held down, her legs pushed apart and a needle is used to prick her clitoris. The incision is similar to a finger prick test for diabetes, blood comes out and the girl is considered ‘cleansed’. Often there is a ritual with a little party to celebrate the procedure.
  2. ‘Female circumcision’: The second method in terms of severity is often compared to male circumcision. The hood of the clitoris is cut off, in some cases the tip of the clitoris is cut off, known as clitoridectomy. In this form, an otherwise normally functioning body part is sliced off and thrown out. Disfiguring a little girl’s genitals in this way cannot rationally be considered anything but mutilation.
  3. Intermediate infibulation: In the third form of FGM, as much of the clitoris as possible is dug out and removed. The inner labia are cut off and the outer labia are sewn together leaving two small holes for urination and menstruation. In places where this is done without ‘medical intervention’ girls have been known to bleed to death. After infibulation is done it is imperceptible what has taken place when the girl stands up with her legs together, but in the obstetrician’s position it is clearly visible that parts of her genitals have been removed and sewn up.
  4. Total infibulation: In the fourth type of FGM the clitoris and inner labia are cut off and the outer labia are cut or scraped off too, then sewn up. When the girl stands, even with her legs closed, her genitals clearly look different.
  5. Vaginal fusing: In the fifth type of FGM, which is rarely discussed, all of the fourth type is done and then the inner walls of the vagina are scratched to cause bleeding and the sewing is again done. The girl’s feet are tied together in an effort to fuse the two sides of the vagina with scar tissue to close it up. Children can die undergoing this.

This is what The New York Times insists is acceptable and that we in the West must be more sensitive to the “cultural” practices of others, including this one.  This isn’t, after all, mutilation; it’s “genital cutting.”  You may have to scroll down a bit in the second link, to get to Celia Dugger’s, NYT‘s Health and Science Editor, excuse for insisting on “genital cutting” as a less culturally loaded term than female genital mutilation.  Blunt facts are never to be allowed to intrude into sensitivities, after all.

No.

These important cultural practices, as The New York Times and Journal of Medical Ethics put it, are a clear demonstration that some cultures are inferior to others.

More importantly, this is a practice that must be stopped, that must not be allowed in the United States, and whose perpetrators must be prosecuted and given maximum sentences.  With confinement with the prison’s general population.

Also: support Hirsi Ali’s AHA Foundation.

Another Reason

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…to stop sending Federal funds to any institution in the California University system.

The University of California hid a stash of $175 million in secret funds while its leaders requested more money from the state, an audit released on Tuesday said.

The University of California system is run by Janet Napolitano, the former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.  And the same Napolitano who decided returning American veterans could be terrorist material: her history of dishonesty is a long one.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the audit found that the secret fund ballooned due to UC Office of the President overestimating how much is needed to run the school system that includes 10 campuses in the state.

And

The audit found that over the course of four years, the UC’s central bureaucracy amassed more than $175 million in reserve funds by spending significantly less than it budgeted for and asking for increases in future funding based on its previous years’ over-estimated budgets rather than its actual expenditures.

There’s more.

[A] top staff member in Napolitano’s office improperly screened confidential surveys that were sent to each campus. [California State Auditor Elaine] Howle said answers that were critical of Napolitano’s office were deleted or changed before being sent to auditors.

Of course, Napolitano denies everything.

Never mind her denials.  Just stop sending Federal funds—the taxes paid by the good citizens of New York, of Illinois, of Texas, of…—to the California university system.  Let California deal with its own schools in its own way without the largesse of the rest of the nation.