- ParisFascistWeek
- Jan 26, 2021
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I saw a new video come out from one of my favorite youtubers, talking about trans politics in the west. This video was specifically about JK Rowling, analyzing her rhetoric and the implications of her statements. I watch these videos with an open mind because I don't know much about the topic but they're always fun, in my opinion.
Disclaimer: I don't necessarily think JK Rowling is a bad person, she may just be misguided here. Regardless, her actions have consequences as addressed in the video. I also don't know if I'm allowed to post links so I'll just put the title
J.K. Rowling | ContraPoints (on youtube)
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Jan 26, 2021 23:20
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May 3, 2024 08:10
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- Katt
- Nov 14, 2017
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Rowling wrote like a thousand million pages of fiction without a single lesbian character and then she accused trans people of helping to remove lesbian representation.
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Jan 28, 2021 23:34
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- porfiria
- Dec 10, 2008
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by Modern Video Games
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Rowling wrote like a thousand million pages of fiction without a single lesbian character and then she accused trans people of helping to remove lesbian representation.
Hagrid was a lesbian.
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Jan 29, 2021 02:41
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- 3D Megadoodoo
- Nov 25, 2010
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Between 1957 and 1977 (when he died), the Finnish author Niilo Lauttamus published twenty-two very popular novels set during the second world war, starting with Vieraan kypärän alla ("Under Foreign Helmet"). They were published by a major publishing house, in fact the oldest publisher in Finland: Gummerus. What were they about? Why Finnish SS-men fighting for Germany, of course! But how did the author come up with enough material for 22 books in 20 years? You guessed it:
Why didn't the Allied Control Commission (that is: the Soviet Union) demand the imprisonment of all Finnish SS-men, especially after the entire organization had been deemed criminal at Nuremberg? I guess they just... didn't give a poo poo  . The government wasn't that interested in the matter either; the (at the time) communist-controlled Finnish state police did question most of them, but didn't actually do much. For comparison, Denmark imprisoned 3 600 of their own citizens who'd served in the SS.
I'm not sure how I've come to own a copy of one of his books as I have no interest in "war novels" - I think it came from a lot I took in after my brother-in-law's father died and his mother was clearing out the house - but I read it without knowing anything about the author and... it was really boring. Just dudes drinking and whoring and fist-fighting with other soldiers in some German or maybe Austrian town. I'm glad it wasn't about genociding people, but I don't understand how it sold tens of thousands of copies (according to the dust jacket). Also, while Googling, I stumbled upon the fact that some of the books were being re-printed as late as 2012 
Anyway, none of this affects any non-Finnish people as the books have never been translated, as far as I know, but just another thing to watch out for when your home country was on the losing side of WW2: popular authors who were literal literal Nazis.
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Jan 29, 2021 04:18
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- 3D Megadoodoo
- Nov 25, 2010
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Can't speak as to the nazi shitheadedness, but the boringness that you described fits pretty well with my experience of being in the army during wartime.
OK, but would you want to read a book about it?
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Jan 29, 2021 04:58
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- Sham bam bamina!
- Nov 6, 2012
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ƨtupid cat
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Hm. This author sounds like a bad person, but I can't quite put my finger on why he was a bad person.
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Jan 29, 2021 05:59
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- Katt
- Nov 14, 2017
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Between 1957 and 1977 (when he died), the Finnish author Niilo Lauttamus published twenty-two very popular novels set during the second world war, starting with Vieraan kypärän alla ("Under Foreign Helmet"). They were published by a major publishing house, in fact the oldest publisher in Finland: Gummerus. What were they about? Why Finnish SS-men fighting for Germany, of course! But how did the author come up with enough material for 22 books in 20 years? You guessed it:
Why didn't the Allied Control Commission (that is: the Soviet Union) demand the imprisonment of all Finnish SS-men, especially after the entire organization had been deemed criminal at Nuremberg? I guess they just... didn't give a poo poo . The government wasn't that interested in the matter either; the (at the time) communist-controlled Finnish state police did question most of them, but didn't actually do much. For comparison, Denmark imprisoned 3 600 of their own citizens who'd served in the SS.
I'm not sure how I've come to own a copy of one of his books as I have no interest in "war novels" - I think it came from a lot I took in after my brother-in-law's father died and his mother was clearing out the house - but I read it without knowing anything about the author and... it was really boring. Just dudes drinking and whoring and fist-fighting with other soldiers in some German or maybe Austrian town. I'm glad it wasn't about genociding people, but I don't understand how it sold tens of thousands of copies (according to the dust jacket). Also, while Googling, I stumbled upon the fact that some of the books were being re-printed as late as 2012
Anyway, none of this affects any non-Finnish people as the books have never been translated, as far as I know, but just another thing to watch out for when your home country was on the losing side of WW2: popular authors who were literal literal Nazis.
Fins as a people are deeply sympathetic to nazis and even educated Fins living today will maintain that their part in Barbarossa was defensive.
(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 30, 2021 15:59
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- I AM GRANDO
- Aug 20, 2006
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In motion, he really looks like Zucc. It pleases me to know that he would probably feel deep disgust and pass out at the thought.
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Mar 12, 2021 00:39
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- Mat Cauthon
- Jan 2, 2006
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The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.
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This is kind of old news but someone reminded me of this today so figured I'd share:
https://historicly.substack.com/p/trick-mirror-a-reflection-on-mass
posted:
Most of you have probably never heard of Jia Tolentino (which is perhaps a good thing). She is a staff writer for the New Yorker. She wrote a book called Trick Mirror: A Reflection on Self-Deception. In the book, she berated capitalism for forcing people to commodify the self. A few months ago, a Reddit forum uncovered a juicy detail about her parents: They were charged with human trafficking. Instead of engaging in self-deception, she tried to turn the mirror onto us for mass deception where she penned this blog post.
Of course, no one is responsible for the sins of their parents; if she had just stated that, it wouldn't have been an issue. It would be honest on its own. However, Jia decided to take a different approach. She claimed, "The vibe was that this was some sort of wild, ironic gotcha," while proceeding to whitewash the deeds of her parents and grandparents.
In 1988, her grandmother Florita Tolentino started a business to recruit nurses from the Philippines. In 1992, she expanded it to teachers and nurses. In 2001, the family business was a significant beneficiary of the No Child Left Behind program. Her grandmother even lobbied Congress to allow teachers from the Philippines to come to teach in Texas. In 2002, Florita Torentino claimed that the state of Texas needed 800 teachers. In 2001, she falsely claimed that Texas's teachers make $3000 a month and are exempt from paying taxes*.
The court records say that the Tolentino family took the school administrators on an all-expenses-paid beach resort to Hong Kong and the Philippines, where they "interviewed" the teachers. In exchange for this trip, they agreed to hire Filipina teachers. At first, the school district said they would employ 55 teachers.
With this preliminary order, the Tolentino family charged each of the teachers $6000 of a non-refundable deposit. Those who could afford it mortgaged their property and took out bank loans at reasonable interest rates. For those who couldn't, Omni Consortium charged a fee with a 5% interest compounded monthly, which was an annual interest rate of 60%. On top of that, Omni took 50% of the salaries for the first few years. The teachers recruited by Omni Consortium were already in $12000 of debt. Before they had even made it to the US, they were in debt roughly equivalent to two years of a median family income in The Philippines.
Before the date of travel, the school district changed its mind and said it only needed 16 teachers. Instead of returning the money, they lied to the teachers. Omni Consortium created fake employment applications and filed false visa documents. They also plunged the teachers deeper into debt bondage, forcing them to come to the US. Omni knew that there was no job waiting for the majority of teachers, yet they brought them over. The teachers lived in cramped quarters, with no furniture. Many had hardly any food. According to the FBI agent who investigated the case, they received a tip from an anxious catholic priest in the Philippines. The Catholic priest spoke about their living conditions, which began the FBI investigation.
Further investigation showed that nearly 373 teachers were brought over, exploited, and extorted during this period. In 2004, after the rescue of the teachers, everyone in the business was finally charged. After a lengthy trial, lawyers hired by the Tolentinos—likely with money the workers themselves had paid—secured a ruling of mistrial on a technicality: Two of the jurors had read some newspaper articles about this case. Finally, as it is in most cases, the family reached a plea bargain with the prosecutors.
As for the teachers, some stayed on. Others went back home to the Philippines, but luckily, all of them got their debts canceled. It is unknown if anyone got restitution for the lost wages.
I've only read Tolentino's articles from time to time, never her book (although apparently Obama is a big fan). She seems to be an up and coming author so it was wild to see her not only defend her family's human trafficking, but then also watch lots and lots of progressive journalists and personalities (like Mero from Desus & Mero) jump into defend her and center her feelings over...the people actually harmed. She's not guilty for her parent's crimes obviously (although their profits bankrolled her education and lifestyle) but I can't imagine finding out something like this and then still looking at her work as somehow moral or the "voice of a generation".
Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Mar 31, 2021
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Mar 31, 2021 03:32
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- Remulak
- Jun 8, 2001
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I can't count to four.
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Yams Fan
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Wow, I was thinking about two of her articles recently.
One was a fun takedown of ‘Thomas the train’ or whatever that I honest-to-god thought was a pretty good LF post: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbit-holes/the-repressive-authoritarian-soul-of-thomas-the-tank-engine-and-friends .
The other was about coming to terms with the fact that her nanny was effectively a slave and a brilliant reflection on her own privilege. Oh wait, that was by another person in almost identical circumstances: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/ . I’ve spent the last 2 hours finding that she didn’t write this and has nothing like this level of self reflection. Dude that wrote this died, and telling his family’s slave’s story was the most important thing in his life.
It’s been long enough now that I’m not sure if I read this or I was directly told, probably both. But imagine a poor TA at an elite college being grade-grubbed due to the horrors of a student’s country of origin realizing that students family effectively owned that country. Meritocracy at work.
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Mar 31, 2021 08:12
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- Zamboni Rodeo
- Jul 19, 2007
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NEVER play "Lady of Spain" AGAIN!
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I got you, fam:
Washington Post posted:
Philip Roth and the sympathetic biographer: This is how misogyny gets cemented in our culture
By Monica Hesse
The day after hardcover printing was halted for “Philip Roth: a Biography” — which is to say, the day after news broke that the biography’s author, Blake Bailey, was accused of rape; accusations that Bailey denies — I did precisely the morally questionable thing and spent $19.24 to download the book onto my Kindle.
It’s hard to explain the rationale behind this purchase, except that when an alleged rapist writes a book about a brilliant but problematic novelist, and when that book is lauded and celebrated up until the moment two women say the author assaulted them — when all that happens, you wonder how the 900-page tome reads in hindsight.
You find yourself scrolling to a random page and reading a description of Roth’s first marriage:
“Maggie’s sinuses were, of course, the least of their problems. Even at the best of times she couldn’t resist interrupting his work on the thinnest of pretexts (‘Could you go out and get half a pound of Parmesan cheese?’).”
One could write a whole essay unpacking the premises propping up this sentence. Why is it unreasonable for Philip Roth to be asked to purchase an ingredient for the dinner he is presumably going to eat? Who purchased the rest of the groceries? One assumes it was Maggie. Was her day not “interrupted” when she shopped for and prepared the meal? What is the difference between a “thin pretext” and a valid request, other than whether the asker is Philip Roth or his shrewish, sinus-clogged wife?
There’s a fascinating discussion to be had in that anecdote, about balancing the demands of work and domesticity, about deciding who gets to be the genius and who has to be the housefrau. But Bailey apparently didn’t see it that way. What he apparently saw was a man under attack.
And so what he wrote was the story of a great man named Philip Roth, and a collection of women who were often either harpies or sexpots. When Roth began “openly dating other people” while still married, Maggie’s “demands for his attention took more and more bizarre forms,” Bailey writes — as if trying to rekindle affection from a serially philandering spouse is nonsensical and strange. (For abundant other examples from the book, The New Republic’s review, titled, “Philip Roth’s Revenge Fantasy,” is a detailed and thoughtful analysis.)
“Even at his worst, when [Roth] was ranting and raving at his ‘b---- of a wife,’ he was charming and funny and essentially benign,” Bailey told an interviewer with the Los Angeles Times.
Bailey, again, has denied the assault accusations against him, which were recounted in detail in the New York Times after being first reported by the Los Angeles Times and the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate, calling them “categorically false and libelous.” I’ll recap them only briefly here. One accuser was former student; Bailey taught her in middle school. Years later in 2003 they arranged to meet up when both happened to be in New Orleans, and this is where she says the assault occurred. The other is a publishing executive who was an overnight guest in 2015 in a house where Bailey was also staying — the homeowner was a mutual acquaintance — and she says Bailey crept into her room in the middle of the night. Both women told others about the alleged assaults shortly after they allegedly happened.
As allegations go, there’s nothing more or less disturbing in these than in the myriad sexual assault allegations peppering the news in recent years. And Blake Bailey is not an elected official, a beloved cultural icon, or even a household name.
But I still can’t help thinking about that Parmesan cheese.
I can’t help thinking about the man who would be irritated that his wife asked him to run to the grocery store, and about the man who would agree with this irritation enough to make it an anecdote in a biography.
Is it a small, subtle, seemingly inconsequential story? You bet. Am I overanalyzing it? Maybe. Probably. But the subtlety is the point; it’s subtlety that often causes lasting damage. Most people wouldn’t trust a sentence reading, “all women are nagging shrews,” but we all can be swayed by the skillful, gently persuasive phrasing that good writers know how to employ, and both Roth and Bailey are very good writers.
This is how a misogynistic culture is conceptualized, created, cultivated and codified. It doesn’t happen because one dude does a bad thing. It happens when like-minded dudes are allowed to be one another’s gatekeepers, and the gatekeepers of broader culture, when faults are allowed to go unexamined, and so they instead spread: Harvey Weinstein dictated the content of movie theaters for decades; it turns out he was abusing women all along. Roger Ailes, Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer shaped coverage and discussion of sexual misconduct scandals throughout the 1990s and 2000s; they were later accused of sexual misconduct themselves.
“We leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint,” as Roth himself wrote in the 2000 Pen/Faulkner Award-winning novel, “The Human Stain.” “Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen — there’s no other way to be here. We leave a stain.”
I can’t help thinking about how readers and viewers have been repeatedly presented narratives as the factual observations of great minds rather than as the ax-grinding of men whose judgment on gender relations might be questionable.
Roth, who died in 2018, was not so much a male writer as an archaeologist of maleness, excavating his own concepts of what men desired, needed and hated. “It is an unspoken rule of literary pages that women are not sent Roth for review,” the book critic Linda Grant once wrote, for the simple reason that women are presumed to not to “get” Roth. “There is in him a dark distaste for women,” Grant wrote. “A repugnance that can only be described by the word misogyny.”
And yet she loves him, she writes. Of course she does. It is impossible to be a person who loves sentences and not love at least some of Philip Roth.
She loves him, and still, she is deeply aware of his failings. In her essay, a review of his 2001 work, “The Dying Animal,” she describes a particular passage, in which a cancer-stricken woman uses her last day before a mastectomy to visit her former professor/lover so that he may fondle her chest and say goodbye. Grant notes that every woman she discussed this passage with burst out laughing at the preposterousness of this idea.
So while skimming “Philip Roth: a Biography” — which remains, in many ways, an impressive and fascinating achievement — I could not help but consider how it might have read if someone like Grant had written it instead. Someone with a different perspective and a bit of a gimlet eye.
Someone who might include the Parmesan anecdote, but the purpose of its inclusion would be to explain not how women nag their brilliant husbands, but how brilliant men can sometimes be major jerks.
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Apr 24, 2021 05:04
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Jan 26, 2021 23:20
