Daily Archives: September 3, 2022

L.A. fashion trend analysis: It’s time to reconsider Uggs – Los Angeles Times

Posted: September 3, 2022 at 4:42 pm

Ugg is perhaps the only shoe brand with a name that evokes the average persons response to the product. If the founders of the company had spelled it Ugh, it would have been just fine. Ugh is the universal sign of disappointment, a guttural belch that signals the speakers fervent wish that the world was somehow different. It sounds harsh, but it looks harsher. With its defiant, self-important all-caps UGG, the brand practically screams BE COMFORTABLE.

All fashion is about staples, the items that never leave your rotation and can be paired with just about anything. The leather jacket, the dad hat, a crisp white T-shirt. The Ugg boot slots easily into that category for its target audience. Its not something you put on to experience the greatest moment of your life. It is the shoe you wear to a last-minute grocery store trip, to pick up stamps or to walk your dog at 10 PM. Its the dad hat of shoes. What to wear when youre not expecting. But in Los Angeles, sometimes the most magical things can happen when youre not prepared.

Imagine walking your dog and meeting the person of your dreams. Do you want to do that in Uggs? Well, sometimes you dont have a choice, because you didnt plan to fall in love that exact second. What if you get into a fender bender? Would you rather exchange insurance information with someone in toe-exposing flip-flops or Uggs? These boots are certainly not high fashion, but they are superior to the alternative. Theyre sturdy, thanks to the rubber bottoms. The soft sheepskin construction makes them a pleasant, easy-going wear. And theyre finding appreciators on the cutting edge of modern aesthetics.

Thanks to TikTok and celebrity endorsements from names like Kylie Jenner and Gigi Hadid, the Ugg Classic Ultra Mini as opposed to the Ultra Mini Classic, Mini Classic Ultra, or Ultra Classic Mini, which I assume are all real shoes and not something I made up has become a soaring trend. The Classic Ultra Mini, with its low ankle profile all the better for showing off leg definition in a pair of leggings, is so popular that people started cutting their old Uggs to match the popular aesthetic.

But fiddling with Uggs is not just for amateurs. Its for the pros too. Take Uggs relationship with the brilliant fashion designer Telfar Clemens, who has created an empire out of appealing directly to Black customers without pandering or dumbing down his work. Clemens has made his career out of approachable, androgynous athleticwear that puts branding above all else. Telfar logos are designed into the boot, reminding the customer of their allegiance to the cult of Mr. Clemens.

Combining his talents with the Ugg brand feels natural in so many ways. The Ugg-Telfar collaborations dont shy away from either version of the Ugg story the chicly disheveled white celebrity and the regular person just trying to catch the subway. Uggs can be downmarket. They can be affordable. But they can also retain the Southern California charm that made them popular in the first place.

In Los Angeles, surfers are often blissfully content with walking around barefoot. The whole surfer aesthetic here might be summed up as: I am simply too cool to care that my feet are on fire. When the Ugg brand was launched in L.A., it offered Angelenos the perfect mixture of comfort and durability. It also connected Australian culture to L.A.s beach-centric lifestyle. Sure, were not all close to the beach, or in my case, we dont want to be. But theres a certain amount of gravity that pulls us west, to the cool breeze and lackadaisical existence that coastal vibes promise us. Perhaps thats why the Ugg boot has been repurposed from a surfers accessory to the shoe of choice for lifes most mundane tasks.

Uggs thrive whenever studied indifference is primary in the zeitgeist. You dont wear Uggs if you want to seem put together or highly effective. Uggs make you look like you dont really care that much. In that way, theyre sort of a cultural cousin to the iconic Vans slip-on. Both shoes forgo laces and can immediately render any outfit more approachable and less fussy. In the last 20 years, Ugg boots have become synonymous with celebrities hoping to appear more grounded.

Uggs ended up on Oprahs Favorite Things list in 2000, which rocketed the brand to massive popularity. The years following saw famous celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton rocking Uggs to Starbucks runs or outdoor lunches. Uggs were a staple of faux-candid paparazzi photos that were most peoples only glimpse of what they perceived to be Hollywood high society. The size and proportion of the boots are audacious, eye-catching, and unmistakable. Perfect gristle for the celebrity industrial complexs hunger for attention. Uggs are comfortable, but theyre not subtle.

Its often impossible to divest ourselves of these cultural associations. When our broadest methods of communication are increasingly becoming a series of references, callbacks, and paeans to nostalgia, its hard to accept a thing at face value. Celebrity associations pigeonholed Uggs into an aesthetic segregation of the tossed off, cobbled together chaos of female tabloid icons the woman who simply cant be bothered. Uggs were always intended to be a unisex shoe but were weirdly gendered by the mid to late 2000s. They were for the so-called hot mess, usually a very wealthy white woman who hoped to conjure up images of reckless fame.

It could be that Uggs fell out of favor when Los Angeles itself fell out of favor. After a decade of prominence thanks to shows like The OC and the nonstop coverage of places like the Chateau Marmont (where Lindsay Lohan infamously racked up an unpaid bill of $46,000), culture and fashion shifted to Mad Men"-esque paeans to buttoned-down 50s look and prep aesthetics as typified by Scott Sternbergs Band of Outsiders label. The backlash to early aughts debauchery meant the rise of the manic pixie dream girl, odes to French New Wave cinema, and most important, shoes that made you look like you were actually trying. The girlboss fad required ambition, attention to detail, and a wardrobe that meant business. Obviously, not everyone adhered to the trends that were brought down from the mountain of the New York media gods. This is Los Angeles, after all. Thanks to how ubiquitous and accessible they were, Uggs began to be associated with consumers who wore them to decidedly unsexy locations like the DMV. One could not be grown and sexy in floppy sheepskin boots. But the overriding perception of the boot was one of luxurious nonchalance.

When I think of Uggs, I think of Kate Moss approximating a bohemian ideal in boots that look like theyve been chewed on by a wet dog. Its a look that feels dated and unapproachable for anyone who doesnt look like Kate Moss. But the revival of Uggs is very much a movement fronted by people of color on a mission to claim a discarded trend for themselves. Jennifer Lopez has long been a devotee of the brand, dating back to its heyday, but when she started getting photographed in them again back in 2020, it started a rediscovery of the joys of looking a bit messy. Casual looks came back thanks to pandemic-era comfort fetishizing. The idea of being effortlessly casual became glamorous again, as routine errands found a new level of importance thanks to quarantine and social distancing. Probably the most crucial element of Uggs revival is plain, simple nostalgia.

The 2000s feel like unmined sartorial territory. For so long, that era has been maligned as grotesque, tacky and lacking in self-awareness. Our current moment is one where ideas, public figures and fashion trends are being reassessed. Low-rise jeans are, tragically, roaring back with young consumers. Ive even seen one or two trucker hats in the wild. Surely, an Ed Hardy revival is regrettably on the horizon. But its not just clothes that are being reconsidered.

Monica Lewinsky has turned from Gen-X pariah to millennial hero thanks to a collective desire to use hindsight to address our blind spots and prejudices. FXs miniseries American Crime Story: Impeachment didnt hurt the cause of her newfound celebration as a resilient, strong woman who survived years of omnipresent abuse. Paris Hiltons documentary This Is Paris revealed its subject to be far more complex than the persona that was slut-shamed in the 2000s. It feels right to look back at our collective mistakes, to consider maybe we misjudged some things. Maybe Paris Hilton and Uggs arent so bad after all.

But theyre still ugly. They still elicit groans from passersby. Sometimes it feels powerful to be ugly. Its a defiance in the face of the unrelenting grind of needing to be successful, which so many Angelenos feel. Slipping on a pair of Uggs can put one at ease. They have the power to disarm in a city where our guards are always up.

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L.A. fashion trend analysis: It's time to reconsider Uggs - Los Angeles Times

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How Eliza Rose made the song of the summer – Dazed

Posted: at 4:41 pm

Future historians will look back on this as the summer of rail strikes, Elf Bars, climate breakdown, spiralling living costs, and B.O.T.A (Baddest of Them All), a dance track by Eliza Rose and Interplanetary Criminal. If you still havent heard it, I have some upsetting news about your grasp on the cultural zeitgeist. But you probably have done, at some point: on the radio, at a festival, blaring out of a passing car on a sultry evening, the soundtrack to any number of TikToks where people lip-sync the lyrics while clearly feeling themselves (and good for them!) Now hovering at number two in the charts, B.O.T.A marks the long-awaited end of the song of the summer recession weve been suffering for years.

B.O.T.A first gained traction in Londons club scene, but it wasnt until Glastonbury that it really took off. Soon, it was everywhere, achieving a level of ubiquity which Rose hadnt anticipated. I thought the underground scene would love it, and I knew that it was quite a special song, she tells me, as we begin our white wine-fuelled stroll through Dalston, the area she grew up. But never in a million years did I think it would get into the charts. For it now to be at number two is insane.

The songs title and central refrain is inspired by Coffy, a 1973 Blaxploitation film which stars Pam Grier as a woman vigilante. The tagline reads: the baddest one chick hit squad which ever hit town. Shes the ultimate figure of female empowerment for me, says Rose, and even if its not an obvious reference, I think some of that strength permeated the song. It makes her happy that the song has resonated so much among young women, Black and queer communities; in her words, people living themselves authentically, doing what they want that makes them happy and going against norms. Anyone who enjoys the song, and feels empowered while listening to it, instantly becomes the baddest of them all.

B.O.T.A has elements of UK garage, which remains one of Roses biggest inspirations, and maybe a little dash of PC Music, but really its a tribute to 90s dance. Its a little bit trashy, a little bit Euro, says Rose. The song is extremely catchy, which no doubt has contributed to its success, but theres also something deeply evocative about it. How I write is very image-led, Rose says. When she first heard the instrumental (she wrote the lyrics and top-line melody, Interplanetary Criminal wrote the music), she imagined it being played at an arcade in the 90s: fairground rides, cheap candy floss, throwing up, being 14 years old and kissing a boy. The song is intended to be nostalgic, but its a nostalgia anyone can relate to, whether theyre an older person reflecting on another era, or an 18-year-old reminiscing about the previous summer.

As well as being a DJ, Rose is a fiction writer who has just finished her first novel What Happens in Dreamland which portrays a friendship between two women who are both, in their own ways, in bad situations. Female friendship runs through everything I do, she says. Friendship is just as important as the notion of romantic love. You learn about yourself through how your friends see you. The video for B.O.T.A an Alice in Wonderland-style descent into Hackneys queer scene which features a starry cast of drag and performance artists is itself a testament to friendship: filmed on a minuscule budget, it was directed by one of Roses best friends, Jeanie Crystal, the founder of Faboo TV, and she knows everyone who took part, even if only through conversations in club smoking areas. Her interest in literature also bleeds into her songwriting. Jean Rhys is the love of my life; I adore her, Im obsessed, she says. This is getting neeky now, but her book Wide Sargasso Sea is a big inspiration for me. Its a reimagining of the story of Jane Eyre, told from the perspective of the madwoman in the attic, and that element of re-imagining things in new contexts has really influenced what I try to do. So for example, I wrote a song that was inspired by Minnie the Moocher, a famous blues song by Cab Calloway, which tells her side of the story.

B.O.T.A is a relatively rare instance of an underground song breaking out of its original context and seeping through to the mainstream. But Roses journey to the top has been anything other than meteoric. In recent years, she has steadily risen to become a star of both the London scene and festival circuit, but this has been a long time in the making: she has been plugging away at DJing for years, something which for the most part hasn't been glamorous. I first met her back in 2016, and my defining memory is running into her in various parts of London, dragging an enormous suitcase of vinyls on the way to play some badly paid gig in a pub. You have to work hard, she says. Not a lot of people just fly to the top. You have to do it for the love and not just because you want to look cool, because that wears thin very quickly. There have been so many times where Ive been like this is long, nobody knows who I am.

When it comes to records, Rose is also kind of an anorak; a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool muso. Im a bit of a hoarder, Im a bit obsessive, she says. I find it really interesting to find some track that nobody else is going to have. It all started with a fluke. When she was 15, she did a work experience placement at a record shop, but this only happened because her original plan fell through at the last minute. All the good placements were taken and my two options were working in a nursery or a record shop. I was like, I'm not changing nappies or looking after screaming children, so I went to the record shop. But she was bitter about this, telling her friends, oh my god, guys, Im going to have to work with a bunch of old white men.

At the time, the idea that vinyl culture might be an accessible interest for someone like her seemed laughable. As a 15-year-old Black girl, for me, record shops were just old white mens things. It wasnt something that I had any connection to at all, she says. But the experience ended up being life-changing. I was really into Amy Winehouse at the time, she says, and through her I started getting into soul, jazz and disco. When I realised that all of this was Black culture, and I was able to hold this physical thing in my hand that represented Black culture, thats when I started getting into records. She spent the following decade working for Flashback, one of Londons most respected vinyl stores, and eventually started DJing in 2014.

In light of the revelations against Tim Westwood which emerged this year, there has recently been a lot of discussions about the experiences of women and particularly women of colour in the dance music industry. For Eliza, trying to make it in a scene which remained dominated by white men was challenging at times. It often felt like an uphill battle, she says. There wasnt the same community that is there now. For a long time, I felt like I was ticking off a Black woman box and was only getting booked for that reason. But I needed to pay my rent. I knew I was being used as a token, essentially, but I decided to take that and build myself to the next step. Even now that she has proven her talent beyond all doubt, and become a hugely respected figure within the scene, she still feels a sense of imposter syndrome derived from those early experiences. I always wondered if I only got gigs because of my race, and that still has a knock-on effect. You get stuck in the narrative that youre not good enough to be here, even though you are. Whereas if youre a white man youd just be like Im sick. Ive got this gig, big up me and my bad self! You wouldnt even think about it like that.

Today, its important to Rose to reclaim dance music as part of a Black cultural legacy. I want to be part of a movement where we say, this is ours. You may enjoy it too. But this is ours, she says. It took her a while to arrive at this realisation: to begin with, she assumed that house and techno were firmly within the domain of white culture. I did see UK garage as more of a Black genre, but I didnt see it as electronic music, I saw it as sped up R&B, she says. But when you start doing your history, you quickly learn that whole scenes were whitewashed. Its notable that B.O.T.A took off in the same year that both Drake and Beyonce released house-inspired albums, two events which have led to a wider cultural conversation about the Black roots of dance music. Even UK garage, which became something a lot of white boys played, was born from South London and its Black community, she says. Yes, it was mixed from the beginning, but UKG became completely whitewashed, as did house and techno. Its only now were clawing back our own spaces. Were still having to fight for it, but we are slowly getting there. Were not saying so you cant have your time too. But you do need to move out of the way!

I always wondered if I only got gigs because of my race, and that still has a knock-on effect. You get stuck in the narrative that youre not good enough to be here... Whereas if youre a white man youd just be like Im sick

As we walk through Gillett Square, we pass by a Caribbean takeaway that was closed down earlier this year after incoming residents complained about the smell. Rose tells me this was the moment she decided to stop getting so upset by gentrification: not because she realised her anger was misplaced, but simply because maintaining it had become too exhausting. Its really awful how much it has changed, she says. When it first got really white around the time of the Olympics [in 2012] I started experiencing all kinds of racism. People would look at me like, Oh, my God, she says, affecting a look of prim horror. Its like they were scared of me, in my own area, on my own street, where Id lived all of my life. Id think, you've moved in here, and you're looking at me like that?

Even though shes made an effort to be less bitter about the fate of Hackney, she is determined to support whatever creative spirit has yet to be priced out. I try to choose to see the things that are good, because there are still these different spaces going against the grain and refusing to be removed, and there are still people who continue to push the creativity which used to define Hackney, she says. It makes those things even more special.

If youre someone who cares about London's nightlife, there can be a tension between wanting to champion it for what it actually is, today, while still acknowledging the fact that its under threat (the higher powers don't give it as much respect as it deserves, says Rose.) Its true that London is a city far more amenable to property development than it is to raves, and that venues are closing all the time. But this summer, Rose has felt a sense of rebirth. However embattled Londons club scene might be, the fact that its still capable of giving rise to cultural moments as exciting as B.O.T.A shows that its spirit hasnt been crushed just yet.

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Friday essay: Joanna Bourke, the NSW arts minister, and the unruly contradictions of cancel culture – The Conversation

Posted: at 4:41 pm

An earworm has gnawed its way into my brain, looping the same melody over and over. It is Italys most famous resistance song, Bella Ciao, which I recently heard played as a high-decibel dance remix in an exclusive Balinese bar overlooking the Indian Ocean. Well-heeled patrons of diverse nationalities bopped to the catchy tune in the glow of a glorious sunset and, fuelled by exotic cocktails, chanted the chorus. I wondered how a sacred anthem of radical credentials could have strayed so far from its original meanings and contexts.

Bella Ciao began as a partisan anthem, possibly with roots in folk laments sung by exploited workers in the north of Italy. It is associated in Italian minds with the resistance of 194345.

The songs popularity peaked when it was used as a soundtrack for the popular Netflix series Money Heist (2017). It was sung from balconies in Europe during the pandemic; it is de rigueur at political rallies by groups of all political leanings. It is used to sell burgers in Korea and to celebrate quashing an opponent in football matches (Messi Ciao). Unanchored from its local habitation as a protest folk song, Bella Ciao is now a tune that can travel anywhere and represent everyone and everything.

The less benign phrase cancel culture (and its cognate cancelling), which has roots in oral Black vernacular traditions, has suffered a similar semantic drift.

Cancelling originally referred to a practice among the disempowered of calling out socially unacceptable behaviour and discrimination. It has now become a catch-all phrase, imprecisely applied to all manner of people, places and things. It is used to signify everything from vigilante justice, hostile debate, intimidation and harassment, to levelling statues and de-platforming books and lectures in universities and school syllabi.

Cancel culture is often conflated with adjacent phenomena such as outrage culture, boycotts and backlashes. It is linked to debates about censorship, free speech, decolonising the curriculum, wokeness and political correctness. The noisy doxxing and bad faith piling-on feels, to many, like a rudderless surrogate of the judicial process, at once chaotic and ritualised, and has invited comparisons by some commentators to ancient, ritualised practices of scapegoating.

While cancel culture may be a hot topic among journalistic and intellectual elites, a recent UK YouGov survey found that only around a third of Britons (35%) think they know what cancel culture means. Of the two-thirds who dont know what it means, close to four in ten claimed never to have heard the expression in the first place (38%).

That many people have not heard of cancel culture doesnt mean the phenomenon isnt real. On August 19, the NSW Minister for the Arts, Ben Franklin, demanded that Sydneys Festival of Dangerous Ideas cancel a talk about bestiality by eminent historian Joanna Bourke. After being contacted for comment by 2GB talkback radio host Ben Fordham, Franklins office said he was

deeply concerned by the contents of Bourkes scheduled talk entitled The Last Taboo, and is demanding festival organisers remove it from their program.

Festival curator and Ethics Centre director Simon Longstaff refused to comply with the request, stating Bourkes views have been misunderstood. If somebody was to provide a history of cannibalism or slavery, said Longstaff, does that mean they are therefore encouraging us to eat each other or enslave our fellow man? As a result of this media attention, he added, Bourke has been trolled by lowlifes.

In 2019, the Macquarie Dictionary committee named cancel culture Word of the Year, noting it captured an important aspect of the zeitgeist. According to its definition, it describes community attitudes that

call for or bring about the withdrawal of support from [for] a public figure, such as cancellation of an acting role, a ban on playing an artists music, removal from social media, etc., usually in response to an accusation of a socially unacceptable action or comment.

Franklins attempt to cancel Bourke falls squarely within this circumscribed definition.

Read more: Cancel culture, cleanskin, hedonometer ... I'm not sure I like any of Macquarie Dictionary's words of the year

Is this attempt to cancel Bourke simply another example of the anti-intellectualism evident across the political spectrum? Is vitriolic misinterpretation really replacing thoughtful debate?

Attempts at cancelling often aim to inflict maximum reputational or economic damage to otherwise out-of-reach public figures and celebrities. But as the case of author J.K. Rowling suggests, the more famous you are, the more difficult you are to topple. Rowling appears to have suffered no significant career setbacks following calls for her cancellation after she tweeted controversial views on gender identity and biological sex.

Cancelling, in this sense, is a bit like executing the strikethrough option in the keyboard: a function that enables you to draw a line through a word while allowing it to remain legible and in place.

Cancel culture is not always discerning in its targets. The transnational #MeToo movement, to cite one example, has contributed to the exposure of high-profile sexual predators such as Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, leading to criminal convictions. But other cancellations enact a more casual cruelty on ordinary, innocent people. I am reminded of the US writer Shirley Jacksons story The Lottery (1948), in which a member of a small American community is selected by chance and stoned.

The idea of cancelling or calling out transgressions has its origins in the creative spaces occupied by marginalised groups. Exemplified by hashtag-oriented social justice movements such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, the strategy has been successfully deployed by activists to call out real harms and demand accountability.

Journalist Aja Romano notes the idea of cancelling a person, place or thing has long circulated within Black culture, and traces it to Nile Rodgerss 1981 single Your Love Is Cancelled.

Writer and researcher Meredith D. Clark argues that calling out, which begat cancelling, is an indigenous expressive form of useful anger perfected by Black women. The practice was colourfully deployed to name individual transgressions. In its networked forms, it became a critique of systemic inequality.

It developed into a socially mediated phenomenon with origins in queer communities of colour. In the early 2010s, Black Twitter a meta-network of culturally connected communities made the language of being cancelled into an internet meme.

The term cancel culture, however, has become unmoored from its history and its original significations. In its clamorous current form, it has no coherent ideology: cancellations come just as steadily from the right as the left. Reframed by the dominant culture, and amplified by the media, it has come to be used as a term of approbation wielded against minorities to maintain the status quo.

In the attention economy of the 24-hour news cycle, journalists routinely extract and decontextualise rich traditions of collective resistance (or in Bourkes case, scholarly research) to meet the demand for attention-grabbing content. In doing so, they often fail to explain why these debates should or shouldnt be part of mainstream public discourse.

Franklin is on record as championing freedom of expression and diversity of opinion. Earlier this year, he stated an artists boycott of the Sydney Festival was censorship and that it risked silencing diverse voices and important perspectives to the great detriment of society.

Given free speech is a sovereign human right many liberals and conservatives claim to hold dear, attempting to cancel a reputable academic seems an awkward spot to be occupying. Bourke is a prizewinning author of 14 books and a Fellow of the British Academy. She is an expert on the history of violence in British, Irish, US and Australian societies. Her work includes histories of rape, fear and killing. Her most recent book, Loving Animals: On Bestiality, Zoophilia and Post-Human Love (2020), has been widely reviewed in scholarly journals.

Read more: Was the Sydney Festival boycott justifiable to support Palestine?

How is it that the most ardent defenders of free speech and diversity are often the same people who seek to silence those with whom they do not happen to agree, without a sound knowledge of the ideas on which they are passing judgement?

Lets be clear. Platitudes about freedom of expression, in the contexts we are discussing, are not about the abstract principle of free speech as such. They are about the greyer areas of where we draw the boundaries. What kind of discourse and actions are considered acceptable? Which are morally out of bounds? And, crucially, who gets to decide?

All societies place some limits on the exercise of speech, because it always takes place in a context of competing values. And in the case of cancel culture, this exercise of free speech is mediated by commercially owned social media platforms such as Twitter the main arena of cancel culture which, while free, thrives on the scandal that generates profit.

In this respect, it is useful to remember that the kinds of speech and actions that society deems acceptable are historically contingent and an effect of power relations.

Societies evolve; norms change; attitudes progress; the boundaries of moral acceptability are redrawn over time. It is also in the nature of linguistic meaning to be fluid and provisional, not fixed or rigid. As Judith Butler explains in Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1996), speech acts are constrained by a larger set of discursive rules. Those rules are negotiable. In this sense there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as free speech, in the sense of unlimited and decontextualised speech.

An idea deeply embedded in liberal democracies is that people are equally empowered to engage in debate and freely express their ideas. But is this really so? The public sphere is a fractured space of competing elites. Idealistic visions of equal access fail to acknowledge disparities of knowledge and resources between social elites and disempowered groups.

Right-wing politicians and commentators have claimed in recent years that a progressive cancel culture has silenced alternative perspectives and stifled robust intellectual debate. The pejorative label cancel culture has been misappropriated to discredit social justice movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo.

The question that remains to be answered is why, even as pundits condemn cancel culture as the mob running amok, the injustices and systemic inequalities that cancelling strategies evolved to name remain largely in place. The example of Franklin and Bourke suggests hypocritical censoriousness remains part of the dominant political culture.

Understanding the genealogy of cancel culture, and how its language has been reframed and mobilised, may help us see such moral condemnations for what they really are: a reactive rearguard reflex by those in power, who are no longer congruent with the progressive liberal culture that dominates a fractured public sphere.

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Friday essay: Joanna Bourke, the NSW arts minister, and the unruly contradictions of cancel culture - The Conversation

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The pending collapse of the United States of Political Correctness – The Hill

Posted: at 4:40 pm

As one of the great Chico Marxist quotes of all time asks: Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes? Every day it seems that more of our political leaders are asking maybe ordering Americans to ignore the wrongs they plainly see, in favor of narratives that are built on false and self-destructive ideology.

As Americans try to cope with exponentially diminishing security, supplies, affordable energy, savings accounts, job prospects, career-creating and career-relevant education, and even many of their liberties, those who are in charge insist, Nothing to see here; move along. Were supposed to trust the nanny-state.

Why would these politicians purposely ignore actual and fixable catastrophes that could negatively impact their own somewhat privileged lives and the welfare of their children if left unchecked? Biased minds are spot-welded to questionable ideology, anger, hate, hubris, and the inability to acknowledge that one is wrong.

Lets look at four examples of quality of life-destroying issues that some who worship at the altar of political correctness had a hand in either creating or denying, or both.

The first is the energy supply crisis spreading around the world as in, energy that makes human life sustainable.

While those pushing green and renewable energy solutions can deny it all they want, the truth is that fossil fuels remain the giver and protector of human life and civilization. Eliminating fossil fuels is tantamount to signing a death warrant for millions of people the world over.

Two voices, among many, have spoken out on this subject but, because of who they are, the green energy zealots and their media and celebrity enablers doubled down on their denial of any energy emergency that threatens others quality of life.

The first person who comes to mind was Donald Trump. Yes, alert the authorities: If Trump said it, no matter how accurate his warning as president may have been, many on the left will deny it, smear it and destroy it.

But, four years ago, during a speech at the United Nations, Trump warned that unreliable green and renewable energy sources would threaten the actual energy needs of Germany and Europe. The German delegation literally laughed in his face.

Theyre not laughing anymore. With natural gas supplies from Russia essentially cut off because of the war in Ukraine, Europe is facing energy shortages and a potential crisis this coming winter.

The next notable person I recall speaking out on the issue was Elon Musk, who recently said that civilization will crumble unless we continue using oil and gas in the short term. Earlier this week, he tweeted: Countries should be increasing nuclear power generation! It is insane from a national security standpoint & bad for the environment to shut them down.

The green energy-pushing leftists can hate on Trump and Musk all they want, but that doesnt make their warnings false. We can see for ourselves the energy crisis unfolding across Europe, which could reach our own shores. And then what?

Next, lets consider the war zones that some of our cities have become. Not familiar with that story? Im not surprised. Thousands of lives are being lost each year to urban violence. Why isnt this a national emergency? Well, political correctness dictates that we cant talk about those lost lives because many are the result of gang violence or turf wars between young men. Sometimes innocent children or women are caught in the crossfire.

Ironically and quite brazenly, since some at the newspaper favored earlier calls to defund the police, which voters opted not to do the Minneapolis Star Tribune recently published an editorial titled, Curbing violent crime is an all-hands job. An excerpt said: Crime, particularly violent crime, is at near-record highs in larger cities in Minnesota, with emboldened criminals feeling freer than ever to wield even the deadliest weapons without regard for the law or human life.

No kidding. Thats what happens when you demoralize the police, and some cities are experiencing difficulty replacing those who quit. Thats happening not just in Minneapolis but in cities elsewhere in the United States, and some cities have prosecutors who dont want to prosecute certain crimes.

From the epidemic of violence, lets switch to the epidemic of obesity in America. Oh, wait we cant talk about that, either. Political correctness dictates that to address such an issue would be fat shaming. And yet, obesity is an epidemic that is contributing to the loss of tens of thousands of lives each year.

We see it, we know the grief it causes, but were told not to believe our lying eyes. It is much more politically expedient for some to normalize obesity and allow people to suffer from chronic illnesses or even die instead of addressing a health crisis that continues to get worse.

And the topic of health brings us to the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of deaths worldwide were attributed to the virus, but we still dont know definitively how SARS-CoV-2 originated in Wuhan, China. Shouldnt our political leaders try to get to the bottom of this? And if they dont care to find conclusive evidence, why not?

These four issues alone are harming people worldwide. And yet, many of those who control the government, media, academia, science, medicine and entertainment either refuse to acknowledge it, or worse, seek to punish anyone who dares to question their politically correct policies.

If we dont address the catastrophes we are witnessing with our own eyes, we risk the collapse of the infrastructure and rule of law that sustains society. The clock is ticking and the alarm signaling a point of no return is about to shriek.

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.

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Laurence Fox finds a role equal to his talents: the Breitbart biopic of Hunter Biden – The Guardian US

Posted: at 4:40 pm

It has been repeated so often since it was coined in the 2004 film Mean Girls that it has perhaps become an overused formulation. But in the case of Donald Trump, his supporters and the New York Post and their efforts to discredit Joe Biden via his son Hunter, it feels especially apt: guys, stop trying to make Hunter Biden conspiracy theories happen.

The most recent salvo in the campaign to make Hunters lost laptop the new Hillarys emails may, at least, bring about a moment of joy for the rest of us. Available for download from 7 September, the movie My Son Hunter is a piece of political porn dedicated to animating the wildest fringes of Trump chat-room banter. To enjoy it, you have only to submit your email address to Breitbart News, the far-right internet platform that is distributing the film. For those unwilling to see their names on that particular list, I can assure you that the trailer, which dropped last week, is more than you need.

The call sheet is an an absolute peach. The film is directed by Robert Davi, who played one of the bad guys in the Goonies and whose previous political work as a director includes Demon Sheep, the attack ad featuring satanic livestock that helped Carly Fiorina lose to Barbara Boxer in Californias 2010 Senate race.

The screenplay is by Brian Godawa, who, two years ago, wrote the confusingly capitalised ObamaGate Movie, about a deep state plot to undermine the Trump candidacy, and also writes biblical-themed novels with titles such as Psalm 82 and Judgment: Wrath of the Lamb. The actor John James (Dynasty, the Colbys, the ObamaGate Movie) plays Biden, and Gina Carano former cast member of the Mandalorian, who was fired from that franchise last year for making social media statements denouncing mask wearing and comparing the treatment of present-day Republicans to Jews during the Holocaust appears as a Secret Service agent trying to save her country from the Bidens.

These gifts are all secondary, however, to the casting of Britains own Laurence Fox as Hunter Biden. To enjoy the full impact of this, we need to pause for a moment exclusively to address American readers. Its hard to explain, to the unacquainted, the unique role played by Fox in British national life: an actor who appeared in a popular detective show for years without troubling the public imagination, Fox has, in recent years, inserted himself into the discourse with a range of eye-catching opinions that can be largely summarised as a defense of our eras poorest underdog: the straight, white male.

Credit where its due: Fox was quite good, 20 years ago, as the fifth lead in Gosford Park. But as the child of the actor James Fox and nephew of the actor Edward Fox, Laurence may be imagined in relation to his familys acting dynasty as a kind of British Stephen Baldwin, only built like an asparagus and with cheeks as hollow as in any painting by Edvard Munch.

In 2020, he was dropped by his agents after he characterised being described as a white privileged male as racist, and he has been shown to be fond of the phrase All Lives Matter. Last year, he founded the Reclaim party to fight against extreme political correctness, and he stood for mayor of London in 2021, a candidacy as delusional as Marianne has anyone tried fixing America with crystals and bee pollen? Williamsons run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, if a good deal less charming. Fox lost his 10,000 deposit after gaining just 1.9% of the vote.

You get the idea chiefly, that in My Son Hunter, Laurence Fox has finally found material equal to his talents. For British readers, meanwhile, there may be some catching up to be done on the subject of Hunter Biden and the internet. There isnt enough time in the world to fully describe everything that has emerged from this particular screaming hellmouth, but briefly: the source for My Son Biden is what the New York Post calls Hunter Bidens laptop probe, a series of stories that circle around material found on a laptop at a repair shop in Delaware, which was reported by the Post to show connections between Hunter Biden and various Ukrainian and Chinese energy companies, plus some sex stuff I still cant figure out. Stories about the laptop were suppressed by tech companies in the lead-up to the election even though some of them were true, which is why Trump has described it on his Truth Social platform as the Laptop from Hell coverup. But they have also given rise to a world of conspiracy theories and conjecture, connecting Joe Biden to Hunters dealings in ways that have never been proven.

While its a constant Republican talking point, the story never got much real-world traction outside the Fox News ecosystem. Hence the need to make My Son Hunter, key search terms for which, on the strength of the trailer, should be cavorting, underpants, and, to nail that crucial international revenue stream, Lozza Fox. We can only raise a glass to them all, wish them the very best of online premieres next week, and fervently hope the movie gets the audience it deserves.

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Moving ahead as a party of one Times News Online – tnonline.com

Posted: at 4:40 pm

Published September 03. 2022 08:51AM

Today we should be celebrating our 17th wedding anniversary. Its funny to me how my opinion of marriage has changed over the years. It was important to Steve that we got married the old-fashioned way, in church, in front of our friends and family, and with all the pomp and circumstance that went with it. Me? I figured it would be easier to raise the kids in a traditional family and I really wanted the fancy dress and the big party. It all came together beautifully, and our wedding was everything we both wanted it to be and more.

Sure we had some bumps in the road, like when our limo pulled out of the parking lot after we took photos, the door flew open, and I almost fell out of the car. Or, when we got to the end of the night, and congratulated ourselves on planning ahead to have our vehicle in the parking lot, only to discover that Steve had forgotten to get the keys back from the friend who brought it over for us.

One thing that I do remember clearly was throwing off a lot of the wedding folks, like the limo driver, the photographer, and even the priest by being early for everything. Although I had everything planned down to the second and the smallest detail, there was more to it than just my anal retentiveness. I didnt want to wait one more minute to start our lives together. I also remember all of my bridesmaids being armed with tissues, just in case. There was no need for that. There were no tears to be shed on my end. Steve, being the big old sap that he was, did have a few, so my handkerchief did get used by one of us.

Although our day was traditional, I felt that a lot of things about our marriage ended up being not quite so traditional. Right off the bat, I never changed my last name. I had never planned to, and it had nothing to do with Steve. Quite simply, after being one person with one name for 31 years, it seemed a little silly to change it. Also, when Steve and I discussed it, I suggested that we both change our names, either combining our last names into a new name, or hyphenating them. He said, well that would be stupid. I loved it when he won my arguments for me.

For the first few days after we were married, Steve and I went through the whole thing of calling each other husband and wife and each time, wed collapse in hysterical fits of laughter. It sounded so ridiculous. Husbands and wives were just different people. We were just Steve and Liz, like wed always been.

Steves nickname of Wonderful Husband or The WH started as a joke due to our complete disregard for those titles. After 16 years, I would overhear Steve say to someone else my wife and Id think, who the heck is that? Then I would have to remind myself, oh he means me. And, any time I had to introduce him as my husband, I would have to fight back the giggles. Most of the time, Steves reputation preceded him, and I could get away with a This is Steve.

I dont think of myself as some crazy over the top feminist, but I never wanted our family to feel like anyone had to follow gender norms. Although I ended up being the one who put dinner on the table most nights, and Steve cut the grass and took out the garbage, I wanted our kids to know that at any time, I could easily handle putting gas in the car, and Steve could change a diaper with the best of them. Recently, the term life partner has come into vogue and although Steve hated the political correctness of it, I felt like it was a much better description of our relationship.

Among the many other nasty surprises that come in the wake of a death was just how fast you are literally not married anymore. Within days, I had to check the single box on many of the forms I had to fill out. A few of them graciously provided a widow box to check, which while harder to fill in, at least felt like an acknowledgment of what had existed.

When you say the words til death do us part, you think a lot about the (hopefully many) years leading up to that parting, but I never spent much time thinking about what life would be like after that parting. I guess when you assume that it will happen many years down the road, after a long and fulfilling life, you figure it might not be that much time to actually consider. Now, there is a good chance that Ill spend a lot more time parted from him than we had together.

I thought so long and hard about all the other parts of our vows, especially the in sickness part, because Steve was the absolute worst sick person ever, and I knew exactly what making that vow entailed, but I now know that I should have thought a lot more about the parting part.

While in my head, my heart, in every way that truly matters, I will always be Steves wife and he will always be my husband, our life partnership is over. Im just here trying hard to figure out how to keep moving forward as a party of one.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.

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Google Bars Truth Social From App Store Over Lack of Content Moderation – Reason

Posted: at 4:40 pm

Truth Social, the Twitter-esque social media platform launched by former President Donald Trump, is being barred from the Google Play store over content moderation concerns.

Google Play is the default place to find apps on Android phones. Exclusion from the Google Play store doesn't mean people are prohibited from downloading and installing an app on Android devices, but it does make doing so more difficult. And Truth Social does not currently offer a version of the app that can be downloaded and installed from its website or elsewhere. So, anyone who wants to use Truth Social on an Android phone has to do so via web browser rather than through a dedicated app.

"On Aug. 19, we notified Truth Social of several violations of standard policies in their current app submission and reiterated that having effective systems for moderating user-generated content is a condition of our terms of service for any app to go live on Google Play," a Google spokesperson told Axios, which reports that Google is concerned with Truth Social not effectively moderating threats of violence.

The situation echoes concerns over the right-leaning social media platform Parler, which was banned from app stores (though only temporarily from Apple's) for alleged indifference to posts from January 6 rioters. Many conservatives accused the tech companies of liberal bias and potentially illegal conduct.

There are two important things to keep in mind when it comes to the Truth Social and Google Play situation.

Number one is that the situation looks likely to resolve itself soon enough. Google said it has raised its concerns with Truth Social, and the two companies are working to resolve the issue. Trump Media & Technology Group said in a statement: "It is our belief that all Americans should have access to Truth Social no matter what devices they use. We look forward to Google approving Truth Social at their earliest convenience."

Also important to keep in mind: The impossible situation app stores find themselves in.

Google and Apple have both been harassed by regulators and politicians over app store policies, with some suggesting that tightly controlling the app store could be an antitrust violation or grounds for losing Section 230 protections.

Meanwhile, these companies are also hammered for not doing enough to stop dangerous, misleading, or violent content, including content on apps that appear in app stores. Sometimes, the government even tries to ban certain apps from being available through app stores.And increasingly, intermediarieslike tech companies and payment processorsface lawsuits for not stopping potentially harmful content.

In effect, tightly controlling its app store may get Google in legal and political trouble. But not tightly controlling its app store may also get Google in legal and political trouble.

This sort of catch-22 has become all too common for tech companies, which face demands to both stop more speech and allow all speech.

"Is 'Woke' just PC with faster internet?" asks Phoebe Maltz Bovy. The impetus for this question: her discovery of an early '90s book titled The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook. In a post on Freddie DeBoer's blog, Bovy looks at what's different between today's version of "political correctness" and that from 30 years back, and what's the same. "But the point of the book feels about as 2022 as it could. There are the defenses of free speech, which, yes, but more powerful, and more relevant, is the critique of PC's fixation on language over substance, and indeed in obscuring the absence of substantive change."

A city in Vermont has repealed two ordinances against prostitution. The Montpelier ordinances state that "no female person shall be a prostitute" and "no person shall keep a house of prostitution."

City Manager Bill Fraser said the ordinances hadn't been used in a long time. And prostitution will still be criminalized in Montpelier under Vermont state law.

But despite minimal practical impact, the repeal could be a sign of winds shifting.

"Montpelier has become the second city in Vermont to repeal its antiquated prostitution ordinance in the past year," notes the group Decriminalize Sex Work. "Last summer, the Burlington City Council voted to repeal that city's prostitution ordinance and voters subsequently chose to strike discriminatory and archaic language on sex work from the city charter."

More on the debate over Montpelier's ordinances here and here.

DOJ responds to Trump. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has responded to former President Donald Trump's request to appoint a special master to oversee the handling of documents gotten from Mar-a-Lago. You can read the full filing here; CNN offers highlights here.

Read Reason's Matt Welch on the death of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Young people are interested in the newsbut not very happy with it.

France is using drones to spy on and tax unauthorized swimming pools.

"California lawmakers are on the verge of passing a bill that would significantly scale back solitary confinement in prisons, jails and private immigration detention centers," reports Fox News. The measureAB 2632would limit solitary confinement to no more than 15 consecutive days and no more than 45 cumulative days in a 180-day time frame.

A pair of Virginia lawsuits seeking to get the books Gender Queer and A Court of Mist and Fury removed from the shelves of libraries and private booksellers has been dismissed.

New York is hobbling its legal cannabis market with excessive taxes and regulations.

A new book showcases six decades' worth of Maurice Sendak's work.

Women are the fastest-growing incarcerated group in Texas, reports Scalawag magazine. "In Texas, women's incarceration rates have increased dramatically over the past few decadesover 1000 percent since 1980."

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She idolised Thatcher, now Liz Truss is on the cusp of becoming Britain’s next PM – WAtoday

Posted: at 4:40 pm

The irony shouldnt be lost on Truss. In the 1980s, she spent part of her childhood in Scotland where her Labour-supporting parents were involved in anti-nuclear marches dominated by one particular political chant: Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, oot, oot, oot.

Well, I think my mum will, Im not sure about my dad.

And as a teenager at Oxford, Truss used a speech as a then member of the universitys Liberal Democrats movement to argue the Queen be dumped and Britain become a republic, saying: We believe in opportunity for all. We do not believe people are born to rule.

She told the BBC last year: I think its fair to say that when I was in my youth I was a professional controversialist and I liked exploring ideas and stirring things up.

I came from a left-wing background. My mother was in the campaign for nuclear disarmament. There were very few people at my school or who I met on a regular basis in fact, I could count them on one hand, who youd describe as right-wing.

Ask recently if her parents would even vote for her in a general election, she replied: Well, I think my mum will, Im not sure about my dad.

All smiles... Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss at the final hustings of the seven-week grassroots campaign.Credit:Getty

Truss, elected to parliament in 2010, has proven herself to be a great survivor throughout the premierships of Boris Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron having held several cabinet postings and showing herself to be an ambitious MP who earned her moment to strike for the leadership.

She has also proven herself to be a great gymnast. She was a staunch member of the Remain camp during the European Union referendum and has since been among the most vocal supporters of Brexit.

And it is her capacity to constantly change that has made her a formidable political opponent not only in the Conservative leadership race but potentially for Labour at the next general election.

Changing your mind is often thought of as a weakness in politicians, whereas in reality, an unchanging commitment to ideology is one of their most eccentric habits, John McTernan, a former adviser to both Tony Blair and Julia Gillard, observed recently. In normal life, we change our minds frequently and without fuss.

Liz Truss leaving 10 Downing Street in July. Credit:Bloomberg

The fact Liz Truss has been on a political journey also makes her a powerful communicator. Some of the most persuasive arguments in politics are based on empathy rather than angry disagreement.

Her speaking style is clear and simple. The listener readily understands what she thinks and believes. Her opponents who too readily dismiss her as simplistic are missing the point.

McTernan, along with Peter Mandelson, an architect of Blairs election victory in 1997, has been vocal in warning Labour not to take the mayhem within the Conservative government which had led to a fourth leader in seven years, for granted.

A graduate in philosophy, politics and economics, Truss juggled her professional career in London first as an economist for Shell then as head of public affairs for Cable & Wireless with her political ambitions. Having run unsuccessfully twice, she was a star candidate when Cameron would lead the Tories out of the political wilderness in 2010.

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But she had faced a fierce and embarrassing battle against de-selection by party members after the Daily Mail revealed before the campaign that some years earlier, shed had an 18-month affair with a Tory MP, Mark Field, 10 years her senior. Both were married at the time of their liaison.

Truss door-knocked every party member dubbed the Turnip Taliban to explain herself and an effort to oust her failed. She went on to win the seat by more than 13,000 votes. She has fiercely guarded her privacy since, with her husband and two daughters rarely seen in public settings.

While her constant rebranding has made it difficult to label her politics, her close friend, former Australian high commissioner to London George Brandis, best described her as a Thatcherite neo-liberal who ultimately believes in freedom of choice and speech, and freedom from political correctness, big government and high taxes.

Over the past six weeks of campaigning, she had made several commitments to reform the tax system while promising to scrap Aprils National Insurance rise a British form of the Medicare levy and to underwrite the cost of nuclear energy.

While playing to several bases within the ranks she has vowed to deliver net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 but remove green energy levies from energy bills and end the anti-car rhetoric of local councils.

She says Britain must now pay off COVID debt over a longer period to focus on cost-of-living issues and also wants to encourage workers back into offices. She has promised more Rwanda-style schemes to reduce illegal immigration but wants uncapped skilled migration to fill labour shortages.

Truss has vowed to continue Britains tough stance against Putin and Chinas rising assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, and will increase defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030.

While some of her political opponents fret over what her ascendancy means for their hopes, some of those who should be her allies are more than willing to mock her.

Shes not a nasty person, said former Tory MP, adviser to Thatcher and political commentator Matthew Parris. Everybody I know who knows her, or has worked with her, likes her. She is a very likeable person. Shes just a bit crackers!

Parris has described Truss as intellectually shallow, with wafer-thin convictions, and a planet-sized mass of overconfidence and ambition teetering upon a pinhead of a political brain.

Any decision to follow Johnson with Truss to the doner kebab which, after a night on the tiles, momentarily seems like a good idea until you open the bread pouch, he wrote this week in The Times.

While Britains economy and cost-of-living crisis would occupy Trusss immediate focus, she does carry some baggage from her time as Britains most senior diplomat.

Her relations with EU countries are clouded by the bitter row over how to trade across the Irish Sea after Brexit while keeping both the Northern Irish unionists and republicans happy. Her expected emergence on the world stage is also poorly timed, with potential conservative allies in the United States, Germany and Australia all ousted in elections over the past two years.

But Dan Tehan, the former trade minister in the Morrison government, said Australia had true friend and like-minded traveller in Truss, regardless of which party was in power.

The Victorian MP was exposed to one of those so-called crackers moments last year when Truss was international trade secretary and hoping to close a historic deal with Australia.

Tehan was leading a trade delegation as the newly appointed minister to London with the intent of finalising negotiations when it was reported that allies of Truss believed he was inexperienced compared to Liz and that Australia needed to show us the colour of their money.

Londons Telegraph had reported that Truss planned to sit him down ... in an uncomfortable chair, so he has to deal with her directly for nine hours.

The story broke as I was boarding a plane in Paris, and by the time the short flight to London had landed, my phone had nearly melted from missed calls and incoming texts, he said.

One of the earliest missed calls was from Liz, who immediately apologised. Others will speculate about the source and intent of the news story but I viewed her apology as a sign of character.

It meant I could tell the excited press that the issue had been resolved and we had put it behind us.

He said Truss was a professional and formidable opponent, who gave as good as she got.

I formed the view that she was rational; someone who was prepared to listen, and who wanted to understand the details of all the issues.

She also wanted what was best for Britain. In our negotiations it was clear that she saw Brexit not merely as the cutting of ties with Europe but as an opportunity for Britain to forge its own, independent way forward.

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OPINION: Andrew Tate sparks a culture war: The perspective of a young man and woman The New Political – The New Political

Posted: at 4:40 pm

This story contains two parts, each written by Zach Donaldson and Julianna Rittenberg, sophomores studying political science. Donaldson serves as the assistant opinion editor and Rittenberg is an opinion writer for The New Political.

Please note that these views and opinions do not reflect those of The New Political.

Zach:

Whether you love or hate him, laugh at or laugh with him, vilify or deify him, one thing is for certain: it is nearly impossible to avoid him. More searched on Google than Joe Biden in the past month and amassing 12.7 million views on a platform he holds no account on, Andrew Tate has risen from relative obscurity to one of the internets most notorious provocateurs. How exactly? By acting as the speakerphone for a large group of depraved and angry young men riddled with insecurity.

Masking his brand under the tired trope of defending manhood and the traditional household, Tate promotes an ideology that, at best, commodifies, objectifies and infantilizes young women. At worst, it downright encourages violence and victim-shaming. He has compared women to dogs that must obey him. He has noted a preference for dating 18 and 19-year-old girls so he can make an imprint on them. He has stated that he would attack a woman who accuses him of cheating. He has argued that rape victims shoulder responsibility in being raped.

It would be easy to go on for pages. To give air-time to his ludicrous venom and waste breath tearing apart every one of his nonsensical sputterings, but that has been done by countless others and doesnt do any service to this issue. I could yell at the sky and ask how a man who is mired in allegations of beating and trafficking women is lauded as a badass and hero by many young men in my generation, but that wouldnt put a dent in his popularity. I could demand the array of social media sites banning his content be expanded in vigor and breadth, but that would only slap a band-aid on a bleeding bullet-hole.

The reality is that Andrew Tate is far bigger than one misogynist with a big microphone. He is the nastiest new emblem of the old guard in Americas ongoing culture war on gender roles, a conflict steeped in who gets to define masculinity and how it is defined. Its a battle with a lot at stake. In order to create a space where men and women can be authentically themselves, we must understand why Tate and other alpha male figures' words have appeal, how they perpetrate a harmful environment and encourage more men to hold them accountable.

Tate and his peers are the culture war response to an increasing consciousness on the fluidity and privilege of gender and gender roles. A far cry from the traditional household model of decades gone by, there are more serious efforts today in pursuing equal opportunity for women, challenging long-held microaggressions in daily conversation and an emphasis that male doesnt need to mean masculine, and female doesnt need to mean feminine. This can be seen in the smallest challenges to the status quo, which yield the loudest of results, whether it is Harry Styles wearing a dress for Vogue or Ariana Grande proudly declaring that God is a woman.

Tearing down the patriarchy is beneficial for everyone. By breaking the long-held stigma that men dont cry, we give a opportunity to young men, who are disproportionately impacted by suicide and mental health, to finally open up and seek treatment. By tackling simple phrases like you play like a girl, we can validate young women to continue being competitive, hard-charging and high achieving. By ditching gendered expressions and attacking institutional oppression all together, we can create a space where the question of gender is irrelevant to any professional opportunity or acceptance into a community.

But the fact is, we have been socialized and raised for generations to think within the gender binary and within the age-old phrases assigned to it. I have no doubt that our grandparents and parents telling us to man up or act like a lady were meant with the most sincerity, but words have a meaning and a message that we internalize. Change scares people, and when you challenge notions as basic as peoples understanding of gender, it elicits a response.

This nexus of confusion and anger is where people like Tate thrive, clinging to a dying social perception that still resonates with many to pump their agenda and fill their pockets. It has a political functionality to it and, as Julianna Rittenberg will point out, that can be manipulated to perpetuate an environment that is scary for women to live in. I cant testify to that struggle personally, but I can unfortunately see why some of my peers may fall victim to the propaganda of this old guard.

For one, Ive heard constant comments from young men my age who feel attacked when they hear the term toxic masculinity. Having a powerful celebrity celebrate the concept is both amusing and disturbingly empowering to them. It breeds a willful ignorance, and reproduces the harassment and harm women have faced for centuries in a new sphere.

I also know a lot of men and women across generational and racial barriers who are annoyed as society updates what terminology is acceptable when discussing gender. So when former President Donald Trump assured them that political correctness needs to be an idea of the past, they came out to vote in droves. Naturally, when you give a man who flaunts sexually assaulting women the mandate to lead a country, cultural degradation will follow.

There are countless more examples, whether its infuriation at things as trivial as how sexy an M&M is or bringing this rage to some of the youngest among us in scouting. They all speak to one incontrovertible fact: gender, and our conception of it, is central to the way we live our lives. If we ever hope to reach a place where men and women can be authentically and comfortably themselves, we must continue to call out the demagoguery of powerful figures, whether it is an aggrieved kickboxer or the president of the United States.

Julianna:

In July, U.S. Senate Ohio candidate JD Vance tweeted he believes women should stay in violent marriages, rather than divorce under the guise that it is better for kids. Domestic violence is not a gendered issue specifically, anyone can be in a violent relationship. However, Vances statement specifically refers to women in violent marriages. Rather than viewing partner violence as a safety issue, Vance insinuates it is an issue of male anger and male expression of emotions. This perpetuates the idea that allowing hostile partners to express emotions in an unhealthy way tops safety or bodily autonomy.

There are things that women subconsciously know, especially the expectations in every aspect of life for how to behave, dress and speak. If you wear crop tops or shorts or skirts, its your fault when someone makes you feel uncomfortable. Its your fault when someone makes your confidence a liability. When women wear clothes that give them confidence, that confidence is torn down by men making the moment and the clothes about themselves, their sex drive and their wants.

Women are subconsciously taught to avoid confrontation, otherwise, they are too overbearing and intimidating. We learn that it is better to avoid bringing up issues that might make someone angry and potentially violent, than it is to speak up for our needs. We see on social media that women are blamed for school shootings, rape and domestic violence, instead of the truth, that the perpetrator is at fault.

Most women have heard a man in their life, whom they respect, make a misogynistic joke. Theres an expectation to laugh or else you are labeled bitch. In my experiences, I have been put on the spot to explain why the joke was not funny and then told to lighten up, get over it or else no one would want to be around me. Women are put on the spot to explain what made them uncomfortable, criticized for it and then usually ignored.

Women face misogyny in schools, as well. Most women have experienced being interrupted in classes or talked over in conversations with our peers. If we do well in classes, rumors start that we must be sleeping with the teacher. I have had people tell me political science is not a male-dominated field, because there are more women than men at the collegiate level. Yet, when looking at the breakdown of jobs, more men are in political science and government jobs than women.

Even in the way the word feminism has been turned to have a negative connotation. We are told that feminism is only for angry women, but then we are told that feminism is a girlboss concept. We are told to be quieter with our anger, while men are free to express their anger. Men even get to attempt to overturn elections with their anger, yet when we push back against unfair wages, sexist dress codes or feeling unsafe in the workplace or school, our anger is unheard.

We need to do better. I refuse to be pushed into a box and I refuse to be apologetic for something that I am proud of. Children cannot grow up thinking that sexist and misogynistic behavior is acceptable by any means. All people, regardless of sex or gender, must push back against misogyny. All of us must call out this behavior and refuse to give it a platform.

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"I Know What It Means To Grow Up Without Much" Pro Golfer Harold Varner III Keeps It Real About Going To LIV Golf | It’s All About The Bag!…

Posted: at 4:40 pm

The world has been cringing about the audacious spending of LIV Golf to lure the worlds top players from the PGA and onto its tournaments. And the circuits association with Saudi Arabia.

However, until now, we have only heard one Black players perspective, the juggernaut of the game, Tiger Woods, who is holding the line of political correctness and not getting involved in LIV Golf.

Now another Black player of prominence has entered the LIV Golf quandary, and unlike Tiger Woods, the increased financial opportunity was too significant to miss for Harold Varner III. The 32-year-old winner of the 2016 Australian PGA Championship took to social media to keep it real on why he has decided to work with LIV Golf and how it can change the trajectory of his family for generations.

The opportunity to join LIV Golf is simply too good of a financial breakthrough for me to pass by, Varner posted on his Instagram account. I know what it means to grow up without much. This money is going to ensure that my kid and future Varners will have a solid base to start on and a life I could have only dreamt about growing up. Itll also help fund many of the programs Im building with my Foundation. Ill continue to forge pathways for kids interested in golf. This note is a receipt of for that.

Last week, LIV Golf announced six golfers would be taking their talents to the new series, including Harold Varner III, Cameron Tringale, Joaquin Niemann, Cameron Smith, Marc Leishman, and Anirban Lahiri. The new circuit, led by Greg Norman and backed by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, has faced public backlash for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias human rights issues.

As it is about to host the fourth event at the International on Sept. 2-4, outside Boston, LIV Golf now boasts six top 30 players on the Official World Golf Ranking.

Tiger Woods, who represents the all-American golf image, cannot align with an organization whose backers are reportedly linked to funding 9-11 planning and are alleged to be responsible for the death of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi. However, Tiger Woods is a billionaire and the most prominent talent brand in golf history. For others like Harold Varner III, who may never see that level of success in the sport, LIV Golf represents a way to jumpstart more significant financial solvency.

Varner has never won on the PGA Tour. However, he did qualify for the FedExCup Playoffs this years seventh consecutive season and won the 2022 PIF Saudi International. Rumors have abounded that is when LIV Golf first approached him to join. Clearly, something happened from then to now, as Varner initially expressed his disinterest in LIV.

Varner told the world in June that he wasnt interested in joining LIV Golf even after they gave him a nuts offer.

Im obviously not going, Varner said to SI. Ive spoken with [PGA Tour commissioner Jay [Monahan], Ive spoken with a lot of people I look up to and it just wasnt worth it to me for what it was worth. Thats pretty simple.

With the reversal, Varner makes his LIV Golf debut at The International in Bolton, Massachusetts, this week as he is working for his last name and not his first name amid the controversy surrounding that decision.

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"I Know What It Means To Grow Up Without Much" Pro Golfer Harold Varner III Keeps It Real About Going To LIV Golf | It's All About The Bag!...

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