Some years ago — about thirty, because I was pregnant with younger son — some woman wrote a “sequel” to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. I grabbed it off the sale bin at Barnes and Noble, then figured out why it was on discount. And it didn’t seem to do very well.
For those who don’t know the book, I’m going to leave most of the set up and motivation alone — at some point I’m going to write a crossover with Pride & Prejudice, and you can read it then. It won’t be the same, but still closer in spirit than this “sequel.” Anyway, on one point — if you don’t want spoilers skip two paragraphs: the man main character killed his former wife for what, if you read the book seems like good and sufficient reason. (Counting that she baited him into killing her, on purpose, at a point of extreme weakness and threatened to destroy his entire life and public image.) You can have moral qualms over his killing her and still understand. In any fair court of law it would count, at most as manslaughter particularly when you discover the murder occurred at the end, when you know the character who is not vicious or scheming. (Though at times he’s thick as two planks put together, in the way of introverted people.)
The author of the “sequel” decided that the fact he had killed his first wife, who was a thoroughly despicable character, meant his second wife couldn’t trust him, because he was going to kill her sooner or later; that he was a wife abuser; and that she should have the most soppy, “sisterhood” solidarity with the dead woman she never met and has reason — not just her husband’s testimony — to think was a rotter, while being “scared” of the man she loves and who never even raised his voice to her.
The bizarre — lack of — though process annoyed me so much that I think I threw the book in the trash. Look, there are ways to sell that ending to the story, but to do it you should give indications the husband is a psychopath — which negates the setup in the original book, but obviously they didn’t care — and that the dead woman was secretly a saint. But this actually wasn’t at all about the characters or the actual story. it was all in the author’s head, and for her it was self evident.
I ran into this yesterday night late — during a minor episode of insomnia — reading a mystery. I’m not going to name it because I like both the author and the series. But this one — an older one, I don’t remember reading — made me see red. It was exactly the same category error as in the “sequel” to Rebecca. And it is important to know the author is female.
In the mystery, the murdered woman has been revealed as more and more despicable, and in the end it is revealed that the man who killed her did so in service of his country, and in an act that saved millions.
And yet, the woman he loves above everything doesn’t want to ever see him, because he killed a woman. And the author obviously low key sympathizes with her and has the main investigator arrange a way so that the “murderer” — who is beyond the reach of the law because he did it in the service of his country and to prevent deaths — killed. Because, even though he’s an obviously decent soul and a young and sensitive man, he murdered a woman, so he must die.
I feel the need to pause here and point out that no, thank you so much, I do not in fact approve of murder. However we all know — all of us who aren’t crazy — there are murders that are justified to defend yourself or those who depend on you. Either because they are part of your family or because you are in a position to defend your country.
However, a thought experiment: say the victims in these particular books were men. Still venal, evil, and one threatening to destroy a good man whom he’s been torturing for years; the other one plotting something that will kill a vast number of inhabitants of a country. He’s plotting with the enemies of the country and also plotting to kill his spouse — who is also a secret agent, but on the side of the country that doesn’t want to be murdered — and he’s generally of low moral character. These men get killed: one by the man he’s been tormenting and whom he promises to destroy (and if following the book, whom he’s intentionally baiting to kill him as his final act of evil); the other by a young man in the service of his country.
Would anyone in their right mind assume the men who did the killings are vicious murderers or deserve to die? No? Yeah, thought so. And for the record, I don’t think the writers of these books would either.
So what is causing them to make these bizarre errors of character and plot?
Well, you see, the writers are women — both of whom consider themselves feminist — and the characters who deservedly get murdered are also women.
And, apparently, killing a woman no matter how deserved, is the forbidden thing. Anyone who kills a woman, no matter which woman, is ipso facto horrible and will murder all women given a chance. And particularly women characters will identify with the victim, even if there’s no resemblance whatsoever.
WTF, out?
Oh, I know the — lack of — thought behind this. It’s something like “Sisterhood of Women” and “If a man killed a woman, he killed all of us.”
It is in fact not only complete stupidity and moral absurdity, but also — very importantly — a betrayal of what they CLAIM to believe. Because feminists claim to believe that men and women are exactly alike and can fulfill the same roles in the exact same way. And yet when a woman does things that would get a man killed justifiably, we’re supposed to be horrified if she’s killed and to wish revenge for her death and destroy those who killed her.
Look, I completely understand the taboo on men hurting women. I think it’s the beginning of civilization. If there isn’t something moral, something in the head, preventing men from utterly obliterating women, what you have is barbarism, because no woman can physically defend herself from 99% of the men.
However, even in that there are begs. Even though a man isn’t supposed to hurt a woman, the self defense exception remains, as does protecting a lot of defenseless people when it’s your job to protect them. And I find it bizarre and illuminating that so called “feminists” who advocate for a level of equality that is frankly absurd and against biology in the end default to “Oh, no. you’re a man who hurt a woman. You should be destroyed.”
Illuminating?
Oh, yeah. Because, you know, I suspect some amount of this is the purest instinct. Women have trained, from the dawn of time, to avoid men who might hurt them. This means btw that outsized, powerful men are often on the receiving end of unwarranted female anger.
But mostly, mostly? It’s the Marxist rats in head. It starts with the idea that women everywhere in every culture are a disadvantaged “class.”
Now it is true that women throughout history and most of the world are indeed disadvantaged. Because women not being disadvantage requires a high level of culture and civilization.
However no woman in the West (unless a recent immigrant or being abused by recent, unassimilated immigrants. Sorry but it’s true) is at a disadvantage FOR BEING A WOMAN. Now, of course, there are women in horrible situations, but that’s personal stuff, not civilization. Our society has bent itself into pretzels trying to equalize things and has gone far too far to try to make women and men “equal.”
But in Marxist thought, women are a disadvantaged class, and the fact they’re disadvantaged means any member who doesn’t side with other women is a traitor siding with the “oppressor.” Even if the oppressor isn’t but is only identified as “oppressor class” because he has a penis.
Which is the utter insanity of “classes” bunched together on a single physical characteristic. Women can be completely different, but they all have a vagina, and therefore they are all, ultimately the same thing. Widgets in a group with “WOMEN” stamped on them. And the fact they have a vagina is supposed to override every other consideration, of worth, of individual character, even of simple human affinity.
To understand how stark raving mad this is, take two of my friends: I have a lot in common with M. C. A. Hogarth, in that we come from relatively similar cultures, we’re both mothers, we’re both writers. And neither of us is 100% in control of our writing and sometimes write books that make people headtilt at us. I also have a lot in common with Dave Freer, who has been a writing friend and companion for years. We have both have been ground down by the gears of trad pub, our kids are at similar life stages. And for two people born half a world apart with different cultures, we have a lot of the same principles and animating will.
Do I immediately love Maggie because she also has a vagina? EW. No. Like I am interested in my friends’ private parts!
Now take Dave Freer, my friend, my brother in ink, who sometimes kept me anchored in reality through our morning talks, (well, morning for him, evening for me. He lives in strange time zones) during the dark years. Say that I’m required to pick between him and say, AOC. WHO DO YOU THINK I OWE FRIENDSHIP, LOYALTY and PROTECTION TO?
“But Sarah, she has a vagina.” Yeah. Probably. Though EW I certainly don’t want to see it.
“If you don’t stand with her, you’re a gender traitor, a traitor to all womanhood.”
Yeah, yeah — lifts middle finger aloft — this for being a traitor to something I never swore allegiance to, to something that says nothing about the intelligence, knowledge, or moral character of the individual. Therefore I can’t betray it. Yes, I am female, but that cannot and does not mean I will love every female and despise every male.
I like, love and extend loyalty and friendship to individuals, not sex organs.
And I bet the authors mentioned above do the same. It’s just that when it comes to writing, the rats get in their heads and tell them that no no no they must side with the victim class!
Marxism is such a tiresome anti-reality brain short circuit! It’s not just wrong, evil and frankly completely divorced from reality, it’s also predictable and boring.
It’s time no one paid any attention to it, except to wave a middle finger at it when it demands attention.
According To Hoyt 
There was a meme that I saw a while back.
A white man is saying these things and the woman calls him a sexist.
Then he tells her that he’s Muslim and those things are part of his religion.
So the woman apologizes for being Islamophobic.
The Rats in their head tells them that women are always victims but the Rats also tells them that Muslims are victims.
So it’s OK for Muslims to be “sexist”.
Idiots.
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If you wear your sex organ on your sleeve don’t be surprised when people hit it. It really doesn’t matter which organ it is, or even if it is a real organ. If that is what you claim to be, that is what you are. In simpler terms, if you wear your Penis on your sleeve you are a DICK, and nothing more, vice versa for female organs.
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Some writers probably do it out of fear they won’t be published if they don’t properly profess the faith.
Some are sincerely convinced men are pigs.
Some fall afoul of “sisterhood,” tropes because of factors I don’t know. I do know I got annoyed with Mercedes Lackey (who generally knows better, or did) swiping the plot of Gaudy Night for a Valdemar book. Women in Haven – small female businesses, an order of nuns/female priests and at least one female Herald-trainee – are being harassed. But where Sayers had the perpetrator be a woman, Lackey creates a mysoginistic religion, newly come to Haven, so it’s all the men’s fault. It made for an inferior book.
And some of it is cultural. Kimball Kinnison encounters a beautiful, dangerous female zwilnik who recognizes him despite his disguise. He’s filled with disgust at the thought of killing a woman. But, he goes into her mind fully intending to take evrything she knows and then kill her, because he’s on a mission. (She’s been equipped with a false tooth and am amnesia drug, so Kinnison gets only a bit of data, but also is relieved of the need to kill her).
Right now, I’m just appalled by all the rats in people’s heads. Trump is a pedophile, everyone knows that, THE JOOOOOOSSS! are running the world, and so on. Too many rats, in too many skulls.
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Deep breath. A LOT OF THOSE are foreign or bots, or foreign bots. The chowder heads will always be with us. BUT they’re not that many.
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And X is in the process of making it easier to tell who is a foreigner pretending to be an American.
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It’s the rats under the floorboards that bother me…
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I thought they were in the walls. *looks around in a shifty, Innsmouth-related kind of way*
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Giving the walls the fish-eye?
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Working on a film adaptation of Shadow of Over Innsmouth.
Shot entirely with a fish-eye lens.
—
“Don’t throw fish, I’ll just make more props!”
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LOL
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(singing) “Living in the fisheye lens, caught in the camera eye….”
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This looks like a job for Lew Zealand and his Boomerang Fish act!
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I just look at Florida and that “jewel” of a woman convicted of being a serial killer. I suspect somewhere, somehow someone is going to try to rehabilitate her. And she didn’t even protest ICE!
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I’ve already seen people defend her.
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“Fight Patriarchy”
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Racial preference in academic hiring is supposed to prevent academics from acting as a proxy for political power, and from “betraying” one’s “own” racial group’s poor people. In particular, it is supposed to prevent academics from supporting liquidation of own group poor people when the government wants to do so.
This does not work when the society and the academic ‘class’ are not racist enough.
I’ve been struggling with how to describe this, because it is a preference for a group membership over another group membership.
Some people might describe this as classism being more important than racism.
That has long not worked for me, and recently I understood why.
Class has long been used for birth affinity groups, or affinities of blood kinship. Born into a noble family, or whatever. Alexandria Mostly-Brainless, for example, is very keen that we not forget that she is closely tied to the Mostly and Brainless families.
The affinity group that the weakminded among the academics cling to is a curated mental perception group. A mental perception affinity group that is strongly curated. Which is too long for many English speakers, but English has the word cult.
(However, I have long not found cult an exactly satisfying word for this. Nor do I feel it is persuasive. )
Black academics, officially and according to scholarship on what blacks say, endorsed the arsons of the poor black neighborhoods, as long as it was not outright and on the record explicitly endorsing. To extent that black academics actually did so, they were too racist and not racist enough. One formulation is more classist than racist. A second formulation is more cultist than racist. (With the cult being one of the academic communisms.)
Aynway, women younger than menopause don’t strictly fit this description of classism/cultism. They seemingly often have a strong instinctual perception that they do not want to openly be seen as crossing more high status women. If other women are in the best position to quietly murder one’s children, then not offendign and drawing attention from women is a higher priority than the same but for men.
A classist feminist woman would hate poor women, and value even non-feminist women who were well born.
The cultist feminist woman would hate poor women outside of the feminism, but be fine with low born women who have seniority by paying their feminist dues. The cultist feminist woman would also hate middle class or well to do women who are successful adhering to something that is not feminism.
Both classist and cultist feminist women would be fine with the grooming gangs targeting poor women without feminist bonafides.
See also, Bill Clinton, husband to Hillary (king of feminists), the serial rapist, and jobs for elite women.
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Whatever term you give them they are still blinded by the Magical Vagina, as if that somehow explains the complexities of being female. Except when confronted by the magical religion that is not Christianity or Judaism You could probably do it in a formula
(MagicalVagina)>(StandardPenis) didvide by (Magical Religion)= Chaos
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“Both classist and cultist feminist women would be fine with the grooming gangs targeting poor women without feminist bonafides”
Britain’s garbage leftist ruling class have all but flat out admitted they’ve deliberately held out poorer white girls in front of sex staved third world men in order to get them to the UK and give them a permanent voting majority.
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They really need some awakened Saxons in Britain.
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Yeah, I’ve seen the left sacrifice the health and safety of women and girls too many times to believe any bullshit they spout about “sisterhood” and “feminism”. Brown men will always come first- even when they’re mysoginistic, rapey and stabby. And if you’re a useful chess piece against Trump or anyone else they hate you can grope, sniff and molest little girls on camera in front of God and everybody and the left will shove fingers in their ears screaming “la la la la!” until nobody cares anymore.
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*(Though at times he’s thick as two planks put together, in the way of introverted people.)*
Hey, I resemble that remark!
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From between my legs
Reputation gathers
Either whine or dregs
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…there are murders that are justified to defend yourself or those who depend on you.
One small quibble. Those aren’t murders. They are killings, or homicides using legal terms, but being justified are not murders.
As Ambrose Bierce wrote: There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy…
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Agreed. I got stuck on the word, because “murder mystery.”
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This means btw that outsized, powerful men are often on the receiving end of unwarranted female anger.
This parallels a talking point in the self defense community. The sheep only see the fangs, and do not differentiate between those on the wolf and those on the shepherd dog there to protect them.
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“…the man main character killed his former wife for what, if you read the book seems like good and sufficient reason.”
Sorry to be all Puritan, but absent self-defense in the face of deadly force, there is no possible reason that can be sufficient. It’s a commandment. If she’s that much of a problem, leave town and start over.
“The author of the “sequel” decided that the fact he had killed his first wife, who was a thoroughly despicable character, meant his second wife couldn’t trust him…”
Well, a good and sufficient reason could arise someday, know what I mean? That’s why it’s a commandment. I wouldn’t trust the guy myself.
Must admit I don’t want to read about it though.
“So what is causing them to make these bizarre errors of character and plot? Well, you see, the writers are women — both of whom consider themselves feminist — and the characters who deservedly get murdered are also women. And, apparently, killing a woman no matter how deserved, is the forbidden thing.”
That’s a different matter.
At the risk of making Bonnie McDaniel scream and bite a pillow (Hi Bonnie!), self-defense in the face of deadly force sucks, but you still have to do it. Like if, non-random example, some woman is running over a cop with her car. Or if, non-random example, a “woman” guns down his own family at a hockey game. Or how about, non-random example, a young “woman” shoots his family and then goes to the high school to shoot some more kids.
We all just stand there and let them do it because they’re women? Or”women” as the case may be? Sorry Bonnie, that’s not a thing.
“It starts with the idea that women everywhere in every culture are a disadvantaged “class.””
Yes, thereby allowing all sorts of atrocities to be perpetrated against the innocent in the name of the Sisterhood. Or Brotherhood, or The People, or whatever balderdash is on offer this week. Lying liars lie.
“If a man killed a woman, he killed all of us.”
Let’s do the backwards thing, just for a laugh. The Brotherhood of Man says “If a woman killed a man, she killed all of us! We’re all coming for her head!”
I can hear Bonnie screaming “That’s not fair!!!11!”
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Too bad so sad that you had to bring collectivist class solidarity into it, Lefties. Otherwise these things would be done case-by-case, the Christian way.
Funny how fast Lefties switch their allegiance when the Collectivism isn’t running in their favor. “That’s unchristian!” is the refrain.
Frankly I think it would take more than rats in their heads to do that. Maybe bears.
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He couldn’t leave town. This is turn of the century British and she was leveraging all he was, including his position.
And again, moment of weakness, and she goaded him into it. (Complicated suicide.) So.
In context it was understandable.
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OK, suicide by pissed-off cuckold. Understandable, though I’ve never been near that t-shirt emporium.
Sorry, today’s been interesting, mostly due to hardware issues (never broke a CPAP mask before, but that mask is not compatible with how I sleep, plus an unfortunate software update* caused my computer/printer to go sideways), so I can perceive the fatal frustration on the soon-to-be widower.
(*) The joys of old printers. 32 bit drivers on a largely 64 bit system. Whee. Didn’t remember to update the 4-byte bits.
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“He couldn’t leave town.”
For the purposes of the setup, story etc. I understand. The author is making a box.
However, you can -always- leave town.
My whole family is here in Canaduh because Great Grandpa said “that’s enough of that!” and LEFT TOWN. At about the same time the story is set. Maybe a little earlier. Decamped and moved the clan entire to the wilds of Canada. Some of the Clan Phantom left after Culloden, when the wilds were in fact wild. Indians and everything.
Scotland was so intolerable that it pretty near emptied out in those days. Dealing with bears and winter was considered a better life.
Indeed, I myself left town after determining that there was no path forward for me in Canada. Packed up and f-ed off to America. Then I left America after they did the same thing to me again. [eye roll]
So yeah. I think that really, you can always leave. Life ain’t like the book.
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WP must have found new words to trigger the algorithm. I doubt it was CPAP, so likely the 7 letter word describing the husband of an unfaithful wife. I can understand his actions, though that’s lightyears away from my life.
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Didn’t say it wasn’t a sin. Said “understandable.”
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I reluctantly admit to being judgemental. ~:D
But I’d have pitched that book, just like you. There are some things so stupid, you just can’t.
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I remember back before I quit Facebook, one of my leftie relatives was up in arms about some felon being executed. She solemnly posted that “we are all ‘felon’s name'” and I just hate that sort of political grandstanding. It’s like that other stupid leftie slogan “None of us are free until all of us are free”. It’s really bad for my dental enamel.
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The Reader believes the term is ‘Schrödinger’s Feminist’.
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You find this out after a couple hundred pages of building up the dead wife and her surviving faithful servant/minion/familiar as evil witches in all but supernatural power, and the actual death scenario is both “suicide by cuckolded spouse” and “cuckolded spouse kills adulterous spouse in heat of moment”, which is definitely not okay but was a thing people supposedly got acquitted for in those days (I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t there). The Hollywood version with Olivier and Fontaine (directed by Hitchcock) makes it an accidental homicide (one of those got angry and hit someone and they fell wrong scenarios) and I think gives the husband some actual guilt (as opposed to shame and fear about being caught), so maybe give that one a try if you’re curious.
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I never watched the movie. I mean, I saw parts and wasn’t impressed. I loved the book, though. And he obviously felt guilt.
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Maybe I am just remembering the protagonist’s perspective on because she REALLY doesn’t care about him killing the first wife at a moral level. :D
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Hey!
I like bears. Especially little baby grizzlies, and black bears. Bear cubs are adorable, at a distance; not between mom and them. They are adorable. I am not stupid.
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Biblically speaking “Thou Shalt Not Murder” is the direct translation of the original Hebrew.
Kill and Murder are very different words in Hebrew, as in English. And that specificity is important.
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Somewhat OT (certainly off main topic) regarding non-sequitur sequels(?), I couldn’t stand that Highlander 2 took one of my favorite movies (hey, Queen soundtrack; how could you go wrong) and turned the Immortals into space aliens. WTAH? It might have made a decent stand alone film with a couple of tweaks, but it was NOT Highlander anything.
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Hollywood can ruin anything. >:(
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(weird scottish-ish accent) “There should -be- only one!”
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The way I always got it:
“Highlander 2: The Sickening. There SHOULD have been only one!”
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There is…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HAAYrxGXYAAzhDa?format=jpg
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Ach aye, Laddie! Uhura and Scott, the two unkillable redshirts.
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I’m reminded of being asked back in 2016 (by a man, coincidentally): “So, how excited are you to be voting for Hillary?!”
Me: “Heck no, I’m Trump all the way.”
Idiot: “But you’re a woman! Don’t you want to vote for a woman?”
Me: “What good will it do me if some woman who’s already powerful becomes even more powerful, especially if she and I have completely different political philosophies?”
Just saying.
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Back in ’08, $SPOUSE was nominally Democrat, and got a canvass phonecall, encouraging the GOTV for Schrillery. Caller was expecting enthusiasm for Her Lowness, but got quite the shock when the response was laughter. Loud laughter.
We both held our noses and voted for Sarah Palin’s co-runner, not that he stood a chance in Oregon. She shifted to the Deplorable party shortly afterward. Primaries in Flyover County are much more fun for Republicans, and it actually means something, some times.
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We three voted for Palin’s co-runner. On the hope that he’d have a heart attack quickly. Crossed fingers and voted Trump all three times. Fully knowing how Oregon’s (then) 5 electoral votes would go. When I heard Trump won in ’16 the response was “OMG”. When Trump lost in ’20 it was “Oh S***”. When Trump won, again, in ’24 it was “Thank you Lord!”
Now that the SAFE act has passed the house, just need it to pass the Senate. Next, make mail-in-voting illegal. Last I heard, there was a petition for an initiative to reverse the mail-in-vote. But since have to mail-in-vote to remove mail-in-vote, my hopes are not high.
Oregon already gets the votes counted on election day, so already ahead of California there.
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Maverick would have been the most across the aisle squish “republican” we’d ever seen. Even so he’d have saved us from Barry, and then there’d have been no way they would have run Autopen.
But with no Barry there’d have been no DJT.
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I, for one, am forever grateful that Barak Obama saved us from HRC ascending a throne.
That would have been very, very bad, indeed.
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Some Republican senator on TV called #TimWalz “a less masculine version of Hillary Clinton.”
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Which is one of those jokes that is funny mostly — because it’s a true statement.
Compare “The Scots, fighting their hereditary enemies, the Scots…” from Good Omens. Lots of tragedy with the comedy, see “Culloden Moor” etc.; but still hillarious.
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One of the eeriest experiences of my life was standing on Culloden and considering that the clans were attacking fresh British troops with cannon 1/4 mile uphill across or around large hummocks. I don’t consider myself particularly sensitive, but I’m convinced I could hear the screams and smell the blood soaking that place.
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Try standing in a particular field in Pennsylvania, looking uphill.
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Senator Kennedy, Louisiana. Latest in a long line of Southern Senators, both parties, with a gift.
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I got that a few times in ’16. I eventually worked out a crude-but-effective rejoinder: “Look, my brains didn’t fall out my earhole when I grew t!ts.”
(I can DO crude. I was married at a biker rally and I remember the Bad Old Days of the Internet, with rickrolling being the tamest, most inoffensive fakeout of the nastiness out there.)
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Long before Slashdot went full woke (circa 1999ish), I was moderating posts on my coffee break and ran afoul of the “goatsex” (IYKYK) prank. Mercifully, nobody saw my screen, as it was so far beyond NSFW, I might have beat the speed of light in canceling that thing.
That gave me a strong clue to avoid the site, and I stopped reading altogether shortly afterward. Hadn’t realized they went full woke/TDS until ’16 or later.
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Literal thread I saw about a different election:
Liberal 1: Why do women vote against their own interests? That’s stupid.
Woman: After consideration, I concluded it was in my own interests to vote for him.
Liberal 2: That’s selfish.
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I don’t like anyone who says, “You have to like/support [THING] because you are a [whatever].” It makes for lousy books and worse politics. There’s an academic argument concerning whether a candidate who matches voters’ philosophies is better than a candidate who matches voters’ ethnicity and culture. You can guess which one the actual politicians seem to favor.
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I had someone tell me he refused to believe I was a woman because of my political views.
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One idiot told me that either I wasn’t female or I was lying…because I don’t like pink.
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Bigtime. I lean conservative and support the 2A, so one particular candidate-for-office came right out and told me I wasn’t a REAL womun. (He absolutely slobbers over the jackboots of any female candidate, and was one of the chorus about the Hill in 2016.)
I’ve read the book by Atwood, so I instantly adopted the sobriquet of an Unwoman. Hah.
(I don’t like pink either. Never did, even as a chiId.)
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Occasionally I look in to what the progressive Mormon are posting about. On one particular occasion a Mormon feminist compared women who aren’t feminists to Vichy France and thus complicit in not only her own personal “oppression” but every woman’s oppression. It’s an absolutely insufferable attitude.
As for me, I was born in 1982 and started to become politically aware during the second Clinton administration. I know exactly how hollow and false the feminist movement is.
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Back in the early 1990s I started using the term wymynist for the radical anti-male feminists. Now they’ve gone so far off the deep end I don’t know what to call them. Cookoo is an insult to birdlife. It started with OJ, according to one gal who was a regional head of NOW, and bailed when the head shed announced that instead of using the case as an example of the dangers of abuse and domestic violence, it had to be about the “oppression of black men.” Then it got farther and farther from being about equality for women.
At a certain point, you need to stop, rest, enjoy the fruits of your labors, and share them with others. Not search desperately for a cause, and accuse other people of betraying The Cause if they want to enjoy the fruits in a different way than you do.
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Lawdog might have some useful terms. :)
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“The Affronted ….”
Nope. Back to my knitting.
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The Affair de Lewinsky was where my Democrat tendencies went away. At that time there was ALOT of training in the commercial world about sexual harassment. Mr. Clinton’s treatment of Ms. Lewinsky, even at the earlier findings, clearly violated every bit of that training, let alone the later bits and bobs that came out. I expected Mr. Clinton to behave similarly to Nixon, having been caught in blatant Sexual Harrassment and Adultery he would resign. I also expected Mr. Gore to clearly stand against his president’s misbehavior. Neither of these things happened and 2 things became crystal clear, first that there were clearly 2 or more levels of standards for Democrat politicians vs their competition; And secondly that Democrats were inveterate oath breakers. All was negotiable if they would wave off blatant adultery and violation of the marital vows as if it was a dubious jaywalking citation.
The amazing thing is IF Gore and Clinton had followed that script, Mr. Gore would likely have been elected President in 2000 (it was a close thing). That is scary. I fear Mr. Gore would have been far less controlled on 9/11 He is a weak and foolish person. Mr. Bush (Bush the Younger) was not perfect but the alternate history with President Gore has no nice paths.
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Guys, I think this Wes Yang fellow might have some acceptable terms.
https://xcancel.com/wesyang/status/2023923505364922724?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
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The kid is going to lose. The schools exist to employ teachers union members, who then give money to politicians. The students are just an accounting token for getting state money, and any education they accidentally receive is an incidental side effect.
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Back in the 80s I saw one of the Deathwish movies. It ends with him killing the bad guys who were untouchable due to bribes, then coming home to find his fiance has figured out who he was (he was using an alias) and left the engagement ring and didappeared. I was in my early 20s and did not understand why she did that. My mother read SF and mysteries nonstop, also regency, so I asked her why?
She said that once the woman saw that he was comfortable with casual violence and killing people, who in his sole judgement needed killing, she couldnt trust him to NOT decide to kill her one day.
She also told me that she trusted no man for that same reason.
Another datum, when I got married, my wife told me her sister and husband would physically attach each other. (She did say her sister always started it and he was defending). She said If you ever hit me, I will leave. I said that is fair. If you ever hit me, I will divorce you. Damn near derailed the marriage before it started. She wanted to hit me with impunity.
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I had a girlfriend who complained that her ex hit her. Then she hit me, not once or twice but three times. Third time I asked her why she hit me. She said I was a big guy and could take it. When I agreed but then asked her why I should, her brain seemed to lock up. I guess her ex had a little less patience than I; I just walked (ran) away.
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And at this point “feminism” means pretending men have a vagina, regardless of the damage done to physical women. We are required to buy in to their fantasy, even at the risk of physical damage, r*pe, and death if necessary.
I have never heard anyone ask “What is a man?”
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One part of this “rats in their heads” thing seems to me to be not just what “they” believe, but how they believe it. Most of “us” (people with the, for lack of a better word, conservative mindset) have a sort of instinctual (or also learned) tendency to “make it make sense.” (Even despite the proof some decades back that doing it perfectly is impossible, see Godel’s incompleteness theorems.)
That is, we’re mostly rational beings, as much as we can manage, in an Enlightenment sort of way.
Apparently, a lot of leftist-style thinkers (or “thinkers”) really don’t. They “accept” a grab-bag of free-standing, axiomatic ideas or statements (which of course can change like a fickle wind according to the latest ‘downloads’ from their “thought leaders” or current declarations of orthodoxy) as being, as and in themselves, facts. Never mind if some of those contradict each other; there’s no process in place for reconciling one with another usually anyway (“Stick to the talking points!”).
Now of course the core of Godel’s work is that generally, you can have either completeness or consistency but not both. (And I’m not going to do more than mention things like Lakoff’s “The Political Mind” which attacks logic itself as, basically, being unfeeling and inherently defective; I know someone who’s wading that swamp and it don’t look like grand merry fun to me.) But it doesn’t say you can’t come quite close to having both, most of the time — the ‘weird stuff’ might well be “a set of measure zero” a.k.a. almost rarer than hen’s teeth.
As far as I can tell, their solution to the problem of (many) contradictions is to try to pretend they don’t exist (“whistling past the graveyard”), or try to ignore them by changing the subject of their thoughts or conversations, or to simply get mad if someone tries to hold them on-point. Only a few ever seem to stand on something (allegedly!) solid like Lakoff’s credentialled “scholarship” in an “appeal to authority” — mostly, reason itself is just not on the table, faith in dogma (as defined by latest installed update) rules… once you’ve got past all the defensive gatekeeping in front of it.
Oh, they do know what they believe — and are “unburdened” by making consistent sense of it.
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One of the best descriptions of this is in the appendix to 1984 describing Newspeak and in particular the word doublethink This is the quote I’m looking for
The quote might actually be from the Emmanuel Goldstein “book” O’Brien gives Smith.
This state of mind seems to be what the more “advanced” Democrat politicians (Pelosi, Schumer, Walz) hold. Others (e.g., Occasional Cortex and our most recent Democrat presidential candidate) don’t even seem to understand that they are participating in doublespeak. I think 1984 got many of the large details of the dystopian society wrong. Brave New World and especially That Hideous Strength got it far closer to right in the broad strokes but doublespeak seems to be the sine qua non of the skilled liberal politician, be they US, Canadian, Australian, British, French, German or of another country.
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Can we summarize by saying “rats in their attic” — instead of “bats in their belfry” for more basic, functional mental disorders? Because that’s quite likely beginning to appeal to me.
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I stopped reading Mercedes Lackey when I noticed that her protagonists almost never had good fathers. Abusive fathers, neglectful fathers, perhaps there might have also been some good fathers who were dead and the protagonist was now single-parented or orphaned; I couldn’t swear to that last one. But good fathers who were still present in the protagonists’ lives? Couldn’t find any. No, wait, I remember one: in one of the books in her SERRAted edge series, the protagonist (a grown man of about 30 or so) had a good relationship with his parents, though of course he was no longer living at home. But I remember a scene of him showing up at his parents’ house, wounded, I think because his own home was no longer safe but his enemies didn’t know where his parents lived. It’s been 30 years since I read that book, so I might be misremembering, but I liked that one. (I quite liked the bit where he, while a prisoner, keeps the mind-reading guard out of his thoughts by mentally reciting lyrics from They Might Be Giants until the guard gives up in disgust).
But more recent books? Lots of bad fathers, almost no good fathers that I can recall. What kind of message is she sending teenage girls, eh? That your father doesn’t have your best interests at heart, and that if he warns you against a guy, then the guy is probably okay? Honey, listen to me. Your father was once a teenage guy. He knows how teenage guys think. If he warns you against a guy, there’s a reason.
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Same in Hollywood. I was briefly adjacent to that industry back in the ‘80s, and it’s a common theme among many crew and production folks too. Sometimes I think there’s an entrance screening and if you don’t have daddy issues they won’t physically let you in.
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It seems to be a theme on the left side. Obama, Clinton and Carter all had severe daddy/abandonment issues that drove their actions. Ms. Harris seems to have had a similar problem .
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the basic question to be asked of most lefties is “how old were you when Daddy left? “.
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One of her romance/resold fairy tale novels (Fortunes’ Fool) involves two people who both have solid, decent families/fathers. The most negative bit is that because the 500 Kingdoms have the Tradition (an apparently non-self aware but extremely powerful force that enforces various “fairy-tale,” tropes), the male, as a seventh son, is Traditionally supposed to be treated like a fool, so in public the family puts on an act. In private, he’s both loved and respected, and knows why they do this. (A recurring sub-theme in the books is that if you understand the Tradition, you can work around/use it to your advantage).
But darn it, if you’re going to steal from Sayers, keep the good bits.
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Yeah, I can see the P&P angle if I squint. Although I suddenly had a horrifying flash of Rebecca the novel as a weird remix of Mansfield Park where mousy protagonist enters Big Rich House by marriage rather than quasi-adoption, and now I can’t unsee it.
In any case, the mousy protagonist never shows any sign of feeling threatened by the husband, and although I wouldn’t swear that he would never harm anyone else in his life, he’s alot more likely to harm someone to protect the protagonist than he is to harm her. I think the sequel writer only watched the movies and got the 1940s version of Suspicion (same female lead) and Rebecca mixed up.
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Well, I was thinking of calling it Anne, but it wouldn’t QUITE be death….
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Will look forward to it!
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Honestly feels like cartel behavior. The ‘Karen’s demands are the justification for the expansion of the bureaucracy, so anyone who harms one for any reason must be expunged.
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Well it’s certainly the way the ladies in HR run things, as HR decisions only ever yield more HR control and power, with the “protected class” definitions and oppressor-victim relative ranking driving it all.
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That’s just Pournelle’s Iron Rule of Bureaucracy playing out to wit
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FWIW, a blessed Ash Wednesday, and Ramadan Mubarak, I guess.
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And one-day-delayed Happy Year of the Flaming Horse, everyone! 恭喜发财! 新年好!
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I’ve never read Rebecca nor seen the movie. I don’t dream of Manderley. Now I’m less inclined.
. But I’ve long wanted to read Trilby by her grandfather.
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I LIKE Rebecca. It’s the stupid “feminist authored” “sequel” I hated.
Rebecca’s protagonist is understandable for his time and class. Maybe even for now. if we forgive women setting their abusive husbands on fire, this would be excusable too.
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That’s a good comparison
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I’ve encountered people raging about Women in Refrigerators — women killed as as plot device to move a man’s story forward — in a way that reinforced the trope. After all, it is exactly because a woman’s death is seen as more horrible than a man’s is why writers are more likely to kill a woman to motivate characters.
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”…people raging about Women in Refrigerators…”
I mean, everyone should have a hobby, but that one is oddly specific…
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Originally, comic book fans had some issues with some specific writers and storylines.
Then that beef was carried forward by self-proclaimed comic book fans.
I basically blame academic instruction in literary theory, but then I would.
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‘Literary Theory’…
When the ‘Litrachur Experts!’ say “This book means yada yada…” and the author says “No it doesn’t.” and the ‘Experts!’ say “Yes it does! You don’t know what you wrote!”
———————————
When reality doesn’t conform to your theories, it’s not the universe that’s wrong.
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Today, a tweet by a planefag was quoted on instapundit.
A custom on 4chan back in the day was to append fag to a lot of terms. planefag was a nickname for a specific 4chan user, who was running a quest on that imageboard.
I had previously known that user from a different quest, using a different nickname on a different imageboard. Which was the “I put on my robe and wizard hat” quest on a touhou image board.
Anyway, I lost track of that stuff,
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Re: Pride and Prejudice, I recently pointed out that although Wickham was very bad, he arguably ended up trapped living with Lydia, rather than Lydia suffering from having to live with him.
A lot of people agreed with me (especially since Lydia is so bullheaded and oblivious), but other people could not accept that someone who did something bad could ever be victimized in any way, including by the consequences of his own actions.
And if anybody ever did anything bad to you, even if it turned out to do you no harm and not be noticed by you, you were a victim forever.
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