That old "posh" British accent - why did we laugh at it?

When I was at university, I used to laugh with my friends at the Monty Python sketches ridiculing posh English accents and the army officers that used them. This was in the very early 90s. The Monty Python sketches were getting really old themselves, and the accents we were laughing at were fast dying out. 

One of my reasons for joining in this humour was less honourable. Being young I hankered after friendship. When I got to university I found a lot of my fellow students going in a political direction I knew I couldn't follow. Today we'd call it the "progressive" Left. But I found that when I played Graham Chapman's sergeant major character, some of those friends laughed very loud*. I didn't share the political bent that made them laugh at some things rather than others - but social pressure encouraged me to laugh at that parody

How we laughed at the posh-speaking army officers. Except that those officers were the ones that were actually in charge of one of the best militaries in the world, widely respected.

I've been thinking about this again when I watched a documentary about Britain's campaign in the Falklands. It is their sort who ran half the world. They were not much like today's breed of Englishmen: who all seem to hate each other, who are negative about themselves, everyone around them, the future, our past...negative about everything, really, which they seem to think is a badge of honour

* my student friends even seemed political at what they'd laugh at. Maybe that's true of some of the things those of us on the centre-right laugh at. But I do think that "progressives" took the phrase "the personal is the political" excessively seriously. A huge number of them were obsessive about their politics. It was hard to talk to them about any subject without them relating it to the struggle against the Tories. This cultist frame of mind is incredibly inimical to the imaginative life

Progressives, feminists, books and culture

It amused me to find a thread on mumsnet agonising about how someone's DS (dear son) was reading the BeastQuest books by the tonne (or having them read to him). She was upset that the main character was male & that the main female character didn't do as much. It was therefore, of course, "sexist"!

This is the feminist/progressive mindset: having got him reading at all, she then wanted to control what he read. It's not that there aren't books (Nancy Drew, but really thousands of them) with female lead characters, but that either a) he wasn't reading them, or b) they aren't always as popular; people's choices of reading are what are upsetting her. It must be upsetting for her that the Harry Potter is the main character in the bestsellers. It's the same mindset that had Dr Who disastrously turned into a woman, and will soon do the same for James Bond (which has already contained a rant or 2 against sexism from the new "M" who was at this stage, inevitably, a women). Firstly, they can't produce a franchise with a popular lead character themselves (Lara Croft, Mrs Marple etc are either not successful enough or "problematic in their representation of women") Secondly, they want to control all that we see, hear, say or think. They are, quite simply, mad...and they control the publishers & bookshops, schools, universities and the broadcast media. That's why you should be worried - your liberties are under attack

The idea that dishonest arguments weaken your position

So I don't consider myself rightwing - but I certainly read & watch a lot of content by those who oppose the extremes of modern progressive politics. There is a argument with which we console ourselves, and I'm not sure it holds water. 

The argument takes this form: feminists complaining about mansplaining weaken feminism because they imply that women are so weak that they need to be protected from male arguments. A similar assertion is that positive discrimination and "offence politics" are themselves racist because they imply that ethnic minorities are too stupid to get jobs for themselves and, again, need protection from offence (by authoritarian, anti-free-speech laws)

The appalling logic of progressives might weaken the logical framework they are putting forward - but political power, as we know, is not won by presenting the most logical argument, but by either persuading people with arguments (however specious) and traducing or threatening anyone who disagrees. In this, feminists and the "everything is racist" mob are preeminent: their approach to politics is entirely based on accusations of hatred and arguments that are just plausible enough that the more articulate people* in their camp can persuade themselves that they are right.

In my first example above, the more bonkers feminists may continue to argue that women need to be protected from interruptions, that men aren't allowed to express a view on the abortion issue, and that womens' prisons should be closed, and at the same time they will claim that they "only want equality".  Some of us will laugh at what nonsense this is, and then we will watch and wonder why those who rule us do exactly what the activists want 

So the progressive cult may still be successful politically as what they say gets less and less internally consistent. It may take a long time - and a lot of work for the rest of us - for their intellectual dishonesty to be widely recognised. As much as anything else, it's a matter of removing a self-selecting group from power, and seeing as they are very rich, this could be difficult

 * note that I did not say "the more intelligent people in their camp"

The childish tricks of the progressive left

Everything is racism

It seems to me that British (nay Western) life has become dominated by accusations of racism - often on the smallest pretext - to the point where discussion of politics becomes all but impossible, and therefore doesn't happen properly. Rulers in Europe are committed to mass immigration, and reportedly are considering whether to classify and dissent on the subject as "hate-speech". (this development is, in itself, a serious infringement of freedom of speech)

But whatever the ruling classes think they are doing we can't pretend that the obsession with racism is confined to them - it is rampant among well-off liberals living in London, Oxford and other university cities in Britain. I myself know well (and have written about) some of the types who keep the perpetual racism narrative alive. You'll be at a kids' party talking to other parents, or sipping cocktails in someone's spacious garden - often living in the whitest districts in Britain - and the conversation will veer towards "racism" as if attracted by a sort of black hole, from which nothing can ever escape.

There's a video on Youtube where a reformed SJW explains how she used to be actively looking for racism, almost hoping to see some so she could step in and be the hero. This is very common and illustrates the skewed perspective of such people. It's hard enough to understand life as it is, but you simply cannot see things clearly if you start out looking for a particular phenomenon, and ignoring everything else..

The trap being used to silence conservatives

We're bombarded with anti-white-male political correctness. I travel on my bus to work and I see posters advertising a 6th form college, that show several girls and a coloured boy. An advert for a martial arts class that has the same ratio - no white boys. I try to ignore this and open the newspaper that's free on the bus and by God it's Metro - the . At the weekend, I go to a nativity and open the carol booklet, and I see pictures of girls singing, with a boy in blurry focus very much in the background. And yesterday I watched Carols for Kings, once the glory of the BBC and one of the most powerful expressions of British spirituality you'll see still alive and well. But the powers tht be have screwed with this tradition, too. Most of the readers of lessons were women - the ratio was so blatant that they can only have been trying to make a pointl most readers had a north American accent, weirdly; there was one Muslim (naturally, at a Christian service...) and eventually I think one white male got to read a lesson.

The denizens of Twitter, as usual, paid scant attention to the beautiful music being played and got down to the serious business of pushing progressive politics. A user claimed to be disgusted with the whole thing - he didn't explain why - and people lined up to ask "Why?", "Please tell us why?". They'd made up their mind already.

That's the trap - we're having a particular agenda shovelled over us every day, and if you complain there are enough fanatics out there waiting to a) say how much they approve of it and b) are looking out for anyone who doesn't approve of it, so they can closely question that person and imply or just say outright that they are racist.

"Let's do something to wind up the Gammon brigade"

Sometimes the whole trap is quite deliberate. The Labour government who started mass immigration into the UK were open about their wish to rub conservatives' noses in it. They knew full well that they could not only secure votes, but accuse anyone who opposed the policy of racism. It was win-win for them. I'm certain the BBC do the same thing. When the new Dr Who was announced as a woman (what a joke that is, by the way, done purely for political reasons when there were already excellent Time Lady characters in the Rani and Romana) the usual Twitter crowd - aching to display some virtue, were circling like a pack of vultures waiting for someone to complain - simply so they could call that person a "misogynist". They gleefully announced how the best thing about this was that it "upset the Gammon brigade".

There is something wrong with us if our priority is to wind up someone from a group we want to accuse of hatred

They can keep this game up forever, and it is openly anti white-male - I don't think there is any controversial in my saying that. The discrimination against white, straight men,  flagrantly illegal though it is - is openly on view) The only antidote to it is for us all to call it out for what it is, unafraid of being accused of "hate-speech".

That and the fact that the opportunistic accusations of hatred are so reflexive, and often on such spurious grounds, that terms like "racism" will lose their power. This would weaken the grievance industry, but would hardly be a good thing in itself.

Why Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is slightly unpopular

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has recently been described as "the most annoying woman in Britain", and normally I'd think this is hyperbole, or at least a difficult title to win so easily.

That is, till I spent 20 or 30 minutes watching some of her interviews and reading a few of her somewhat tendentious writings. I thought a brief summary would be helpful, as she's been at it again in that charming newspaper The European. This is what I learnt about Yasmin

1) she appears to be a committed enemy of Britain's culture and wellbeing, posing as a sort of concerned critic of our country, who wants to make it a better place.

2) her shrill, unremitting complaints about our island make one wonder - how much about it does she actually like? Indeed, it's infuriating to those of us that love this country and it's history. She usually drops into the conversation that she chose to make a home here, then proceeds to relentlessly rubbish Britain.

3) exasperated folk will hence often fall into her trap and (quite reasonably) say either "well why did you choose to live here" or "if you hate Britain so much, why not leave". It's a perfectly fair reply, but it's also exactly what she wants you to say, so that she can go onto her other favourite subject: calling us all racists.

This seems to be her game. It's perfectly fair to want to change things, but it's worth remembering that ISIS and the Nazis also wanted to - as they saw it - "change Britain for the better". We are, I think, entitled to ask for a certain loyalty to our culture from those who want to, um, tweak it. All the more so if they want to overhaul it completely.

Yasmin and her friends would no doubt shout racist if they read this. But in truth they'll call anyone and everyone "racist" (you don't actually have to say anything to qualify, just being white and male will suffice). My previous paragraph is perfectly relevant for white revolutionaries and extreme "progressives" who want to overturn everything about Britain.

Some of this crew claim to love Britain, which takes an effort to believe - what exactly is it about Britain that Corbyn or Diane Abbott love? Never trust revolutionaries.

Finally Daniel Hannan rightly takes Ms Alibhai-Brown to task on her attitudes towards the poor people of Britain. What a charmer she is. Whatever happens in Britain, one of the things we need to fix is this new snobbery.

The biggest threat to free-speech. Governments or ordinary folk?

Recently, reading this page on the openDemocracy site, I wrote a comment - where I was basically thinking aloud - mentioning how some of the forces that curtail our freedom of speech are simply other ordinary people, playing power games with one another.

Government censorship & free speech

This needs further explanation, because our first, intuitive idea of "censorship" is of government control of expression. Modern day hate-speech laws are a perfect example of this. To bullet point my problems with the idea:

• "Hate-speech" is impossible to define (partly because the word "hate" is, too)
• what constitutes "Hate-speech" therefore becomes a matter of interpretation
• that interpretation is in danger of 
• being applied unequally to different groups
• being applied in too many scenarios

The last point is key. Officials will eagerly look for new ways of applying this new law, forgetting the essential maxim that one should leave our liberties well alone (especially free speech) unless there is an excellent reason for restricting them. Roughly, being free to kill someone has such a deleterious effect on others' freedom & lives, that it's reasonable to restrict that freedom. 

Casually making it illegal to say something because someone might be offended or angered is a most dangerous path - which we've seen the consequences of. We ought to know better..

People power

What of the other sort of thought control? I think it's worth examining the way ordinary people influence each other's language and expression. It's surely a phenomenon we'll never be rid of, but being fully aware of such forces can only strengthen us against the appeal of GroupThink. 

Over and over again on Twitter and Facebook you can see people saying X because they think the larger peer group (their friends and acquaintances) will approve of X, not because they truly believe X.

My belief is that organised religions used to retain power by this sort of social pressure. As well as the threat of eternal damnation, religion was one vehicle for people to play games of social approval with one another. In the West, we have a new faith that tries to exercise the same sort of moral power - and it is the new Left, with their relentless accusations of racism and misogyny.

I've said often enough that I think feminism is about control rather than the stated aim of equality. Because of the nature of the movement, their means of influencing what you do think or say are numerous: social disapproval, righteous anger, group politics, etc. A respected scientist who says the wrong thing or even wears the wrong shirt is hounded online by an unpleasant army.

The tactic I find scariest, and most akin to something from Orwell's 1984, is the rather successful attempt to influence literature, screen drama, and all levels of education.

Sure a lot of ludicrous feminist dogma has already infiltrated government - and it's a major headache. But nothing says more about how feminism operates than that they quietly lobbied for 'guidelines' for textbooks and writers of drama. (I see the same influences at play with children's literature)

Trying to control the stories and ideas people come into contact with is reminiscent of the worst excesses of the nastier 20th century governments. This effort started with ordinary people telling each other what they should think or say, and has turned into a major movement for doing same. It seems that as long as there is a loosely-defined feminist movement, there will be attempts not to persuade, but to indoctrinate.

Feminism is about control, not equality

EDIT: A piece from early 2016 that I didn't publish originally. Still worth a look I think, as I'm revisiting the same theme

Occasionally, when they think they are getting a bad press (or when soul-searching over the fact that very few people believe their bizarre opinions) feminists say things like "feminism is about equality". This is suitably vague, enabling them to "clarify" later on, I want to suggest that the only thing that makes sense of numerous strands of feminist behaviour is the unusually strong desire to exercise control others - very often men - by any means possible.

Control of language

Feminists in the 80s seemed to get quite excited about the word "chairman", which they wanted changed because, to quote one of them "it reflects a male-dominated society". That was the language they used in those days, I'm not sure "patriarchy" had caught on back then.

A couple of years ago, feminists en masse decided to use the #banBossy tag on twitter - they wanted the word "bossy" made illegal or unacceptable  in some way because they thought (mysteriously) that it was used mainly about women.

One celebrity suggested that the word "fat" be banned too, apparently she believed this would be accepted by many people. It's probable that she will have thought this because of many conversations with friends where they all got rather overconfident about what things should be banned because they didn't like them, so this is more than just one person's eccentric idea

Finally there was a proposal to the EU in 2013 that anti-feminism be criminalised under "hate-speech" laws.

Feminists want to control what you say. George Carlin spotted this fact, though he was considerably more sympathetic to feminism than I am. They also hope, by doing so, to control what you think as well

Control of male sexuality

Feminist groups regularly complain about pornography, and the supposed attitudes it causes in adolescent boys. They've no evidence for this. Similarly to how computer games actually calm kids down, there is no evidence to suggest that the availability of porn increases the amount of sexual assault (even though the definition of such assault has been extended massively in recent years)

But feminists want to control it. Feminist groups also put pressure on governments to ban prostitution, on dubious grounds - and if they can make the legislation demonise the male clients rather than the sex workers themselves then all the better, In some cases this pressure pays off for them.

And finally we come to sex robots. Is there anyone who doesn't realise that the inventor of a perfectly realistic sex-robot is going to be an overnight billionaire? Yet feminists recoil from the idea. I think the laughably obvious reason for this is that - when such robots become available - women will lose their main method of influence over men.

One could be concerned about the effect the robots would have on relationships (hard to say), but I don't think that's what bothers feminists, exactly - though they may claim it is so. The motives for their behaviour become clear when you look at everything else they do. Their reaction to something unknown or frightening is to try and control it, and that goes 100% for the men around them,

The dishonesty surrounding the immigration debate in the UK

The EU referendum in the UK has once again focused out minds in the issue of immigration.

In a nutshell, you have on the one hand working class British people, worried about uncontrolled immigration, worried about jobs, about services, and - yes - worried about their whole culture being changed as they get older.

On the other you have relatively comfortable middle class folk accusing the first group of wanting no immigration at all - and damning them all as racists and xenophobes.

Do I need to make that simpler?

As a nation, we seem obsessed with denouncing each other as racist, to the point of extending the definition of the word, so they can use it to label more and more people.

However, it is not racist or xenophobe or even isolationist to want to at least have our own controls over immigration, or wanting to limit it. We have every right to ask for this, it seems like common sense.

Those voting Remain never addressed this issue, preferring to misrepresent (and show contempt for) those who disagreed with them. Which is part of the reason they lost themselves a referendum...

"Avoiding negative stereotyping" is usually a lie

Plenty have noticed the very politically correct casting choices of The Force Awakens.  There is a long very dishonourable history of this sort of thing, carried out very prominently by the BBC.

The thought police who influence such things always make very sure that there are a preponderance of female characters in "action" roles. Women and ethnic minority characters tend to be honourable, decent people. White make characters, on the other hand are free to be as nasty as possible, and are frequently pathetic, lacking in confidence.

This piece documents just a few examples of the depiction of white men. Here's another.

Diane Ravitch tells this story from her days working on the National Assessment Governing Board

"I reviewed one- and two-page passages that had been prepared by the testing consortium ... Most of these passages had been previously published in children's magazines or in recent anthologies. After I had read about a dozen such passages ... I realized that the readings themselves had a cumulative subtext: the hero was never a white boy. Instead, the leading character -- the one who was most competent, successful, and sympathetic -- was invariably either a girl (of any race) or a nonwhite boy. Almost without exception, white boys were portrayed as weak and dependent. In one story, a white boy in a difficult situation weeps and says plaintively, 'If only my big sister were here, I would know what to do.'"

The obvious hypocrisy

Now never mind what it does to creative effort, to have these political rules shackling the outcome. There's a very obvious, very logical corollary here. If the content of drama and literature is policed so much that there are no "negative" stereotypes of women or non-whites, then you have 2 choices left:

• either your story has no characters with negative traits at all, or
• surprise! White men have to fill all the negative roles

Now anyone worried about how stereotyping affects people ought to be worried about the effect these anti-role-models will have on young white boys (who incidentally seem to be slipping down the rankings in academic achievements). But of course our betters see nothing wrong with negative stereotyping of white men. They don't care. You'll be insulted for suggesting there is a problem.

If people were serious about avoiding negative stereotyping of groups, television drama would be impossible. There would be no characters, no interest. If you choose to protect all groups except one from negative roles, then you are ensuring that this one group will get all the negative roles. You can't escape logic.

Thus the whole exercise of fighting stereotypes is worse than flawed, it does exactly what it claims to be fighting against

The madness of the WomenInSTEM brigade

In UK universities, there are more women studying overall. That is what is known as an inequality. Specifically, more women study languages, biological sciences, subjects relating to medicine, history, and social sciences (psychology, sociology etc). The imbalance is striking*

Feminists - our scrupulously honest defenders of equality, remember - always stay strangely silent about these facts. But, it's ok, they magically regain their voice again when you mention that more men study STEM sciences than women: engineering, maths (only just), physics & computer sciences have more men sudying.

Then our feminist betters are suddenly saying something cogent like "Inequality! Sexism! Discrimination! Patriarchy!"

OK, that's irritating, it's stupid & it's intellectually dishonest. But they're not done yet. NO way. Because if you put this fact to them, that inequalities run both ways, and they only care about those affecting women, then they often DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS A PROBLEM. I've said this and had someone say "well yes, feminism is about equality for women"

At which point you realise they're just trying to annoy you. Right?

Here's some basic logic: equality doesn't work just one way, or it ain't equality any more, it's then greater than or equal to. This is denoted by >= in maths notation and is different from =. You can't have equality for women and not for men. That's silly. So stop talking about equality, s'il vous plait.

And if some lunatic wants to reply "feminism isn't maths", then I would even more say "stop talking about equality" because maths is where equality lives, outside of maths, the word is meaningless.

Here endeth the maths lesson.


* the hard data for this is readily available. If you don't believe me, go down the long and boring road of checking it - even the Guardian reports the facts straight on this one.

Guardian readers' comments on UK divorce settlements

After a recent story on the Guardian website involving divorce settlements where wives were granted tens of millions of pounds, I thought it might be time to talk about CiF again.

In the story, 2 wives gained the right to re-open already HUGE divorce agreements (£10 and 30 million, If my memory serves) because husbands were ruled to have misled the court about how much they were worth.

The details are interesting, in one case the husband had stated that he was "considering floating his company". In fact he had more concrete plans than the word considering might imply. Even so, it seems remarkable that lawyers said they would have waited until they had a "clearer view" of his worth.

It almost sounds - perish the thought - that the wives & lawyers saw in retrospect that the flotation made millions, and then pounced. But to the CiF comments..

Aside from the many comments removed by moderators as usual (and some disappearing altogether), a few (men mostly) expressed angry disgust at the size of the settlement (some using terms like gold-diggers).

Interestingly, several of those responding to them basically changed the subject, saying "the issue is that these men lied in court".

It is important to note that this is a logical sleight of-hand. One issue is that the men lied, which, true or not, nobody is disputing..or even interested in. Another unrelated - but very important - issue is the rule which sees ex-wives able to divorce rich husbands for a fortune - none of which they have earned.

To say that "the issue is the lie" is simply to display temporary blindness to any other issue. All of a sudden the only thing these self-righteous CiF-readers care about is lying in court. One wonders why.


What else?

One exchange of note was apparently between an ex-husband who had been through divorce proceedings, and a character called jakboot who unfailingly took the women's side on every issue. I must say, jakboot's compassion was evident in the exchange:

I don't know about you, but there seems to be an element of glee in that question.

This being the Guardian, there was also the inevitable whiff of "it's happening to rich males, so who cares". If women in large numbers were being fleeced by similar settlements, you might reasonably expect journalists and readers who fret about women serving food at the table to be concerned about it. They might even wax lyrical about women who by their wit and hard work had deservedly made money, being "robbed".

But it's rich men, so no one on CiF really minds what happens to them.... Instead we saw a lot of huffing and puffing about how the men supposedly lied in court, some interesting discussion of the legal technicalities, and a baffling disinclination to discuss the amounts of money in question.

A family lawyer was most helpful in the comments, explaining many points. At one point (s)he was forced to admit, as an aside, that:

In terms of whether the wives "need" more, no, not by any stretch (perhaps in Gosil, not Sharland), and it's an issue that with the types of cases that get to this level, the sums in question are so high that it's difficult to care on an individual level whether they get more money. Or, on the flipside, whether the husbands pay more money.


To conclude...

It's understandable that the ex-husbands commenting on CiF are angry, but I also see that their anger is going to be represented as "hate" somewhere down the line, especially if their language is intemperate.

But a subtle point is how willing many posters were to avoid the issue of the colossal sums which ex-wives were paid - and they still wanted more.

Is Free speech really in danger?

So it became half an issue when some students conspired to close down a debate on abortion in an Oxford college. All sorts of excruciatingly dishonest reasons were given as to why the debate should not happen - but one occasionally stated reason was that 2 men were debating the issue. Some feminists do not want men even expressing a view about abortion.

Anyways, one of the 2 men who were going to speak was Brendan O'Neill, and you can read his thoughts here - and also hear his discussion (I use the word loosely) with  the nightmare feminist from hell Harriet Brown, an Oxford post-grad who doesn't quite seem to have the knack of letting people talk uninterrupted for more than 5 seconds.

Ironically, one of the criticisms from student commenters was that free speech is actually no more than the freedom from government censorship or arrest for your views. So the shutting down of a debate wasn't a free-speech issue. This seemed worthy of some discussion, as it might sound at least plausible. 

So were a bunch of Spectator-reading, frothing-at-the-mouth right wingers getting upset over nothing?

No.

Oh, the long answer...OK

I think it's important to think of “free speech” more broadly than as just about government censorship. Schools etc could exercise censorship, so it doesn't seem a great step to think of student bodies doing so.

More complex is the social pressure we exert on each other: queues, good manners, etc. These are restrictions on freedoms - no freedom is absolute, after all - and are necessary to society. But they needn’t affect calm debate on ANY issue, even if a student announces the issue closed or "passe".

I think free speech is under attack, from those who want to ban words like "fat" & "bossy", from those who dreamt up "hate speech" laws … and from the feminists who try to stop men talking about abortion, by shouting them down (podcast above), by closing down debate, or by claiming:

"I'm not sure that men should be allowed to be part of the debate about anything that happens before a child could be potentially viable. While it remains as much a part of the woman as her liver or her hair"

or 

“The Pope’s beliefs about abortion will become relevant the day the Pope gets pregnant.”

or 

“The idea that in a free society absolutely everything should be open to debate has a detrimental effect on marginalised groups”

I pulled those quotes at random. The censoring attitude is common enough - I've seen it many times myself.

Free speech means..

...well many things, for example letting idiots say whatever they lie, no matter how stupid you or I find it. As said, total freedom is hard to come by in everyday life (on the internet you can come close) or we'd go quite mad. What I want is for anyone who wants to stifle debate to have to give a bloody good reason why it shouldn't happen, and not the cringingly mendacious pretexts given by those who have disgraced Oxford University's good name

Here's the reason: if we didn't take free speech seriously, there is a plentiful supply of young people in every generation who think they know better than us what we should be doing, saying, and thinking. They tend to get so impatient that the idea of shutting up dissenters occurs to them as a really good idea. Any restriction on free speech will be manipulated by such people for their political purposes.

We have to go through this every generation or 2 because we're too stupid to learn from our mistakes. I'd love if we could wise up and not repeat the process.

Yrs,
Angry from Middlewhere

Feminism's dishonesty - pt 2: the pay-gap, and jobs in science and politics

The pay gap debate - lies, or just sins of ommission?

My previous post concerned #shirtstorm, which touched on the fact that there are fewer women working in science. Now I think the argument about women being or feeling excluded in scientific disciplines resembles that of the gender pay-gap. Men measured by a certain average, earn more money than women - just as there are currently more men in senior positions in science departments and, for that matter, political parties all over the world.

I think it's fair to say that feminists hate these facts, but they can't seem to argue a case consistently or at all honestly. With the pay gap, they will repeat the basic statistic, but not the more detailed work showing WHY the gap is there. There is a wealth of research showing that women work fewer hours than men, they choose different types of jobs, and make career choices for different reasons. They choose safer work, nearer to where they live, that doesn't interfere with their social lives, and they take a great deal of time off to have and raise children.

Thus there is no reason to suppose that discrimination lies behind the pay-gap. We have an excellent idea what lies behind it. So feminists can't say it's discrimination so easily. The problem is that they love to imply as much, or to carefully phrase things so that you might mistakenly conclude that discrimination was at work. 

The fact that anyone paying men and women different rates for the same work risks being prosecuted under the law is also swept under the carpet.

So many a time I've read or heard feminists mentioning that there is a pay-gap, and that this is a blatant injustice. But as said, the reasons for the pay-gap don't seem to be discrimination, but the results of women's own choices, so where is the injustice?

Feminists don't answer this, of course, but, like any politician, quickly move on to state that getting the numbers equal would be a desirable outcome. But it's pretty clear that if men are working more hours, doing more dangerous jobs, and taking less time off for children, then you've basically have to pay women more, or enforce quotas, or some such measure that would entail discrimination against men.

Not that feminists mind this part all that much

Jobs in science - same old same old...

Very similar considerations apply with the argument about fewer women working in scientific posts. There is less data, but there could be a number of reasons for this disparity. It may simply be that fewer women may be interested in these jobs in the first place - a heretical suggestion, but quite possible in reality. Then there is the small matter of the chunk taken out of one's life by having children.

...and there may be an issue with the atmosphere in the workplace. It's hard to say, and even if there were such an issue, why should we blame men? Science departments are very competitive places, socially and professionally - making a stressful work environment. It's quite likely that a female scientist might negotiate in a different way from a male, and be more likely to complain about an atmosphere.

And there will be considerable pressures to join a feminist organisation working for women in this field - after all they are a ready-made social network (or guild perhaps?), and you wouldn't want to make enemies of these people.

Lies, damned lies, statistics, and political debate

But my point is about dishonest political debate. Despite the difficulty in finding evidence for discrimination or a sexist atmosphere driving women away, Feminists

a) repeat the numerical discrepancy in scientists by gender - as though it were an obvious evil.
b) they forget to mention that fewer women apply for such posts
c) if this fact is mentioned, they imply dark forces of discrimination against schoolchildren, with no solid foundation in evidence,
d) they then claim - again with little evidence - that the reason for any women not succeeding brilliantly in science is not that there are fewer in the first place (again they often forget to mention this), but because of malign forces of sexism in the office.

So that's one set of evasions and baseless claims. But as with the pay-gap, feminists then seem to want to influence what is done about the gap. They claim that nothing short of 50/50 parity between the sexes is acceptable. But how on earth are we to achieve this if women make different choices? Well, feminists say either

a) that women should be encouraged to make different choices (possibly by incentives for women only to do science) or
b) that there must exist subtle underlying discrimination, and that the only way to battle this is by positive discrimination in recruitment.

So, based on no evidence, and starting from the premise that gender discrimination is evil,  they end up lobbying for discrimination in favour of women - which of course means AGAINST MEN. It's political genius, but also disgustingly dishonest and runs against any sort of fairness. It's one of the main reasons why I strongly oppose modern feminism.

Feminism's dishonesty - pt 1: Shirtstorm, or the day the earth went mad

The day and age we live in..

So, for those mysterious loons who don't get embroiled in internet furores, we'll start with the story of #shirtgate.

A team of scientists managed to land a space probe on a comet which was both hundreds of millions of miles away, and moving at 80,000 mph. That is quite a feat by any standards. I'd say even the moon-landings look tame by comparison. Something to make us feel good about ourselves, you might think.

Naturally there are press conferences surrounding this magnificent scientific achievement, and in one of these a prominent scientist from the project, Matt Taylor, was wearing a t-shirt with drawings of almost-but-not-quite-naked women.

...and this is where 21st century lunacy took over. These days we don't in reality have many facists, hardline communists (well a few, but not many Stalinists) or fundamentalist Christians (in the UK at least). We do have some rather fanatical Muslims, though. And we have feminism. Lot's and lot's of feminism.

That's so ostracizing!

The response to Taylor's shirt began in earnest, including angry tweets from Rose Eveleth of The Atlantic, and a piece in the Verge website entitled "I don't care if you landed a spacecraft on a comet, your shirt is sexist and ostracizing".

"Ostracising" is, I suppose, a gerundive, if I've remembered the term correctly, so it just about works grammatically, though it seems not to have flowed from the pen of a master wordsmith, if you ask me. This sort of language is also one of the tell-tale signs that you're reading one of the outraged victimhood-politics mob.

It's hard, isn't it, to see how a shirt can ostracise anyone. I'm not being funny here. This deliberate imprecision is sort of the topic for the day. For of course we are supposed to understand that they mean that the shirt is in some way related to behaviours that allegedly exclude women from working in science.

Let me quote from the Verge:

This is the sort of casual misogyny that stops women from entering certain scientific fields. They see a guy like that on TV and they don't feel welcome. They see a poster of greased up women in a colleague's office and they know they aren't respected. They hear comments about "bitches" while out at a bar with fellow science students, and they decide to change majors

It goes on a bit like this. Now firstly calling the shirt "casual misogyny" is not just exaggeration, it represents the ravings of someone in need of urgent help. Some modern feminists will call depiction of the naked female form on a shirt "misogyny" if a man wears it, and beautiful self-expression if a woman wears such a thing. In truth, they imagine misogyny everywhere they look. All this seething hatred must trouble them (if they are really stupid enough to believe in it - which they might be)

Secondly, we are once again being asked to believe in mysterious forces at play that are stopping women from pursuing science. Now I've worked in a university Science department and seen no such forces - though they may exist elsewhere, I guess.

What I did see was many men in senior positions, but many more of the up-and-coming students and academics were women in this particular field. The point is, far from men conspiring to impede women's progress, they actually very often want to see more female colleagues.

The slightly more serious politics of it

But the debate about women in science has many similarities with the very dishonest debate about the gender pay-gap, and I propose to discuss this in my next post. Suffice it to say that many women, including some prominent feminists, have said the shirt doesn't bother them, and does not seem like sexism to them. Even Julie Bindel is concerned at what feminism "might become".

I'll end by requoting the Verge:

I don't care if you landed a spacecraft on a comet, your shirt is sexist and ostracizing

And ask - do these people care about anything other than their very dubious beliefs - that they hold with such religious zeal? The scientific and engineering achievement will go down in history. But some feminists didn't give this a second thought, because they were obsessing about an unspecified "sexism" that might not even exist.

They couldn't see the brilliance right in front of them, all they could see was something that wasn't there..

12 Varieties of modern British Bullshit - #3 - "Diversity"

This isn't authentically British bullshit. I apologise for claiming ownership of yet another stupid idea we saw fit to import from the States.

What can I possibly add to the debate about diversity?

Just this: the 'diversity' racket is nothing more than an attack on meritocracy. The principle is this: to not employ people on merit, but simply because they are not white British straight male. Any deviation from that template, the more the better, and you'll probably get the job.

It takes the most intellectually challenged of ninnyish nincompoops to not see that this is racial discrimination, also gender discrimination and, yes, discrimination based on sexuality. Every one of the things the political Left in Britain have lectured us about the evils of, all neatly packaged together in one word - and the Left cannot get enough of it.

Furthermore, I can't get over the tone of voice with which leftists deny this is true: the intellectual vanity of those who say "don't be ridiculous, you can't be racist towards whites" (#2 in our series), as if it were the most obvious thing under the sun. Or the vacuous claim that "underrepresentation" is sufficient reason to discriminate against me, and screw the consequences.

To conclude, the fight against discrimination has become just a ploy to bury the white man, It's number 3 on our chart. It's corrosive crap.

12 Varieties of modern British Bullshit - #2 - "You can't be racist towards whites"

Part the second of our series, here is a quote from an interview with Jo Brand: 

"My personal opinion is that you can't be racist towards white people. ...I think the definition of racism also encompasses political power. So you can't be racist towards a race that’s politically more powerful than a minority. That to me is the correct definition of racism"

This thoroughly dishonest argument is unfortunately not something that originated with Jo Brand, and gets wheeled out every time someone like Diane Abbott makes a stupid remark about white people.

I think it's funny how Brand's personal opinion happens to tally with what some very leftist journalists want her to think; even funnier how she explains to us what the correct definition of a word is - as though it was up to her - a correct definition that depends on some nebulous, unspecified definition of power.

In reality, if a man is being beaten up for being white, do you think he'd be comforted to be told that a small number of others of the same colour as him have "political power"? Because I sure as hell don't have political power - and grouping me with them is another variety of identifying me by colour, which used to be technically called racism (1 or 2 political re-definitions ago)

What Brand says comes from a culture that values the political power to be gained by competitive victimhood. If you can claim to be more of a victim, and can persuade those in power to be act out of guilt, there is plenty of leverage to be got. In this culture, I know if I so much as mention that Brand is a somewhat overweight feminist, I will be accused of first degree 'hatred' - but these facts may go some way to explaining why her 'personal opinion' so closely tallies with the victimhood brigade 

It's #2 on our varieties of British bullshit. It's crap

Things wrong with gender politics #34057

I can hear you asking, so what's number 764? ..and sniggering. Anyway here we go:

Recently, I was enjoying a Youtube video of a young woman playing a Bach piece on the guitar ... till I saw this comment underneath it:

"The guys complimenting? her looks are undoubtedly nice and well-intentioned but miss the fact that as a woman, it is frustrating to spend so much of your life being judged on your looks. Even here, her appearance is being used as a measure of her quality.

She's put so much love into her craft, and it shows in her sublime musicianship. Honour that dedication by talking about that"

Let's do a quick run-down of what the Youtube user has got wrong:

1. she has taken offence on someone else's behalf. In point of fact the guitarist in question has agreed to to use her looks for publicity. ie: to gain an advantage
2. she is telling men what to think and what to talk about. Does noone else think this is ridiculously bossy?
3. she confuses commenting on the woman's looks with judging her on her looks

I'm not sure what "judging someone on their looks" actually means, but it seems to be an invention of modern feminists. I believe I am at liberty to comment on a woman's looks if I want to. Men like to do so, and if someone doesn't like that fact than why on earth should I or anyone else care?

There is this perpetual and entirely unjustified complaint that women have to work twice as hard to be judged on anything other than their looks - as though the same might not be equally true of men. Is it not distinctly possible that a woman may not only have the advantage of being able to use her looks to create a favourable impression, but also the advantage of countless imagined injustices like this swaying people's minds - a thousand reasons in her favour other than her ability?

If I comment that someone is pretty it doesn't mean I don't value any other part of her. It merely reflects my own instinctive thoughts and feelings, and I'm ..excuse me.. buggered if I'm going to be told what to think, feel and say by a feminist who is enjoying a whinge about totally imaginary unfairness.

This merely reflects the fact that feminists have got way way too confident about their right to tell men what to do based on the most spurious justification that they can dream up on the spot. You wonder if they do this at the office and in the home, in their social lives...


UPDATE: And Another Thing: note the feminist's words about the young woman's "sublime musicianship". It's likely that the reason she is gushing in such flowery terms about the (perfectly competent) performance on the video, is that the performer is a woman.

Because of the perceived and very dubious injustice in judgements of ability, she elects to give excessive praise to a woman - almost certainly more than she'd give to a man playing the same piece, no matter how well he played it.

She may be doing so not for the reasons I've outlined, but merely because of a kind of sisterly solidarity with another woman - whether the woman wants it or not. The justifications for this sort of thing tend to come thick and fast, but the ultimate result is discrimination, pure and simple - which is surely precisely what feminists claim to be angry about.

Why we don't need feminism

So recently I was talking to a woman who told me about some incident, explaining to me that "this is why we need feminism". Now she's repeating an idea she's seen on the internet, "reasons why we still need feminism" is something of a meme on Twitter and Facebook. In one case, a bunch of naive students from Oxford University decided to have their pictures taken infront of the Radcliffe Camera with placards hung round their neck giving their own handwritten notes on why feminism was still needed. They looked exceptionally foolish.

No doubt men's rights activists have already responded in their own, inimitable fashion. But I'd like to give my own little rebuttal if I can. Here's why we don't need feminism.

• We don't need another rabid political group of resentful crazies selectively picking statistics and then misrepresenting them, claiming they show discrimination when close analysis shows just the opposite, or talking about "patriarchical violence" whilst suppressing research showing symmetry in partner/domestic violence
• We don't need young women to be told that if any man criticizes them, ever, then it is ok to call him a "misogynist" and to never listen to a single thing he has to say - and then to claim innocently that they weren't  implying that he hated women when that is precisely what they were doing.
• We don't need good science undermined by people stupid enough to thing that if you want men and women to be the same psychologically, then the real world will magically be that way.
• We don't need an army of amateur theorists on YouTube finding hidden (actually non-existent) patriarchical subtexts in TV drama, or making the ludicrous assertion that toy-manufacturers would rather sell to just boys, halving their profits, rather than marketing to girls (when the manufacturers have made strenuous efforts to sell to girls). We don't need the same theorist to baldly turn around 30 seconds later and find an example of hitherto invisible marketing to girls, and then complain about how it's being done, without offering any alternative
• We don't, in short,  need every discussion, every aspect of life viewed from the narrow political point of view of writers whose only talent is to foster the maximum resentment between men and women - simply to acquire political support for a divisive, selfish cause.

More tales from the impartial BBC

I've been fairly unimpressed by the BBC's much vaunted impartiality for many years, and for a while joined in the revels on biasedBBC.com. It's time for a quick recap.

The bias news is mixed. The customary harmonious chumminess towards the Labour party was rudely interrupted by the excellent grilling of Mr Miliband on the World at One. I cannot remember Radio 4 being so hard on a Labour leader before. What an honest, straightforward chap he is!

Anyway full marks to the Beeb there - if only for spreading the excreta far, wide, and generously.

On the other hand, I'm sad to report that the once excellent series Coast is having a disappointing eighth series. There are only so many times you can go around the British coastline and find many original things to say. (they've already stretched a point and been to France, Belgium, and Denmark)

Searching for original ideas, some goon proposed that they give a theme to each program. OK, could be worse, and there are episodes on estuaries and on how we take our pleasures by the seaside. Unfortunately episode 2 was entitled "The Workers", and the soundtrack for the first 5 minutes was some stirring Soviet Revolutionary music.

No doubt this was meant in jest (yes?) but - bearing in mind the dishonesty of* proclaiming ones impartiality whilst sending employees to workshops to ensure the correct point of view - perhaps they need to be told that the joke isn't funny.

* choosing just one example from many, here is another viewpoint showing the same phenomenon.

12 Varieties of modern British Bullshit - #1 - "Opponents of mass immigration are all racists"

A new series! And I haven't decided what the 12 Varieties are yet. I'm sure it won't be hard to think of something.

The first is from David Aaronovitch's piece (£) in the Times, entitled "Forget ‘concerns’ on migration. Here are facts". The title tells you a lot: it purports to contain 'facts' about immigration (and it does contain some), but the whole tenor of the piece is slanted with the modern canard, today's piece of Bullshit:

1) those in the UK who oppose immigration are all racists and xenophobes

Things wrong with it: it's not true for a start, but more importantly it immediately stifles debate - precisely what those on the left want, it seems. I've no doubt that there are indeed racists in the UK who oppose immigration, but there is a problem.

We need an honest, clear discussion over how much immigration to allow into the United Kingdom*. Unlimited? None at all? Somewhere inbetween?

Those (always on the left) who think immigration is a Good Thing never seem to explain why. They simply claim that those who oppose them are 'racist'. I'm sorry to treat everyone like idiots but this is not a reason for allowing more immigration.

Unemployment levels in the UK are around 2,500,000. The number of job vacancies is apparently 500,000.  I think it's fair, if slightly simplified, to ask why we need another 500,000 immigrants? Could there be other issues for British society that outweigh any supposed economic benefits? (do the benefits exist?)

But by this point the debate will have already descended into a shambles. Half of England will be shouting "Racism" at the other half. It's a wonderful example of an important debate being derailed by childish behaviour. It's our first bit of modern-day British Bullshit!

I hope you enjoy it.



*does anyone think we shouldn't debate things that affect us all? I think we can ignore them