A Teenage Boy Secretly Ranks Some of His Female Classmates By Level of Attractiveness; Everybody Loses Their Minds As A Result
The WaPo represents the kid as a horrific misogynistic villain. The school forces him into a quasi-Maoist struggle session, in which some of the girls denounce him at length with crazy leftist nonsense about "rape culture" and "toxic masculinity." The WaPo and its commenters cheer all this as some great victory for progressives and women.
In fact, the kid was just doing something teenage boys pretty commonly do--though usually just in their heads. It's something that's a little bit crass, and when he's older he'll recognize that it was tasteless. But it's protected speech. And his small faux pas is nothing compared to the deranged leftist reaction to it. It's the school and the girls who have lost their minds in this story...though the latter have a partial excuse: they've been brainwashed by the prevailing insanity.
We've seemingly entered the Upside-Down...
Incidentally, I was a T.A. in college and I came into the cafeteria one day, and a bunch of the guys had made big cards with numbers on them. One of them was dressed in a suit, and going down the cafeteria line holding a kind of magician's wand over the head of certain girls, whereupon the others would hoot and holler (or boo) and hold up numbers, rating the girl's attractiveness. I blew up at them and made them stop...even though I didn't technically have any authority to do so. The cafeteria wasn't even in our dorm. Later I read them all the riot act and tried to get them to understand what f*cking bullshit that was. I basically couldn't understand what they couldn't understand... They were basically good guys...but also basically dumbasses. This is not some story about me being good. This is to say: I understand that there's a point at the bottom of such concerns. Publicly doing shit like that is an asshole thing to do, for obvious reasons. But if you ferret out something like that that someone did, basically, privately...well...it's your fault for doing so. Everybody notices physical attractiveness. The teenage boy did a teenage boy thing that isn't awesome, but isn't a big deal. If he did it, of course, he should have made sure it didn't become public. But it did. He probably deserves a bit of public disapprobation, and maybe a little talking-to. Nothing more.
But, as is so often the case now: his small error was met with utter lunacy by the cult of progressivism.
In fact, the kid was just doing something teenage boys pretty commonly do--though usually just in their heads. It's something that's a little bit crass, and when he's older he'll recognize that it was tasteless. But it's protected speech. And his small faux pas is nothing compared to the deranged leftist reaction to it. It's the school and the girls who have lost their minds in this story...though the latter have a partial excuse: they've been brainwashed by the prevailing insanity.
We've seemingly entered the Upside-Down...
Incidentally, I was a T.A. in college and I came into the cafeteria one day, and a bunch of the guys had made big cards with numbers on them. One of them was dressed in a suit, and going down the cafeteria line holding a kind of magician's wand over the head of certain girls, whereupon the others would hoot and holler (or boo) and hold up numbers, rating the girl's attractiveness. I blew up at them and made them stop...even though I didn't technically have any authority to do so. The cafeteria wasn't even in our dorm. Later I read them all the riot act and tried to get them to understand what f*cking bullshit that was. I basically couldn't understand what they couldn't understand... They were basically good guys...but also basically dumbasses. This is not some story about me being good. This is to say: I understand that there's a point at the bottom of such concerns. Publicly doing shit like that is an asshole thing to do, for obvious reasons. But if you ferret out something like that that someone did, basically, privately...well...it's your fault for doing so. Everybody notices physical attractiveness. The teenage boy did a teenage boy thing that isn't awesome, but isn't a big deal. If he did it, of course, he should have made sure it didn't become public. But it did. He probably deserves a bit of public disapprobation, and maybe a little talking-to. Nothing more.
But, as is so often the case now: his small error was met with utter lunacy by the cult of progressivism.
posted by Winston Smith at
9:36 AM
1 Comments:
And while I know you dislike arguments from practicality, and for good reasons with which I agree..
If you want to exacerbate minor misbehavior such as this, the surest way to do it is to create extreme social consequences for its revelation.
Boys will not stop thinking these things. Hell, girls will not stop thinking these things. I recall, as I am sure many do, hearing of lists maintained by girls AND guys of the hottest members of the opposite sex throughout school. Obtaining access to the opposite sex's list was a standard-issue young-person's topic of discussion among the myriad such topics which, as you note, become recognized as tasteless, somewhat-embarrassing artifacts of youth as one ages.
It ain't goin' away.
And if you want to make young boys think they are gravely immoral sexual deviants on account of having those thoughts, ensuring that they will neither reveal nor discuss them with anyone, you will, I expect, create within them a nice little private thought bubble ripe for maturation into actual sexual deviance and immorality.
Among the many ironies of the Ctrl-Left is that its obsession with "victimhood" at the hands of even the most minor of social inconveniences (e.g. "aces" having to bear the TERRIBLE BURDEN of observing the slightest indication of normal human sexuality in the course of daily existence) predictably and consistently leads to its exertion of its own social powers to ensure actual victimhood is imposed upon those who cross its paths.
That's right up there, in my book, with their obsession with, again, "victimhood," at the hands of common sense observation of behavioral norms across genders and their attempts to obliviate all such common sense observations for the sake of their own arbitrary preferences...which turn out to include preferences whereby others must treat them in accordance with those common sense observations of behavioral norms in an inverse fashion (e.g. "transgender" folks must be treated in the totally-evil-unless-it-is-demanded-of-you fashion derived from those common sense observations regarding the opposite sex of the transgender folks' actual sex).
What a world.
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