Identity Politics
September 24, 2022 — Steven Hayward
So this turns out to be a real thing: When is the IPO happening? I want to be in on the ground floor for this one. Certain to be the next Facebook.
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September 20, 2022 — Steven Hayward
One of the definitions in Power Line’s lexicon of modern leftist terms is “Diversity: Where everyone looks different, but thinks the same.” Virtually every office of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is a Soviet-style ideological enforcement bureau, a campus Stasi. And now the New York Times has made it official: “diversity” is a synonym for “leftism.” Britain’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, has appointed a cabinet without a single white male.
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August 29, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Cast your mind back to the early 1980s for a moment, and the early innings of the AIDS epidemic. It was widely understood that AIDS was predominantly spread through high-risk or unprotected homosexual contact, and public health authorities, even in San Francisco, initially said that gay bathhouses that were venues for casual and largely unprotected sexual encounters should be closed down. In those days, however, the ethic of “liberation” and
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August 28, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Leftists will get impatient or roll their eyes when they hear someone like Jordan Peterson describe postmodernist “critical theory,” critical race theory, or any aspect of identity politics (especially the phenomenon of “gender fluidity”) as “cultural Marxism.” And yet. . . Michael Anton drew my attention to a passage in the transcript of Leo Strauss’s seminar on Marx that he taught at the University of Chicago in 1960 (emphasis added): Partly
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August 23, 2022 — Steven Hayward
As you may have heard, Robert Reich, who increasingly looks like a parody of an old man yelling at clouds, is very concerned about equality. Very very concerned. Almost obsessively concerned. Actually, strike “almost” from the previous sentence. His egalitarianism extends to the WNBA. Reich finds it scandalous that WNBA players aren’t paid the same as NBA players. Never mind getting schooled by any libertarian walking down the street, as
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July 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
PITLOCHRY, Scotland—You’d think up here in whisky headwaters of the Scottish Highlands you’d be blissfully free of all the intersectional identity politics nonsense afflicting the United States. And you’d be wrong. The headline over the weekend in The Scotsman (the New York Times of the north country) ran: “Scottish cricket board resigns amid damning racism report.” Maybe The Scotsman is written by the New York Times, given the content of
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July 5, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Jordan Peterson has been banned from Twitter for dissenting from gender ideology in the case of actress Ellen Page who decided to become Elliot Page, and submit to extensive surgery to remove her breasts and become as manly-appearing as possible. I notice Page hasn’t been cast in many film roles lately, after a number of excellent performances over the last 20 years. The banning has gone beyond Peterson: Here’s my
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June 21, 2022 — Steven Hayward
With all the attention directed at the elite leftist bigotry behind trying to force “Latinx” upon an unwilling minority group, I had almost forgotten about the much older term popularized by feminists a while ago now: “womxn.” I don’t know how to say this any better than “Latinx,” but fortunately we have the University of California at Irvine’s Womxn Center for Success on the job helping us out. Though they
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June 10, 2022 — Steven Hayward
As noted here yesterday, the Washington Post decided to boot out an entitled Millennial, which comes in the same week that San Francisco voters booted out a woke prosecutor, and we know that Netflix has told its own staff that anyone who doesn’t like offerings like Dave Chapelle or Ricky Gervais might want to seek employment elsewhere (and then cancelled a planned children’s show based on the “work” of Ibram
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June 6, 2022 — Steven Hayward
There is no finer representative figure for the transformation of Democrats into the party of the faculty lounge and identity politics uber alles than her self-worshipness, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Despite repeated surveys showing hispanics don’t use the term “Latinx” (with a large plurality hating the term), here we see AOC chiding Democrats for not using the term: Curiously, she more or less contradicts herself when she says Democrats should change the
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June 2, 2022 — Steven Hayward
It has long been supposed (mostly tongue-in-cheek, except for Freudians) that the great unanswerable question of all time is, “What do women want?” Forget that. Today the unanswerable question—not tongue-in-cheek—is, “What is a woman?” Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire has produced a documentary about this question which is out late this week. I haven’t see it yet, but I have seen some excerpts, and this short trailer makes one
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June 2, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The phrase “transitional housing” has been around a long time, but San Francisco has come up with a whole new dimension. Behold, a recent Tweet from the mayor: Turns out the mayor has included $6.5 million in next year’s budget with the intent of eliminating trans-homelessness over the next five years. San Francisco is estimated to have up to 20,000 homeless living on the streets. How many are trans? “According
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May 31, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Surveys over the last several years have found an increasing number of young people “identify” themselves as transgender or “non-binary,” with some surveys finding the number as high as 30 percent. (Most report it around 20 percent.) Some of this may be peer pressure and wanting to be part of the latest trend, the way every Oxford or Cambridge student used to become a Communist for a week or two.
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May 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
There is sharp competition for the prize of the worst people at universities these days. Egregiously radical faculty usually get the most attention, followed by the “diversity, inclusion, and equity” (DIE!) staff. But the admissions staff tend to get a pass, partly because they don’t make public pronouncements that attract attention. The admissions process is, however, the tip of the spear for the race-mongering that is central to the left
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May 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
From time to time we like to highlight academic job ads as an indicator of how badly politicized our universities have become. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes the University of Oklahoma with a job ad so jaw-dropping bad that it sets a new standard. In this case, for a musical theater performance slot. The full ad is quite long, but I’ve excised some of the
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May 24, 2022 — Steven Hayward
First it was Bill Maher, as noted here, thumbing his nose at the wokerati on the issue of transgenderism in his most recent HBO show. Now it is Ricky Gervais’s turn. He has a new comedy special coming out soon on Netflix, and move over Dave Chappelle! Take in this one-minute excerpt (STRONG language warning, but this has news value): Notice that the audience loves it. Interesting that the show
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May 23, 2022 — John Hinderaker
That was the way Western University in Ontario commemorated the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. (Somehow, the day went by without my being aware of it.) Western posted this image on Instagram: So, what was wrong with that picture? Several things, some might say, but if you guessed two women in hijabs kissing, you are correct. A university in Ontario, Canada deleted from a social media page an
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