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There Is No Hate Speech

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Clarissa

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It’s very heartening to see principled unity on the Right regarding AG Pam Bondi’s statements that “there’s free speech and then there’s hate speech.”

There is no such distinction in our constitution and there shouldn’t be. The concept of “hate speech” does not exist legally and should not exist morally or intellectually.

Moreover, we should retire words hate and phobia (outside of clinical settings) for a decade or so because they’ve been overused and no longer mean anything.

It’s great that there’s such a concerted pushback on the Right to Bondi’s statements. Her words should be a fireable offence. This should be the end of her legal career.

63 responses to “There Is No Hate Speech”

  1. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    It really should.

    Like WTF Bondi? Did they teach that at your law school? You’re the last person on earth who doesn’t know the whole concept is just bogus charge-inflation garbage?

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    1. Stringer Bell Avatar
      Stringer Bell

      A pathetic attempt at a clarification that only looks like she’s doubling down. What a retarded fucking bitch.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        Well, OK, yeah, but once we get to “threats of violence” we don’t need an additional legal charge. There’s no difference between threatening the life of a political opponent, and threatening the life of your ex-girlfriend, but somehow one of those is an extra-extra crime?

        (sigh)

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Hate speech, hate crimes – it’s all pseudo psychological juju that has no place in the criminal justice system. If it’s a murder, we can generally assume that no love was involved. The moment you have hate crimes, you start defining protected groups, and that’s always bad.

          Liked by 2 people

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            I’m heartened to see NTB take up that banner this morning, quoting Kirk’s opposition to “hate speech” laws.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              What’s NTB?

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              1. methylethyl Avatar
                methylethyl

                Babylon Bee’s sister site, Not the Bee, that covers actual news:

                https://notthebee.com/article/how-about-no-pam-bondi-vows-to-hold-people-accountable-for-hate-speech

                Like

  2. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    Longer clip that gives more context. Of course she was talking about “antisemitism.” The most charitable explanation for this administration’s disgraceful behavior with respect to free speech is that Israel really has something on Trump re: Epstein.

    The purpose of america is to serve israel.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      And here I thought this couldn’t get any worse.

      You are right. The full clip is worse. This is absolutely ridiculous. She’s can’t talk for 3 minutes about the terrible things happening without making it about anti-Semitism.

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    2. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      Geez.

      I’ve never been a down-with-Israel sort. But the more they make it look like our government has been purchased by them, the more I want to across-the-board sever political ties with them: no money, no arms, let them defend their own selves. This isn’t healthy.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. Stringer Bell Avatar
        Stringer Bell

        I don’t care about a free palestine. I just want a free america.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I’m with you, my friend. This is one of the biggest letdowns from this administration. We are hopelessly bogged down in an issue that’s not ours with signs that instead of getting extricated we go in more and more.

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          1. Stringer Bell Avatar
            Stringer Bell

            Nobody’s getting bogged down here, and this isn’t a distraction. There’s a useful systems engineering mantra that’s been making the rounds in the rw sphere lately: POSIWID, the purpose of a system is what it does.

            That brings a lot of clarity when looking at apparent “dysfunctions.” If police routinely fail to respond to crime, then their functional purpose is not public safety. To take another example, the lack of border enforcement under Biden meant the purpose of DHS (no matter their stated purpose). was to facilitate illegal entry, not stop it.

            Similarly, the purpose of America is to serve israel.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              I don’t want to believe it. I keep wanting to find a way to argue that this is a mistake, that it can be rectified. And yes, I know that I’m being stupid. But if we mess this up now, we might be out of chances. We need this administration to do what it was elected to do.

              Liked by 2 people

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        2. donbenham Avatar
          donbenham

          Completely with you.

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      2. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        It’s no secret that I’ve always been completely pro-Israel, and it’s getting even to me. Can we have a conversation about a political assassination in our country without making it about anti-Semitism? Nobody in this situation was Jewish. Antisemitism had shit all to do with it. Can we talk about what’s happening in our country for 3 minutes without getting distracted?

        Liked by 1 person

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        1. Avatar
          Anonymous

          Do you want the biblical answer or the secular one? Either way though the answer is going to be no.

          There is a reason I keep telling everyone this is a Spiritual issue not a physical one.

          • – W

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            You *want* the baddies to be speaking their minds in public.

            When they do it in underground speakeasies it’s harder to tell who they are so you can avoid them.

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      3. ed Avatar
        ed

        Completely on the same boat. I used to be very neutral about it, but now it just seems like they bought our government.

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    3. Avi Avatar
      Avi

      Stringer Bell:

      The ADL (used to be called the Jewish Anti Defamation League, but that was before intersectionality) is in the vanguard of wokist hatespeechery.

      Their business is the relentless pursuit of anyone trying to push back against Woke ideology even minimally concerning Judaism: anything may constitute anti-Semitism.

      I’m Jewish and gay (non-practising) and I don’t buy it.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. Stringer Bell Avatar
        Stringer Bell

        Well, the ADL was founded to defend Leo Frank, a jewish man who raped and killed a little girl who worked in his pencil factory (and pinned the crime on a black man). With such a noble origin story, is it any surprise their actions aren’t exactly scrupulous?

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        1. Col. Potter Avatar
          Col. Potter

          As Frank was found guilty and had his appeals denied, and then kidnapped from prison and lynched by a mob in 1915, he didn’t really get to “pin” the crime on anybody. No one was ever charged with his murder.

          The ADL was indeed founded to help Frank, who, as a northern Jew in Atlanta, could not get anything resembling a fair trial or a fair shot at appeal. There’s reasonable doubt about his guilt, as evidence was mishandled, and, no surprise, there was a lot of anti-Jewish sentiment on display. The Black janitor’s testimony was inconsistent, but there are scholars who find some racial demonization of the janitor as part of the defense. There were also other factory girls who testified that Frank was inappropriate with them–Frank could have been pervy, or an outsider who was hopelessly clueless about 1910s social norms in the south, or both. One office boy witness gave some belated testimony in the ’60s saying that he saw the janitor carrying Mary Phagan’s body, and that the janitor threated him if he ever told anyone.

          In the end, a pardon for Frank that doesn’t address guilt or innocence–just an admission that he wasn’t properly protected while in prison.

          So the ADL thought that the whole unfair trials, prison, and lynching thing for Jews wasn’t exactly fair, and they went and organized about it. It actually was a noble origin story in that sense. After 110 years, things change. Now it’s rough to be a Jew in America because of all the “help” we’re supposedly getting, and people peddling neo-“Elders of Zion” rhetoric feel justified.

          Imagine being raised to love all things to do with Israel and all things Jewish, and then thinking that maybe these “Elders of Zion” people have a point.

          Liked by 1 person

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            We are going in the direction of Jewish pogroms in the US, and every Professor Rosenberg who argues that there should be no tenure, professors shouldn’t do research, and American universities should be modeled on Africa is bringing that moment closer.

            I’m talking about a real book by a real professor that we were forced to read at my job. I’m sure there were some exceptionally innocent-minded people in the audience who did not think what others very clearly did. And I say it as somebody who experienced Soviet antisemitism.

            Liked by 1 person

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            1. Stringer Bell Avatar
              Stringer Bell

              You can’t have a Steve Sailer-type “noticing” (which is becoming so popular, and I’m glad for that) but only restrict to one group of people. Whether it is the behavior of blacks, somalis, arabs, indians (dot not feather), or jews. Notice one, notice all!

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            2. Stringer Bell Avatar
              Stringer Bell

              What you’re saying this hypothetical rosenberg is arguing doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.

              Professor Noel Ignatiev at Harvard University: “abolish the white race”

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              1. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                The Rosenberg is real, not hypothetical. We were forced to read him at work. But yes, there’s an enormous lot more like him and worse.

                And yes, at some point even the blind start noticing. I remember sitting at work, at a large meeting, and making a list of the people in the room who scared me the most. The ones I knew would grind me to the dust if they knew my opinions. Then I realized that 100% of people on the list had last names like Rabinowitz. Everybody mouthed the party line but the real fanatics? Yeah, they old had something in common. Needless to say, that was not a welcome realization.

                Liked by 1 person

            3. cliff arroyo Avatar
              cliff arroyo

              “going in the direction of Jewish pogroms… every Professor Rosenberg … is bringing that moment closer”

              Why does that happen. There’s got to be more to it than “high IQ and excitability” so often Jewish intellectuals go all in on destructive ideas that end up having terrible consequences for themselves… High IQ and excitability don’t account for that. There’s a self-destructive or element of hubris (or weird combination of both) that seem to be in play.

              You can also see that with Israel burning every bridge it can and alienating allies for no real reason or gain. Yeah Netanyahu is trying to stay out of jail but there’s got to be more to it than that…

              Like I said, preemptively pardon Netanyahu, give him a golden parachute and kick him out of politics —- it would save everyone a lot of grief.

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              1. methylethyl Avatar
                methylethyl

                You could go mythological I suppose: natural consequence of Chosen People rejecting the actual Messiah. They no longer have a purpose.

                Liked by 1 person

  3. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    https://x.com/Rightanglenews/status/1967633129587478627

    This is hateful, and it’s speech, but it doesn’t need to have its own special legal designation as “hate speech” because incitement to violence is already a crime.

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  4. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Not sure what she is on about. Free speech means free speech. Sure there can be consequences to what I say, but I am still allowed to say it.

    If I shout fire at a theater, I am free to do so. However I will suffer the consequences of my words. If I like so many leftists have recent found out. Openly called for people I disagreed with to be gunned down in the street. I am again free to do so. However I might suffer the consequences of my words. I could be fired, I could loose friends, etc.

    There is no such thing as “hate speech.” That is simply a fancy phrase for making some words illegal, which goes against the very first right listed in the bill of rights. I might not like the filth that comes from the mouths of some of the animals pretending to be human in America right now, but they are free to say it, just as I am free to describe them as they are.

    While I don’t know about calling for her to be fired for this, I do believe she should be censored ….. I’m not sure if that’s the right term, (basically given a minor punishment as a warning not to continue this train of thought.)

    Also on a slightly different note, Britain had a 3 million man march on London over the weekend, and the British government is now apparently issuing guns to the police. Not all the police mind you, just those who are sent out in front of the rightly furious crowds of British people. I can’t see this ending well for anyone.

    • – W

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    1. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      Censured.

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        Censured then. Thank you.

        • – W

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    2. random reader Avatar
      random reader

      “Sure there can be consequences to what I say, but I am still allowed to say it.”

      I am not completely on board with this unless you clarify what consequences there can be. Friends get angry with you? Fine. Do you get fired from your job? I am not on board with this. If you, as a private citizen say something reprehensible while not on the job or speaking for your organization, I am not in favor of firing you. Will you end up in prison or shot? After all, you did get your chance to have your free speech so now you get to deal with the consequences, which include some prison time. I am absolutely not on board with this. This is kind of like saying “All mushrooms are edible (but some only once).”

      The point is, if the consequences of your speech include getting fired from your job or being put in prison, it is not a free speech anymore. I am personally not happy about people losing their jobs for exercising their free speech, although I find it reprehensible, in the past week or so (an exception is people not doing their job to make a point).

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        Depends on your job.

        There are *lots* of jobs out there that have codes governing what you can and cannot do… or at least be caught doing… in your private life, and still be employed at that job. That’s everything from random drug testing (you don’t have to get high *at work* to get fired for using drugs), to conducting romantic affairs with coworkers outside office hours, to screaming obscenities in public thoroughfares, to appearing in pornographic media, to badmouthing your boss in a viral video. This applies to people working in schools and in the military, more than most.

        Often what these rules amount to is: don’t make the employer look bad for hiring you.

        So the thing is, free speech does come up, repeatedly, in these cases, but generally isn’t thought to apply, particularly if the employee signed a contract on getting the job, where they agreed to abide by these standards of conduct.

        The bar for incitement of violence is quite high. It takes a *lot* to get yourself arrested on that. But if you signed an agreement with your company that says they can fire you if you end up in a live TV slobbering drunk at a street festival, then… they can still fire you. We have loads of precedent for it.

        In what way does screaming in public for the deaths of fellow citizens evade these rules?

        Like, remember this guy?

        https://www.westernjournal.com/latino-truck-driver-fired-white-power-symbol-simply-cracking-knuckles/

        Did they ever give him his job back? No? How’d that lawsuit go?

        If nobody does anything about it, then the actual reality on the ground, whether we like it or not, is, employers can fire you for stuff you do in your private life *even when that stuff is un-provable and stupid*.

        I don’t like that, and it’s stupid, but I also don’t see any reason to turn around *now* and say, well, it was OK to do it to some truck driver for making a wrongthink gesture (imagine! If everyone who ever flipped a bird in traffic got fired for it!), unclear whether on purpose or not because intent can’t be verified, but now that it’s being used against raving psycho maniacs calling for bloody civil strife, we should definitely never ask if such people should be… employed as cops, grade school teachers, camp counsellors, boy scout troop leaders, soldiers, doctors, security guards…

        No, that’s stupid.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I was just thinking about that truck driver earlier today. 2020 was a crazy, crazy year. Let’s not do that ever again.

          Liked by 1 person

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            There’s a whole catalogue of them here:

            https://x.com/jeremykauffman/status/1967557605892788723

            Like, OK if we want to fight for the right of second-grade teachers to call for the murder of the president in public, then… shouldn’t we fight for the rights of these people first?

            If the answer is no, then why are we even talking about this?

            Liked by 1 person

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              OT but important:

              https://x.com/LeadingReport/status/1967984724976296108?t=JLlsqxsWOV9YJNIWZNwAdA&s=19

              And he turned out to be a raging pedo. Color me unsurprised.

              It’s hard to believe he just came up with it on the spot. Who has such presence of mind at his age immediately to start distracting attention from the shooter? Anything is possible, of course, but it sounds unlikely.

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              1. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                And messages between Robinson and his boyfriend that hopefully finally put an end to the idea that Robinson was a right-winger:

                https://x.com/NickAtNews/status/1968022613269402007?t=mUZWws4WnDa3fQ0uiQKNew&s=19

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              2. methylethyl Avatar
                methylethyl

                Yeah, will be seriously disappointed if we end up with a “he totally acted alone” official narrative here, instead of an investigation that nets the entire organization.

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      2. Avatar
        Anonymous

        It is though. It is sort of like free will. We are given free will by God. Now we can choose to come to Jesus and be saved, or we can choose to not. The thing is, there are consequences to our actions. God does not force us to choose one way or the next. Thus it is completely on us how we choose.

        Similarly free speech it is totally up to an individual what they wish to say. That being said there are consequences for it. Take the word fire. If I say fire, no one cares, however if I say fire in a crowded theater and someone dies from the stampede, the consequences of his death are now on me. I am free to say the word or not, but I have to accept the consequences following. If the theater is lightly packed, I will probably be shouted at and maybe banned. Possibly tossed in jail for a few days. If it is packed and someone dies, I would go to jail for a few years or more.

        If at work or online I publicly stated I wanted X person to die horribly. I am free to say this. The consequences being my family and friends with might think what a hateful person and refuse to have anything to do with me. My boss could see my post or hear my words and decide that he doesn’t want me in his firm because if a client heard me the client might leave, so my boss might fire me to protect his company. These are potential consequences.

        Your asking me what consequences there are. Every situation has different potential consequences. Heck you might not even have any at all. So there really isn’t an answer to this question. Its like asking if I stand still in the middle of a busy intersection what will the consequences be. I could tell you the most likely ones, but there are so many others from a bird could land on your shoulder, to a ticked off driver could flick a cigarette at you in anger for your stupidity of standing in the middle of the road.

        “If you, as a private citizen say something reprehensible while not on the job or speaking for your organization, I am not in favor of firing you”

        And if you were my boss and you didn’t want to then you wouldn’t. But that is your choice, another fellow could just as easily state I don’t want this sort of person working here and fire me. Hell the high school I went to would actively suspend or kick out students who off campus and before or after school hours were caught doing drugs, cursing, etc. Because in their eyes it didn’t matter if it wasn’t school hours, the students to them represented the school as long as they were currently students. That was their choice, just as it was the choice of the students to do such stuff. Free will and consequences.

        “The point is, if the consequences of your speech include getting fired from your job or being put in prison, it is not a free speech anymore. I am personally not happy about people losing their jobs for exercising their free speech”

        It still is free speech, we are guaranteed free speech, but we are not guaranteed freedom of consequences for said speech. To give you so idea of the opposite, lets take hate speech laws, or restricted speech laws since the world seems to like both so much.

        If the government decided to tomorrow enforce a law stating I could no longer criticize muslims, or jews, or liberals, or whoever. If I stated anything bad I would automatically be arrested and tossed into jail. The difference is this. Free speech means you might (MIGHT) have consequences to your words. You might not have any. Hate Speech Laws or Restricted Speech Laws means there is a 100% chance you will be punished, it also tends to be retroactive, so if you said something in the past, you will be going to jail for that too. These are designed specifically to stop people from uttering certain words and phrases.

        There is a difference, a major one at that.

        • – W

        Liked by 1 person

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        1. Random reader Avatar
          Random reader

          I think this attitude is wrong and it is a slippery slope that has no way out. Today someone is hounded by people and fired for saying reprehensible things I disagree with, tomorrow I will be fired for stating an obvious truth and have the same argument thrown into my face (you have free speech but you are not free from consequences). I do not like what this country has become. It is quite sad. Both the fact that people are saying hateful things out loud and that they are losing their jobs for writing stupid stuff on social media is nothing to celebrate. Let’s hope the UK laws will not make it here because we may still end up putting people in prison over twitter posts.

          Not following the rules of behavior/expectations set by your workplace/school is a different story and I don’t argue with that.

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        2. Stringer Bell Avatar
          Stringer Bell

          I think we need to rethink the classic idea that the first amendment only applies to the government taking action against you for speech. What has happened now is that corporations have become so powerful, and their ideology so aligned with the left, that the government doesn’t have to lift a finger anymore. The corporations will do their dirty work for them, without even being asked.

          Banks can debank you for offensive speech, payment processors can refuse to process payments on your online shop, ebay can shut down your seller account for no apparent reason, google and facebook can ban your accounts for speech they don’t like, or throttle traffic to your site, which spells instant death. In a time when more of our lives are being lived online, and more and more people’s livelihoods depend on these mega-platforms, it makes no sense to hold on to this outdated notion of free speech. It should reflect the reality that modern corporations are often more powerful than nation states.

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          1. Avatar
            Anonymous

            Agree this is a problem, disagree about it being a first amendment problem.

            Need to end corporations-are-people, and chop them down to a manageable size. The problem is their size– so fix *that* problem and the rest doesn’t matter so much. Reverse the tendency toward centralization of everything.

            Liked by 1 person

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            1. Stringer Bell Avatar
              Stringer Bell

              100% agree. So funny that leftists who were so passionate about the dangers of the citizens united ruling in the early aughts have completely memory-holed this event from their collective memory.

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              1. Avatar
                Anonymous

                They were purchased.

                Liked by 1 person

  5. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    What libtards get completely wrong about this debate is that in their regime people were cancelled and fired for things that were completely inside the overton window (donating to a candidate, professing christian beliefs, vaccine skepticism). Whereas wishing death on someone is not and should never be inside the overton window, and if it is, there is something terribly wrong.

    Suffering social consequences for publicly expressing glee at someone’s death is the most obvious candidate for social censure! Would you trust a doctor or soldier or judge or a goddamn chief of police (all real examples) who did this?

    Liked by 1 person

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  6. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    I’m learning new things daily. Founder of the black panther movement, btw.

    Someone made a joke about jewish involvement in this and well, wouldn’t you know it!

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  7. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “Chosen People rejecting the actual Messiah”

    For believers that makes maybe some sense but… for that to work they’d have to accept that they’d rejected the actual Messiah…

    I think it might be something I’ve noticed in lots of progressive (and a few conservative) types… addiction to opposition and/or disapproval. You see this in a lot of progressive movements when they actually accomplish something — more stable people say ‘great!’ and move on. But there’s always a fringe that hangs around and finds some new way to make people dislike them.

    It happened with feminism (third wave), civil rights (the rise of new race hustlers) gay rights (trans nonsense) etc That’s also what might be going on with a lot of the ‘woke right’ rather than trying to move the ball on critical issues they concentrate on trivial (in the grand scheme of things) issues and/or create new barriers to entry (conservatism is only for certain kinds of Christians).

    Some people only feel comfortable when they’re in opposition and if there isn’t enough going on they’ll create it.

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  8. oldcowboy3 Avatar
    oldcowboy3

    cliff arroyo

    “You see this in a lot of progressive movements when they actually accomplish something — more stable people say ‘great!’ and move on. But there’s always a fringe that hangs around and finds some new way to make people dislike them.

    It happened with feminism (third wave)…”

    Are you really trying to suggest that the second wave had a ‘great’ result ;-D

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    1. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “really trying to suggest that the second wave had a ‘great’ result”

      Yes. And by ‘accomplish’ something I mean ‘achieve goals set out at the beginning of the movements’ whether others think those goals are worthy or not.

      The problem was that it had achieved all it could in the west by the mid-to-late 1980s. The next logical step was to start addressing institutionalized misogyny in non-western cultures (of which there is no shortage) but academically they would have no support because of the emerging idea (thanks, Said! thanks French post-modernists!) that third world cultures were perfect just the way they are and westerners should keep their colonial opinions to themselves. So they chickened out and the movement turned in on itself.

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        That’s exactly it. Feminists achieved everything and then immediately proceeded to dismantle every achievement. It’s like that with gay activists, too. Never in my life have I seen people equally dedicated to undoing real, historic achievements.

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        1. cliff arroyo Avatar
          cliff arroyo

          “proceeded to dismantle every achievement. It’s like that with gay activists, too”

          It’s a valuable lesson… a social movement needs to figure out (in advance) how to dismantle itself once it’s achieved its goals. Otherwise, the lunatic malcontent fringe will hang around and sabotage everything with increasingly strident and/or insane demands….

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        2. oldcowboy3 Avatar
          oldcowboy3

          Clarissa

          Kid, what if the horrible life you saw as a child; a hopeless broken society, the terrible poverty, the drunkeness and complete lack of ambition of most men, while most women desperately tried to manage without adequate material goods, are the completely predictable result of two generations of communism and its equally evil sister feminism?

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            The first time we heard the word “feminism” was in 1993. It was quite scandalous. N and I eventually met over our shared interest in that very new concept.

            Oh memories.

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          2. cliff arroyo Avatar
            cliff arroyo

            “completely predictable result of two generations of communism and … feminism?”

            Soviet (and adjacent) space was about the least feminist place you can imagine. Women worked (mostly full time) and also expected to keep the household going (a full time job without western abundance). Stand in line a couple of hours every day to shop, wash clothes by hand (or a ‘washing machine’ that required constant supervision) clean the household with toxic chemicals, all while the husband turned into an unmoving lump….

            Trust me, communism in practice is about as feminist as the taliban.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              Very true. That a man could wash a plate or figure out where his own socks are located in the apartment was heresy to Soviet people.

              The wife would yell at the husband and heap abuse on him publicly but she wouldn’t expect him to be able to fry an egg. Let alone change a baby.

              Until the day he died, my father had absolutely no idea where his socks and underwear were and how their supply was replenished. He needed my mother to pick them out and present them to him daily.

              But yes, in the USSR my mother made 3,5 times what he did in salary. And she worked more days a week.

              It’s a weird, weird system that resists any Western analogy.

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              1. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                Every time my mother sees N doing the dishes, she hisses loudly, “He’ll leave you! Wait and see, no man will stand for this. He is probably already sleeping with the neighbor.”

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              2. cliff arroyo Avatar
                cliff arroyo

                “my mother made 3,5 times what he did in salary”

                I have the idea in Poland at least (never found confirmation of it being official policy) that salaries at least partly coincided with the idea: the more side hustles the person can do the less they’ll paid

                University professors were thought to have lots of side hustle options (esp tutoring dull rich kids to pass university exams) while everyday school teachers had far less.

                Person working in a store has many opportunities to hold back items and sell/barter them with others, while a full time factory worker mostly didn’t….

                I don’t know if the USSR was rational enough for that kind of calculation….

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              3. oldcowboy3 Avatar
                oldcowboy3

                “But yes, in the USSR my mother made 3,5 times what he did in salary. And she worked more days a week.

                It’s a weird, weird system that resists any Western analogy.”

                Are you sure, our wannabe elites have been forcing that behavior for years, and many young men are increasingly unhappy about it. Sure, some have just given up, but others, well, they abandoned the Democrats for a reason. Let’s all just hope that some Trump’s economic efforts are successful.

                We ran a small business for many years, young men typically tended to work longer and harder because they needed to earn more to attract a girlfriend. That effort increased when they married, and even more so as new fathers. Bugger that male drive up and we will all live in poverty. Okay, but I don’t want to be accused of being a misogynist by ignoring women ;-D

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      2. Avatar
        Anonymous

        I remember a whole slew of books that came out in the 90s on the dire situation of women in the Middle East. It was starting to go that direction.

        What shut it down?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Choice shut it down. The stupid obsession with choice. What if they choose to be abused, miserable doormats? Shouldn’t we respect all choices because they are choicy choice choices?

          That’s when it all went to shit.

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          1. Avatar
            Anonymous

            I’m more of a pragmatist on these things.

            I think it must’ve been money.

            Like, why did the left stop protesting Monsanto?

            Monsanto bought them.

            Why did the left stop caring about labor rights?

            Corporations bought them.

            Why did feminists stop caring about basic women’s rights in the rest of the world?

            Well, Saudi is one of the chief offenders here (and IIRC was top of the publicity heap in terms of human rights violations that people were reading about then), and they have tons of money…

            Was a purchase made?

            What if it’s as simple as looking back at the major feminist organizations and tracing their funding?

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  9. oldcowboy3 Avatar
    oldcowboy3

    cliff arroyo

    Enough! Remember at the time the West, and most particularly in North America: was wealthy, taxes were low; but veteran education and housing were subsidized; and the sexes typically liked each other; on the most part families were married, working class mothers generally were able to rear their children until school age; children were not only numerous but largely happy. Now, exactly what did Second-wave feminism achieve? And remember, I was there, even went to a “consciousness raising” — briefly, extremely briefly ;-D

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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