Ammo Grrrll returns in aggressively transgressive form with COMPETITIVE VICTIMHOOD. She writes:
We Americans are just naturally competitive. I don’t care if Little League doesn’t keep score; the kids know who won. (And God Bless the Ten Run Rule without which we’d still be there.)
One Sabbath long ago our rabbi told this little parable, which I must paraphrase from memory since I have no idea where he got it. If I am infringing on copyrighted material somewhere, I apologize in advance.
A young man became enchanted with Eastern religions and meditation. He went to live in a commune of like-minded individuals with a guru. He wrote back to his parents: “I have spent the first part of my life competing for grades, competing for scholarships, competing in sports, competing in music. Now that I have rejected all those material trappings, I have found peace of mind. We eat simple vegan foods and meditate all day.” And then he closed with:
“P.S. With sustained practice, my guru believes I can be the best meditator in the commune.”
People will compete about anything. Listen to mothers talking about childbirth: “I was in labor for 15 hours without an epidural.” “Really? My twins were born breech at the same time, and I was in labor for three days.” Here’s Jewish ladies talking about Passover Seder prep: “You’re having 42 guests? That will be so cozy! We’ve invited 112. I’ve been boiling and peeling the eggs for the first course for 2 days. Sam is building an addition on to the dining room.”
But no competition is more determined than Vying for Victimhood.
In the early days of The Movement, it would be generally agreed that Black Women had it pretty rough. But then ideological camps would form on who was more oppressed Black Men or White Women? The political arguments were fierce, if patently ridiculous.
Most of the people involved in these discussions were trust-fund wastrels, Red Diaper Babies (people whose own parents were Communists), limousine liberal professors, and work-averse idiots in their 20s (self-described “community organizers”) who had never been “oppressed” for even a day in their lives. But becoming part of a Protected Class turned out to be very lucrative. Why, you could become a Harvard Law professor just with imaginary high cheekbones in your round fat pale face!
Then new categories of victims were added, seemingly daily. What about a gay Black man versus a disabled Hispanic woman? What weight to give what alleged obstacle? Transgendered was far in the future. And now that glorious future has arrived!
Pass the popcorn, indeed. We have Germaine Greer, godmother of the early feminist movement, author of The Female Eunuch, going on about her, uh, sorry, fellas, I’m quoting here, “big, smelly vagina” and saying that “females” without one don’t count. (Smelly, really? Good Lord, woman, I know you’re European, but have you thought of a daily bath or shower? It’s remarkably effective.)
Heaven help us. This decades-long yapping about vaginas is so tedious. We’ve had vagina art. We’ve had chatty vaginas engaging in monologues. I’m just grateful vaginas apparently only talk to themselves and not to each other. That could be awkward in a business meeting. Though I suppose helpful on, say, the Bar Exam: “Pssst…Little help here…what’s the Rule Against Perpetuities again?”
And now with Greer’s claim that “women” without vaginas aren’t really women (duh!), the vitriol unleashed against her has been mind-boggling. She has joined pariahs like Condi Rice in being disinvited from speaking engagements.
The most hilarious example of a combo plate of Competitive Victimhood paired with Barry’s “No Matter What You’ve Done, America is Worse Project” was when he went to China. He felt pressure to briefly mention a flagrant human rights violation there and then offer his standard escape clause: Sure you torture and imprison dissidents, but Asian-Americans in the U.S. suffer discrimination, too, because..uh, uh, oh, yeah, because they suffer different rates of some digestive cancers. Yes! That’s what he came up with. Really.
Of course, he couldn’t tell the truth about the worst discrimination Asians face, which is that after years of studying and pushing from their Tiger Mothers, their perfect grades and high test scores count for spit (as Steve Hayward documented recently). Dollars to doughnuts Barry himself took the place some Asian-American had earned. Heck, maybe my own son did, since Asians need even higher test scores than people of pallor. It’s very important to penalize the people who study the hardest. Check your privilege! Not everybody can study, y’know. Oh wait, yes, they can.
I say if 75% of Asian-Americans voted for this avowed redistributionist, then my sympathy is limited. The Admissions Office just redistributed 300 points from your daughter’s test scores to somebody else! Hope she enjoyed all those violin lessons and advanced calculus classes.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.