Author Archives: Tim Newman

Brown Girl in the Wringer

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Regarding Jeff Bezo’s recent run-in with publishers who have pictures of his tackle, The Zman had this to say:

He broke the cardinal rule of super villains. Never write when you can speak. Never speak when you can nod. Most important, never send pics of you wiener to people. He was cavalier about being recorded and now is the world’s silliest super villain.

Donald Trump talks a lot of nonsense and tweets an awful lot more, but he’s not stupid enough to put it in a document and circulate it. This gives him ample room to backtrack, shift the goalposts, or simply state “No, I never said that.” Like many businessmen and politicians, he’s smart enough not to commit to anything he may be held to.

Over the past month or so several people – notably Scott Adams – have been praising Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her political savvy, and likening her powers of persuasion and reframing the conversation to those of Donald Trump. I agree she does have appeal and is good on social media, but she’s already made her first blunder. As I wrote the other day, she issued this Green New Deal which seems to have been inspired by episodes of The Flintstones. Before the ink was dry, the front-running Democrat presidential hopefuls – Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Brooker, and Kirtsten Gillibrand – had endorsed it. But within hours anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders was having a merry old time tearing it to pieces and hooting with laughter.

Team Ocasio-Cortez sprang into action to say, variously: the document was fake, it was the wrong one, it was only a draft, and it was issued by mistake.


It probably wasn’t lost on most Americans that the person who wants to radically transform the entire socio-economic system from the top down can’t even manage to release a simple policy document without making a pig’s ear of it. And to make matters worse:


The Republicans hold the senate and the deal is non-binding anyway, so there’s little risk in holding the vote from their side. But for the Democrats, they will have to decide whether they go on record backing a document a child may well have drawn up or denounce what their leading presidential candidates have publicly endorsed. I expect they’ll be a lot of abstentions, which will send their own message. Mitch McConnell has played a blinder here, and even more amusing are Democrat attempts to avert this catastrophe:


This is a complete own-goal by the Democrats, and boils down to the fact the half-sensible party leadership hasn’t got a grip on hotheaded dimwits like Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. I found these two tweets explained a lot:


This is the kind of thing you’d expect from schoolgirls under 11, not congresswomen. Aren’t we always being told how girls mature much faster than boys, who never really grow up? It seems modern feminism, consistent with pressing women to adopt the worst behaviours of men, encourages them to remain in perpetual adolescence. I was stunned to discover Ilhan Omar is 37 years old; I had her down for about 25. We keep being told it’s important for the future of society that grey-haired white men make way for multicoloured young women. Okay, but is it too much to expect they behave like adults and show at least some degree of competence beyond that which makes you popular in an American high school? I suppose this is what happens when you go straight into politics without having run so much as a whelk stall. Say what you like about Trump’s outbursts on Twitter, he does have skyscrapers in Manhattan with his name on. Until this week, the only think with AOC’s name on it was a tip jar in a bar somewhere in the Bronx. Now her name is on a hand-grenade rolling around the floor of Democrat HQ with the pin nowhere in sight. Political savvy, indeed.

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Angel of Harem

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A disturbing shadow falls across the world of polyamory:

Franklin Veaux’s work has shed light. His writings about polyamory have been valuable resources that have helped countless people find their way to happier, more fulfilling polyamorous relationships.

But:

Six women have come forward with stories of experiences with Franklin that do not align with his public persona, his self-described stories of his relationships, or the values stated in his writing.

How odd. Men who hang out at the intersection of unconstrained sex, feminism, and lefty politics are usually such genuine people.

The women’s experiences indicate that Franklin has patterns of manipulation, gaslighting, and lying; leverages his multiple partners against one another; tests or ignores boundaries; pathologizes his partners’ normal emotions and weaponizes their mental illnesses; exploits women financially; uses women’s ideas and experiences in his work without permission or credit; grooms significantly younger, less experienced, or vulnerable women; lacks awareness of power dynamics and consent; has involved women in group sex and other sexual activities that they experienced as coercive; and accepts no responsibility for the harm he causes by engaging in these behaviors?—?often blaming other women, or the harmed women themselves, for that harm.

Man who is best known for running harems turns out to be a bit of a cad. Who would have guessed?

These behaviors escalate when Franklin lives with a partner, and he becomes verbally abusive when his nesting relationships end. The severity of this pattern is illustrated by the fact that none of his former nesting partners will be alone with him. Two of them, over a decade apart, fled the homes they shared with him at the end of the relationships. Their written records from the time of leaving him show evidence of trauma.

This chap is best known for his book which argues the case for “ethical polyamory”. That would be like me writing a book called The Case for Holding One’s Counsel.

The women who have told their stories describe effects on them that range from lingering confusion and self-doubt all the way to self-harm, suicidal ideation, lasting trauma requiring years or decades to repair, and long-lasting or permanent damage to their ability to trust others, enjoy intimacy, or enter into healthy romantic relationships.

Well yes, that’s what polyamory does. Although I’d not like to be the psychiatrist picking through the rubble trying to separate the damage inflicted by polyamory from that which was the reason for attempting it in the first place.

Many people throughout many polyamorous scenes?—?including every member of this group, and some of the harmed women themselves?—?have played a role in amplifying Franklin’s narrative and expanding his reach.

Indeed, whereas those who consistently rail against polyamory are the true heroes. Time for a self-portrait:

Ahem, where were we?

Moreover, Franklin is far from the only person with social capital to have wielded it in harmful ways,

Social capital = a sizeable store of woke lefty political boilerplate automatically deployed immediately on sighting a dim feminist with daddy issues.

nor are his former partners the only people to have experienced this particular kind of harm in polyamorous relationships.

I don’t suppose any of these woman are going to take some responsibility for their predicament, are they?

We hope that this moment can be used to propel forward the hard conversations that will lead to collective healing, accountability and transformation.

Or you could just quit obviously harmful, self-destructive, impulsive behaviour.

Polyamory is not an organized movement. We have no governing body to which we can petition for a process of justice.

What would you name a body set up to regulate polyamory? Offmeds?

We must rely on a loose network of organizers, spokespeople and other “leaders” to hear the women’s voices and take action that moves us all toward greater healing and safety.

Leaders like Franklin Veaux with his theories on ethical polyamory?

We therefore must ask our fellow activists, speakers, organizers and leaders, as individuals, to support our call for justice.

I thought polyamory was all about free love and transcending jealousy. This author sounds like hubby died and left her out of the will.

Franklin can be charming and kind. He has helped many people, and many people?—?especially people who have never been romantically involved with him, or who have spent only short periods of time with him?—?have had nothing but good experiences with him. Many of the women he’s harmed also experienced idyllic early relationships with him.

In that fleeting period where she was, being new, at the head of his roster.

Idyllic “vacation” relationships are especially easy to sustain over many years when a partner is long-distance.

Relationship are easy to sustain when it’s not actually a relationship.

His long-distance partners, and partners who have not been through the end of an invested relationship with him, may never have experienced the kinds of harm from him experienced by those who became more entwined.

It sounds as though this chap was running a cult. Which now I think about it, he was.

It is, as Franklin himself has written, possible for him to be simultaneously easy to love and dangerous to love.

This is consistent with the theory that a handful of men who get into polyamory are just regular, a-hole alpha males who’ve found a way to shag lots of women. A lot of polyamorist groups feature one man who gets all the sex while everyone else gets all the headaches.

Many people have tried many times over many years to explain to Franklin the harm he has caused and offer him a chance to change, with no effect.

And why should he, if women are queuing up to sleep with him?

He has been offered, and refused, a community accountability process at least once.

Sensible chap. Can you imagine what that would look like?

Nevertheless, we, and the women themselves, believe strongly that no one is disposable, and that a path to accountability?—?separate from the process of supporting the survivors?—?should be open to Franklin.

I think they’ve inadvertently founded a church.

Therefore, as a final gesture of goodwill, we have sent Franklin a call-in letter naming the harm done, asking that he initiate his own accountability process, and outlining what accountability would look like to the survivors. He has indicated via a public Quora post that he declines, but we stand ready to liaise with his accountability team should he change his mind.

If your sex life is such that you need to maintain an accountability team to deal with complaints, you may have gone off the deep end some time ago. Remember, folks: polyamory is perfectly normal and we mustn’t judge.

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Cryin’ Lyin’ Zion

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I see the Somali woman who has somehow become a US Congresswoman is once again fending off accusations of antisemitism following a series of tweets which suggested American politicians defend Israel because lobbyists pay them to.

This prompted a Twitter thread by a British contributor to The Economist on the practice of disguising antisemitism as anti-Zionism, and the similarities between its adoption by hard-left American politicians and what we’ve seen in the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn. It’s actually not a bad thread, but here’s how it ends:


It seems a lot of Jews in the media are incapable of speaking about antisemitism without an obligatory swipe at Trump and other right wing politicians who hold unapproved views. I’ve written about this before; it’s a common phenomenon. Trump is the most pro-Jewish president America has ever had; he had absolutely no problem with his daughter converting to Judaism and marrying her Jewish boyfriend, who Trump fully embraced. He’s also the most pro-Israeli American president for a long time, motivated by such concerns as security and sovereignty. This ought to have Jews on both sides of the Atlantic turning cartwheels in celebration, but it appears their concerns over antisemitism are outweighed by a desire to remain popular in left wing, liberal circles and keep those dinner party invites flowing.

Trump is racist only by the insane definition of metropolitan newsrooms and western academia. What Orban is supposed to have done that is not part of Israel’s founding policy I don’t know. And I bet this Pfeffer chap took his views on Bolsonaro from an article some know-nothing, idiot journalist wrote from an office in London. Hell, it was probably a colleague at The Economist with a pencil neck and an English degree from Oxford hanging over his desk. Ilhan Omar, on the other hand, really is racist and the same goes for a good portion of those allowed to settle in the UK under successive governments. If the likes of Pfeffer can’t bring himself to differentiate between them and Trump, is the problem as grave as he makes out? Personally I think it is, but if Jewish journalists aren’t going to take it seriously, why should I? He should be looking to recruit allies and build bridges with those (like me) who have no skin in the game. Ordinarily I’d side with British and American Jews over racist Somalis, but if their spokesmen are going to spend time bashing Hungarian and Brazilian politicians and virtue-signalling about how much they despise Trump, maybe I’ll just sit on the sidelines and say nothing. What’s my incentive to get involved?

I’ve written recently about how American Jews are going to have to decide whether they want to join the ranks of white deplorables or continue to stoke the fires of identity politics which enable those who truly detest them. British Jews are similarly going to have to decide whether they want to enlist the help of ordinary, decent people in opposing antisemitism or continue to paint themselves into a corner because maintaining their social status is more important than ensuring their safety.

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From the Balls of Montezuma

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Staying on the topic of Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez, this amused:


It’s funny how the narrative of Europeans wiping out the natives and their descendants living on stolen land stops at the Mexican border. Presumably some think the indigenous peoples of central and south America were already speaking Spanish when the Conquistadors showed up and had names like, well, Ocasio-Cortez.

I have a theory that everyone wants to be an imperialist overlord, but criticism is reserved for those with the competence to actually carry it out. See this exchange, for example:


The Irish spend half the time moaning about British imperialism and the other half demanding Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, and the Falkland Islands be annexed by their neighbours against the wishes of the population. The irony in the case of Ocasio-Cortez is most Puerto Ricans are wishing the US would hurry up and annex them properly.

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Deindustrial Revolution

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Yesterday Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled the Green New Deal, her plan to transform America by combining technologies not yet invented with those of Iron Age man, leaving out everything in the middle. If implemented it will make the USA look like the Soviet Union, only run by the sort of people who shop in organic food stores and collect their own stools to spread on the rhubarb.

The FAQ which accompanied the main document reads as though a child has written it:

Totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle.

Charging stations everywhere, including on top of Mount Rainer. It also intends to:

transition off of nuclear and all fossil fuels as soon as possible.

A free handsaw will be issued to every household for the purpose of gathering firewood.

we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America

Every building? That’s in the order of 120 million. Although to be fair it’s a 10-year plan, so that’s only 230,000 buildings a week. Where the materials for this will come from is anyone’s guess. And who will pay for it? Pfffffft:

At the end of the day, this is an investment in our economy that should grow our wealth as a nation, so the question isn’t how will we pay for it, but what will we do with our new shared prosperity.

Better order your yacht now folks, before the manufacturers get too busy. And you’ll have plenty of time to enjoy it because the plan provides:

Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.

Count me in!

This plan is probably what you’d expect from Ocasio-Cortez, who has burst onto the political scene with more energy and zeal than the rest of Congress put together but unburdened with intelligence or a sense of how the world functions outside of Queens. Some are saying this shifts the Overton window, but these ideas have been commonplace in the corridors of academia and in environmentalist manifestos for years; nobody’s reading anything new here. What’s happening is more akin to a lunatic Green party member suddenly becoming kingmaker in one of those dysfunctional coalition systems they use on the continent, and all the attention switches to them. AOC doesn’t hold a vital swing vote, but she’s holding everyone’s attention and many are eager to capitalise on her popularity:


This came hot on the heels of:


The Democrat party is out of control, lurching leftwards past the likes of Bernie Sanders to where the buses don’t run, stoked by hotheads like AOC. Once again, the parallels between what’s happening to them and what Momentum did to the British Labour party are obvious. I’ve said it several times recently, but AOC is turning into a real problem for the Democrats. She’s stealing all their airtime and using it to promote swivel-eyed lunacy which has the party name stamped right on it. When she pauses for breath the cameras switch to the scarcely more sane Kamala Harris, or Elizabeth Warren who is fast being chucked under the bus but still insists she did nothing wrong by calling herself a red Indian. What the Democrats are screaming out for is someone who is halfway smart and not nuts, and they’re coming up short. This is telling:

Nancy Pelosi isn’t all that impressed. Asked about the “Green New Deal” in an interview with Politico on Wednesday, Pelosi dropped this amazing bit of shade on it:
“It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive. The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”

Nancy Pelosi may be several things, but she’s not stupid and she’s been around a long time. She knows exactly how this sort of plan will go down outside New York city and coastal California, not to mention those who underwrite American politics. You don’t get to be worth $29m on a $223k lawmaker’s salary by annoying corporate America and promoting insane socialist policies. But I have a feeling her biggest challenge is going to be putting a leash on the likes of AOC and Harris, and somehow finding somebody who isn’t a lunatic or an idiot to represent the party going forward. Any idea who that might be?

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Projection of Power(skirts)

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A few commenters on here have raised the question as to whether the US Navy’s infatuation with diversity and political correctness might be behind their recent spate of warship collisions. Via Twitter Kevin Michael Grace I came across this very long article detailing the circumstances around the 2017 collision between the destroyer USS Fitzgerald and a large cargo ship. Not that I wish to extrapolate too much from this, but it makes for grim reading:

Sarah Coppock, lieutenant junior grade, was the officer of the deck, responsible for the safety and navigation of the ship while Benson slept.

…

Coppock did not trust some of her team that night.

…

Still, Coppock, naturally self-assured, took the bridge undeterred.

…

Her conning officer was Eric Uhden. Like Woodley, he was an experienced sailor who served years at sea as an enlisted man before becoming an officer.

Uhden alerted Coppock to the potential danger. At first, she dismissed his concern. But a moment later, Uhden said that Coppock seemed to realize her miscalculation.

…

Uhden memorialized the incident in an understated note scribbled in his private journal: “Fishing vessel got close on watch.” But nobody else knew about it. Coppock never told the captain, as she was supposed to do.

…

Coppock may not have ensured that the radar on the bridge was properly adjusted to obtain a finer-grained picture. A post-crash reconstruction showed that Coppock lost sight of one of the ships due to clutter on the “improperly adjusted” SPS-73 screen.

…

But the 5-foot-4-inch Coppock was used to giving what she got in the Ashland’s wardroom, where the ship’s officers gathered to eat and talk. “You could sit there and scream at each other for hours and it was just to get stuff done. We really didn’t care. It wasn’t personal,” she said. “We’d go out and drink afterwards.”

It was a different story on the Fitzgerald.

Coppock stopped dining with her fellow officers in the Fitzgerald’s wardroom. By long Navy tradition, attendance at such meals was considered necessary to forge the esprit de corps needed to run a ship. Not eating with them was akin to snubbing family.

Fellow Fitzgerald sailors noted her absence. To some, Coppock appeared disconnected. Other shipmates went so far as to call her “lazy” or “abrasive and unapproachable.”

Coppock said she stayed away from the officers’ mess because of criticism from fellow junior officers. She blamed their hostility on her singular focus on getting the job done. Mission came first, she said.

…

Coppock had displayed her skills in the weeks after Benson took command. She and her enlisted assistant, Alexander Vaughan, had stayed up almost 48 hours in the successful pursuit of a Chinese submarine off the coast of Japan. The achievement sealed Coppock’s reputation as a hell of a sailor.

It also boosted her self-assurance. She considered herself one of the better officers on the ship.

…

Parker alerted Coppock. Coppock told Parker not to worry — she was tracking the ship. She said it would pass 1,500 yards behind the Fitzgerald.

…

“We gotta slow down,” Parker told Coppock.

No, Coppock told her again. “We can’t slow down because it’ll make the situation worse.” Coppock worried that slowing down might bring her into the path of the ship that was supposed to pass behind them.

…

Coppock disobeyed Benson’s standing orders. Rather than call Benson for help, she decided to continue on her own. Coppock didn’t call down to the combat room to ask for help, either.

…

Coppock decided that she was not going to clear the Crystal by going toward the right. Such a turn would put her on a possible collision with the Wan Hai 266.

“Oh shit, I’m so fucked! I’m so fucked!” she screamed.

…

Instead, Coppock ordered a move that disregarded the very basics of her training.

…

Coppock did not sound the collision alarm to warn sailors of the impending risk.

“I just got so wrapped up in trying to do anything that I had to just drop the ball on everything else that I needed to do,” she said.

…

Babbitt was trying to save his sailors. The five crew members trapped in sonar were rescued early on. Womack appeared in a daze. Coppock was inconsolable, sobbing and berating herself.

…

The Navy’s investigators concluded that sailors bore the primary blame for the collision. Benson, Coppock and the bridge and combat information center watch teams had failed to use basic seamanship skills to escape an “avoidable” accident. They had been “excessively fatigued” and had not taken steps to rest. Coppock had ignored basic rules of the road and the captain’s orders.

To be honest, I don’t think this episode makes the case that women are useless sailors. Under a different regime, women could probably perform very well on a warship. The trouble is, the same politicised, ultra-progressive, bureaucratic, management system which places high value on diversity is also responsible for standards plummeting across the board. The captain was a man named Bryce Benson, and he didn’t seem up to the job either. It’s not difficult to imagine that the behaviours and characteristics which get you recognised and promoted in the modern US Navy (and most modern organisations) are not those which are valuable in a crisis. This snippet is illuminating:

Coppock had displayed her skills in the weeks after Benson took command. She and her enlisted assistant, Alexander Vaughan, had stayed up almost 48 hours in the successful pursuit of a Chinese submarine off the coast of Japan. The achievement sealed Coppock’s reputation as a hell of a sailor.

I expect there were many such instances of Coppock’s reputation soaring as her career progressed, only when it really mattered it was abundantly clear it was undeserved. This is depressingly common: I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen slavish dedication to senior management form the basis of someone’s stellar reputation, even as everything falls apart around them. The outlook’s not too gloomy for her, though:

Coppock was charged with dereliction of duty and pleaded guilty. She remains in the Navy and is expected to be a witness against Benson and Combs in their trials. Navy investigators have praised her candor and cooperation. She has a tattoo on her left wrist with seven shamrocks. It features the coordinates of the crash.

I’m slightly surprised she didn’t get a medal.

(I’d be interested in Jason Lynch’s comments on this story.)

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Food for Thought

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Consider this tweet by Israeli journalist Lahav Harkov, who is sound on a lot of issues:


Now I know there’s a whole swathe of the alt-right who believe women should never leave the kitchen, and I know the expectation that a woman is obliged to cook for her husband every night is old-fashioned. But that said, if a woman does cook for her husband that will go some way to defining her worth, both in his eyes and those of outsiders. Imagine the roles were switched, and Harry was cooking for Meghan every night: his stock would soar in the eyes of most women.

I know a lot of men my age and younger who can cook, and part of this is because feminists told recent generations of women they ought not to learn. “If he wants dinner he can cook it himself,” was the prevailing attitude. Well, that’s what they did and I know several families in which the man is the main cook (and enjoys doing it). The problem with that is it removes a valuable tool women of my mother’s and grandmother’s generations used to attract and retain a husband. Men of that era couldn’t boil an egg, so it was a huge incentive to settle down with someone if you wanted to eat properly the rest of your life. The phrase “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” isn’t repeated across languages and cultures for nothing. Of course it placed a burden on the woman, but having a stable job (that was often dangerous) placed a burden on the man. A marriage is a partnership in which mutually beneficial tasks are divided between the couple, each doing what they’re best at. If women decide they don’t want to cook, the man will either find someone who can or learn to feed himself. He isn’t going to starve. The standard feminist response to this would be: “Well, if all he wants me for is to be his slave, he can get stuffed.” And quite right too. But as I’ve just said, a relationship is a partnership. If she’s not cooking, what is she offering? Sex? That’s not enough, especially in the Tinder age. Sassy feminism? No thanks.

I’m being unfair. There are many women who bring plenty to the table, if you excuse the pun, without cooking for her partner every day. But on the other hand I keep reading articles on how hard it is for modern, middle class women to find a decent man who sticks around. Apparently, they’re only interested in Tinder hookups these days, and many don’t want relationships. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that if these women had cooking skills in their armoury along with a willingness to deploy them regularly, they’d find men a lot less keen to skedaddle as soon as the first ray of sunlight touches her bedroom window on a Sunday morning. I base this on the fact that, if a woman meets a man who can cook well and likes doing it, she brags to all her friends and spends more time at his gaff than her own.

My point is, to find a decent partner you need to maximise what you bring to the relationship, and focus on those skills they might lack. You would be amazed at the degree to which my relationships have been based on an ability to unblock sinks, take down heavy boxes from the top of wardrobes, fit insulation strips to ill-fitting windows, and bleed radiators. Having someone who is willing to cook is a huge asset in a relationship, regardless of who is doing it. Being able to share the duties is even better. But modern feminism has taught women that being able to cook should not contribute to their worth in a relationship, and they ought not to even bother learning. Stripped of one of the most valuable skills they can bring to a relationship, they’re now howling at the lack of men who are interested in one.

As I’m fond of asking: whose fault is that, then?

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Misidentified Gender

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An article from Vox:

Ever since women started holding political office, American men have been fixated on their clothes.

Yeah, sure. Just like when Theresa May was interviewed at home wearing leather trousers, the cattiness that followed was also from fixated men. Uh-huh.

(Via Steve Sailer, who notes it’s about as plausible as: “Ever since men started playing golf, American women have been fixated on their golf course architecture.”)

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State of the Union Dressup

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I’m seeing a pattern here:

Behind him, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sat in a white suit jacket and blouse. Before him, a block of female lawmakers donned a range of white outfits and visibly unimpressed expressions. Even his daughter Tiffany was pictured in white, with social media speculating that the choice may have been more than a coincidence.
President Trump’s State of the Union address was flooded with the color white.
The bold statement, initiated by the House Democratic Women’s Working Group, saw dozens of lawmakers coordinate their attire as a show of solidarity among women. Democrats taking part included newly-elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who was seen wearing a white cape, and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who wore a white vest and trousers paired with a blue hijab and red shirt.

Oh yes:

Women are wearing black to the 2018 Golden Globe Awards to protest sexual harassment and raise awareness for Time’s Up, a new initiative fighting sexual misconduct in Hollywood and beyond. As the stars take the red carpet for tonight’s ceremony, they explain the powerful reasons why they went all-noir for the awards show.

And:

When US vice-president Mike Pence visited Philadelphia on 23 July, he was greeted by a now familiar sight: a wall of women dressed in scarlet cloaks, with oversize white bonnets obscuring their faces.

The outfit worn by Margaret Atwood’s handmaids in her 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale and its recent TV adaptation has been in evidence from Argentina to the US, the UK and Ireland, and has emerged as one of the most powerful current feminist symbols of protest, in a subversive inversion of its association with the oppression of women.

And:

An estimated 500,000 people gathered for the Women’s March on Washington to advocate for gender equality on President Donald Trump’s first full day in office. Many sported pink knitted beanies with cat ears, called “pussy hats,” as a symbol of solidarity among protestors.

A group called the Pussyhat Project helped make the hat part of marchers’ uniform. Project co-organizer Jayna Zweiman told Business Insider that anyone who planned to march could download a crochet, knit, or sew pattern for the hat on the project’s site. Alternatively, people could make and send them to the organizers to give away at DC’s march.

An awful lot of what passes for women’s politics these days is just a big game of dress-up. Whereas this might be expected from empty-headed actresses and the vinegar-drinking cat-ladies who go on women’s marches, what excuse do female politicians at the State of the Union address have? That America oppresses women so much it behooves the dozens of women who hold high political office to draw attention to it? This is theatre – nay, pantomime – and these women are play-acting. The whole stunt screams:

“Hah! We have forced our way into your institutions and now we’re going to act like a bunch of teenagers and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. Take that, daddy men!”

Which is strange, because the old misogynistic dinosaurs of yesteryear warned against allowing women into senior positions on the grounds they’d not take them seriously. From accounts I’ve read on Twitter, each woman in white sat through Trump’s address with a face like a bulldog licking piss off a thistle until he said:

No-one has benefited more from a thriving economy than women, who have filled 58% of the newly created jobs last year.

At which point they rose to their feet and delivered a round of applause in congratulation to…themselves.


I can understand why this goes down well with some women. What I don’t understand is why normal, intelligent, self-assured women would take them seriously. Even more baffling is that men vote for them as well. As others have said, modern feminism is little more than a giant sh*t-test which men are failing badly. Men are gonna need to snap out of it soon. So are ordinary women, for that matter.

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A Product of Dumb Luck

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When I arrived in my MBA program last October I had to spend a bit of time preparing my backstory. All my classmates are in their twenties and have yet to start their careers, whereas on some measures I’ve done quite well for myself already. I had to come up with a way to explain it without my coming across as a complete d-head. During a car trip to Bern with a fellow student, I emphasised the importance dumb luck played in me achieving a relatively comfortable standard of living, rather than my sheer brilliance.

First off, I chose my parents carefully and was born with above average intellect into a stable, middle class family. These two alone are the markers of probably around 80% of life outcomes, unless your parents smoke crack pipes in the living room (mine didn’t). I was fortunate enough that my dad earned enough money to send me to a school which, for all its faults, got me the grades to get into a decent university. Secondly, I happened to stumble into the oil industry during the biggest boom it had ever seen, complete with skyrocketing salaries which were sustained for more than a decade. Sure, I made stuff happen by making a few smart decisions, working (when absolutely necessary), and taking opportunities when they arose, but without those two things I’d be nothing.

Thanks to my being a well-educated, white collar professional who enjoyed a lucrative career, most of my social circle is the same. From those who rode the oil boom with me, particularly those who got in early, most are millionaires (asset-wise) with multiple properties, international marriages, children in expensive private schools, and who enjoy luxury foreign family holidays at least once per year. Turning up at my school, I found this describes many of my professors, too. Often when I’m introduced to people in my social circle, I find them to be very intelligent, successful, and staggeringly rich by the standards of even the last generation.

The trouble is, I’ve detected a severe lack of self-awareness among what I can accurately describe as my social peers. It takes the form of a sneering, dismissive attitude towards anyone they deem “uneducated”, which means they hold views they disagree with. It appears to be the policy in my business school that lecturers make a random, disparaging remark about Trump once per session, without stopping for a single second to put themselves in the shoes of those who voted for him. If challenged to do so, they’re dismissed as uneducated racists who were manipulated by his fearmongering lies. Similarly, those who voted for Britain to leave the European Union are routinely insulted by phenomenally wealthy people in my social group who’ve done extraordinarily well from the status quo, and blithely assume anyone who hasn’t is stupid or lazy. Unfortunately, thanks to my membership of Facebook, I have to see this every day from people who really ought to – what’s that term? – check their privilege.

There is nothing uglier in a person than a lack of self-awareness, particularly an inability to appreciate that there by the grace of God go I. Yes, we all worked to get where we are, some of us damned hard, but sheer luck played a large part as well. Too many of my social peers are trapped in a self-delusional bubble which is, quite frankly, turning otherwise decent people into a-holes. A lengthy career in an international oil major, where sneering down your nose at the lower ranks is actively encouraged, can scarcely help with that. When I moved to France I gradually started mixing with people who weren’t oil industry professionals or expatriates, and nowadays my social circles are made up of many such people. Some of them earn less in a year than my oil industry colleagues spend on the education of a single child in the same period. I’ve noticed you don’t hear them airily dismiss whole swathes of society as readily as those in my more natural social circle. Indeed, they tend not to mention politics at all. These days, voting is a middle class hobby; for those lower down, nothing changes no matter who gets in. I have friends who express opinions which would make my other friends choke on their organic veggie burgers. I don’t necessarily agree with them, but given who they are and where they come from, I can see why they think that way.

I’ll wrap this up by saying I have a good friend who has done very well for himself as an international banker, and is very well-educated and wealthy by any standards. But he remains extremely down to earth, and can rub along with anyone. Why? A child immigrant, he grew up in his parents’ restaurant in the (almost) Deep South. As he put it:

“If you’ve grown up scrubbing pots in a kitchen full of Mexicans, it’s hard to get too far ahead of yourself.”

Indeed. I didn’t have a hard life, and most difficulties were self-inflicted out of pure masochism. I got lucky. If I didn’t make the effort, I might not know how the other side live. I’m glad I did, and I do. I wish more of my peers did.

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