As a society, people need to learn to mind their own fucking business. That goes for both the social conservatives strongly represented on this board and the social justice types you’re at war with. Both of y’all are mirror images of each other’s worst tendencies and really need to get a grip.
I never knew I was a social conservative until someone told me it was unreasonable to oppose having bodily fluids from sex parties in places where the general public eats and children play. How grossly intolerant of me!
I think “as a society, we need to be more sex-negative” together with comments elsewhere about taking away kids from people involved in kink, and restigmatizing anal sex to be ‘80s Moral Majority-level social conservatism, yes. I guess I’m weird that way. But do go on about how you’re feeling about how the libs are so intolerant while spouting this kind of shit out of the other side of your mouths.
I'm fairly confident Abby's remark was tongue-in-cheek. More a reference to over-sharing of something that a lot of people just don't really want to know?
No "hysteria" in my game. I'm just challenging a very stupid sentiment that I don't think holds up to well even in a less extreme form. Sorry, not sorry if that goes against a certain kind of groupthink in this community.
Again, it was a tongue in cheek response to a pretty wild and rather disgusting story. We are allowed to make a little joke here now and then. You're being overly sensitive.
How about you just criticize the comments that are actually challenging your world view rather than playing the correlation game and simplifying things for yourself so all your political enemies are in the same boat?
I am literally criticizing a statement - “as a society, we need to be more sex-negative”. And I don't find that statement "challenging" so much as straight up reactionary. If you agree with that statement, how about offering a coherent argument for it rather than getting pissy at me.
Sadly, I suspect the issue-- and I very much mean this to apply to both social conservatives and certain overwoke types-- is precisely that their ideology is such that they deem these issues to BE their business. "You need to care less about this thing that you care about" is just not an effective approach.
Minding one's own business is great, but if I was a patron of that place, I would definitely appreciate knowing what's going on in the kids play area after closing time.
No way anybody is getting *all* that jism from off the various surfaces. This seems relevant to the community and its coffee drinkers.
"No way anybody is getting *all* that jism from off the various surfaces."
You've got to be kidding me. Eating establishments that want A-grade health inspections are cleaned at a level that would make any Real Housewife's kitchen look like the stereotype of a trailer-trasher's. The odds of any of this activity doing anyone physical harm are somewhere between minute and infinitesimal.
There were couches that attendees were encouraged to "make creative use of" - that inevitably entails someone's load getting dumped on them or someone's smeg getting smeared across a cushion. You cannot undo that.
Is there any good sourcing that this space was, in fact, a “kids play area” at other times? So far, this has the status of unconfirmed accusation, not confirmed fact. It sounds to me like the classic case of someone after the fact linking unconventional sexual practices to kids in order to throw some very dark shade.
Well the owner knew of the accusations and did not deny it, so that coupled with his glaring lack of common sense in allowing such an event within his place of business leads me to believe that it's probably true.
Either way, serious red flags all over the place, for the cafe owners and the group who staged the event.
Based on my own research, all of the specifics that are claimed against the event are disputed, and B&R definitely did not present both sides, but rather, only the side of the cancellers. This reeks of double-standards and culture war against the pervs, plain and simple.
Oh and for everyone reading, "keep yourself safe," is a code for "kill yourself(KYS)," and the only reason he's saying is to avoid a ban trigger. Which means he does this on other websites too. Sad life.
“Oh no there’s free speech in the comment section of the free speech podcast!! Save me Jannies!!!! Ban it!!!!!! 😭 I’m a weak negative chin soyboi help!!!!!!!”
Just to clarify: “Allah” is an imaginary construction and, whatever good may come, now and then, from the imagined “words” of this construction, it pales in comparison to the horror, hatred, destruction, and death that the concept and worship of this imaginary entity has created in our modern world. Just the same as for the other sky daddies “the Lord” and “Yahweh” (and all the rest of them). Just checking in to make sure we’re all on the same page here!
Like people are having less sex? That’s because we’ve gone so far into sex positive that half of dudes are content to sit at home being losers and jerking off to all the fucked up porn out there along with the sex positive internet hoes.
Sex negative, seemed to lead to more sex and babies. Cuz Jesus or something.
So basically we need less internet and more church.
That’s my stance on that, I guess. Definitely less internet.
I think actual human beings having sex with each other is generally better than the internet stuff. However, I see no reason to believe that the internet is pulling people away. In fact, I think we're maximizing our real-world opportunities, and the rather precipitous declines in sexual activity, relationships, and childbearing reflect real material declines in the conditions that lead to those outcomes. And given that there are not a lot of real relationships to be had, the internet is just the easiest alternative.
I may be stupid but I honestly didn’t follow much of that.
What about material declines?
And im quite sure there is a serious internet porn epidemic. A large number of internet heavy countries, advanced first world countries, are having real problems with this. Birth rates are down, marriage rates are down. Why improve yourself for a mate when you can sedate yourself with the drug-like rabbit hole of online porn?
The internet gives you easy access to fuck, especially if you’re a no strings attached loose person, it doesn’t translate as well to good long lasting relationships.
I also seem to remember hearing a statistic that a smaller percentage of people were having a larger portion of the sex. Maybe BS, but from what I can see in the modern world I wouldn’t be surprised.
In any case, I do firmly believe the internet is doing real harm to people socially, in a lot of serious ways. Like catastrophic, society fracturing ways. And porn and the proliferation of hook up apps are a big deal.
There are lots of material declines. In the U.S. in particular, the threat of non-judicial punishment hangs over the tiniest action. People don't talk to each other because they're afraid of what might happen. People don't even talk about relationships or sexuality in the abstract. The educated coastal American has regressed to the stereotypical Victorian Age.
This compounds with the mental health crisis affecting young women. I'm generally of the Haidt-ian view that it's caused by social media, which is not porn per se, as well as overly restrictive parenting and supervision.
And then there's the obesity crisis. Whether it's spending too much time inside or eating processed crappy foods or microplastics in the water, whatever the cause, the effect is pretty clear.
Hook up apps and the social media world aren't porn, but they do have the effect of making it quite visible to everyone how unequal the sexual marketplace is, and it reducing the quality of real-life interactions between the sexes.
Everyone has a bias, and my perspective is that I turned 21 without even knowing what pornography was, but my life was almost ended by a nightmare woman, my only experiences of being physically touched by another human being were of being abused, I'd already adopted the baseline assumption that male heterosexuality was illegal, and I was stuck with an enormous unsatisfied sex drive and no plausible method of even trying to satisfy it. Porn was the cause of none of that. It certainly is not a perfect solution, but it's a lot better than nothing, and nothing is what's out there for a large segment of the population. I'm just completely baffled as to what anyone thinks the alternative is.
The sex recession is more of a numbers issue than attitudinal shift. Married people have and have always had more sex. A decline in marriage has a direct relationship on the aggregate number of fucks per capita.
Weirdly, I actually agree with this, and I think that's the first time I can say this about something by this poster. It's not a problem for society that people (thanks to birth control) aren't having kids by accident and (thanks to women being semi-respected) aren't having kids by coercion. It is absolutely a problem for society that (thanks to kids being costly and annoying to deal with and everyone being on their phones and afraid to interact in person) people aren't having kids on purpose.
True. So long as nobody is offering babycinos to children or small animals in the sex dungeon?
Actually I wonder if the café is complying with Food Safety requirements re bodily fluids? 'Cause I can't take my family's very good doggos into some cafés. For any period of time.
Yeah not sure that working through your feelings about your dad beating you with a belt by letting strangers choke them is really as healing as they think it is…
This is an innate difference between men and women. It’s why gay men are so carnal and why lesbians are so sexless and boring. I love sex with my partner but have never once achieved orgasm with a stranger, and I think that’s true for most women (even the ones who claim to love meaningless sex are getting something else out of it, I think.)
Well, it would make sense. There’s no need to mollify a different set of instincts; there are of course positives and negatives to that on both sides. I’m a lesbian, and it works for me 😅
I have no experience with lesbian relationships, but I do with very long term hetero relationships. I have never lost any interest in getting busy with my guy, except for right after giving birth.
As you've been very willing to exclaim, your guy is almost certainly better looking than most guys, at least at his age. Most relationships don't work like that.
There are some differences between men and women, but I wonder if it is more with regards to the behavior that precedes the sex rather than the rewards that come after.
Every week some new statistic comes out about the enormous number of young women who have mental health diagnoses or are on medications for such. It might be that they need more affection whether they want to admit it or not, and whether they're willing to do what it takes to get it or not.
Honestly that’s just because we’ve medicalised all negative feelings and American doctors are more than willing to stuff you full of pills if you tell them you’re sad.
Oh, I agree completely. It’s the most obvious cause of increasing rates of erectile dysfunction among young men as well. FAIR in Medicine did a webinar on informed consent and SSRIs recently and talked about this a lot.
I’m of the “lifestyle medicine” persuasion, where I think what a lot of people really need is an exercise prescription (a recommendation from their doctor to find some physical activity), a decrease in eating food that isn’t really food, and (gasp) more social connection.
The conventional narrative that we’re sold is that men who are single are failures who are unworthy of affection, while women who are single are higher beings who shouldn’t stoop to the level of showing interest in a man. Maybe try the thought experiment of flipping that around, but land on something that doesn’t presuppose that the correct outcome for either sex is being alone.
I think mileage differs for people based on both nature and nurture. I know many many women who enjoy casual sex and many who don’t. Or at least express that they don’t. Women certainly are encouraged to be more modest in public but we’ve had 50 years since Nancy Friday exploded that ‘women don’t lust’ myth in My Secret Garden. Women enjoy sex in all forms just as much as men, but modesty comes from both social pressure and a form of physical protection from non-consensual sexual attack. Which is entirely understandable.
Women do not enjoy sex in all forms as much as men. Women have far more preferential restrictions on "form." Imagine a man saying "I've never achieved orgasm with a stranger." That just means he hasn't had sex with a stranger. Or at least one that wasn't a horrible experience.
Nah mate, that’s BS. I grew up in a sex positive household and I’m a prude because it just doesn’t interest me and plenty of women are like that, it’s just not something they throw a parade for. Sex positive women are more visible and more likely to have a Substack or some shit, and definitely more likely to be at the kind of party you like to attend, but are they a majority of women? The numbers just don’t add up.
And that’s fine! Only wanting sex occasionally with someone you love is actually not bad at all.
I’m not sure what point you’re disagreeing with me - I’ve said women (and indeed men) can either be into sex or not and that it’s a mixture of nature and nurture. I’m saying it’s all highly subjective and individualistic. Men who don’t enjoy sex (performance issues, body image issues, disinterest) are as quiet as sex-positive women are loud. This stuff is entirely individual and subjective and claiming an inherent gender difference is misplaced. Your sexuality is a product of your relation to your own body, to your upbringing and to your.social interests. It’s not ‘men are carnal, women are shrinking violets’.
Degenerate. May you come to forgiveness through prayer and asking the Prophet (PBUH) for forgiveness. Else face the suffering of one thousand swords to the bowel a day for eternity.
Honestly what does that even mean? First of all escaping objectifying people in life is impossible. Saying you’re not down with ‘that’ is redundant. It may make you feel good to say but it’s not actually something you can achieve. Secondly how every individual approaches a moment of intimacy is unique and so you can’t say objectification is inherent in the act. Maybe it is for you but that’s entirely subjective.
I can’t respect ‘it’s objectifying people, I’m not down with that’ as an answer, it’s both meaningless and self-serving. It’s one of those plethora of semi-intellectual answers the world would be better off without.
I agree. I don't mind people embracing whatever kink they have, I just don't want to hear about it. And yes, people must be able to talk about sex, but I'd prefer they did it less, I don't want to know who does what and I dont want to talk about it either.
For some reason Michigan Wolverines starter jackets were a prestige clothing item in the very well to do CT town where I went to middle school, so I just assumed Michigan was as well regarded as Ivies/NESCAC schools.
Haha, this is what I was coming here to comment on. Going to Michigan as an out-of-state student costs about as much as going to most liberal arts colleges. And it's a much better school than Princeton if you're going for STEM or many of the performing arts.
I find this discourse to be a little funny. In many ways you would think being accepted to an elite university would be something to be proud of. However, the underlying assumption is that these kids are born elite and don't deserve what they have. Maybe that is not entirely wrong, but I still think folks should take some level pride in the fact they achieved high level educations. You can still acknowledge your priveldge in getting that education, but you still go it. You can be privileged towards a lot of things.
People come from different experiences and have different knowledge and skills that can be appreciated. Folks who have highly college educated parents are probably going to do something requires a high level of college education, but if you're come from parents who worked construction or logging or whatever blue collar profession than you're going to be privileged for that early on. Yes it is hard to bridge gap if you're a blue collar kid wanting to be a lawyer something, but I would say it also pretty darn hard to bridge the gap going the other way. You don't get a lot kids from east coast wealth moving out west to be ranch hands or whatever. I think it is cool when people do bridge gap because it shows that much more dedication.
I just think that the elitist rhetoric always has this undertone disparaging the "educated elites" and glorifying the working class heroes. It would be nice see more of an egalitarian view between the two worlds. I think a lot of this is just silly cultural perception and I think our populist moment feed into a lot of that.
I think this misses the forest for the trees in this context.
Jesse isn't not "proud of" going to Michigan because he contextualizes it against his elite upbringing and is weighting it against his advantages. He is, quite literally, *wrongly* stating Michigan is not an "elite" school. He is leaning in to his privilege in being the son of wealth (of highly successful attorney for a dad -- not sure about his mom) from one of the richest suburbs in Massachusetts and mistakenly thinking Michigan is not an upper echelon university, as viewed by everyone who grew up outside of his uhble.
It's fine, and in my opinion excusable because he is largely not always defaulting to his privileged upbringing. But he isn't doing the thing you're saying. He just has big blind spots on privilege -- not that I am a huge "you must declare your privilege before speaking" person. It's just good context to have when contextualizing Jesse's takes on certain socioeconomic issues.
For sure it is now! It was a basic state school when I went in the 90s. I probably wouldn't be accepted there now as my SATs were average. And I couldn't afford it!
I was shocked at how many of my classmates were private school alums. I thought state schools were for middle class, public school kids and felt disappointed by the lack of economic diversity. And of course, that OSU, like most schools, prioritizes international student and student athletes above all else.
I once heard someone describe going to a state flagship university as “working-class college” and on some level I get it, aspiring working class students don’t always aim for the Ivies (at least not in my generation), but also goddamn, if you have a college degree, you do hope to not be a plumber.
My Alma mater is referred to by professors as a mid level, blue collar, state university. It's more because the student body come from blue collar/working class families, as well as a certain amount of families below the poverty line. Most students are studying criminal justice, business, marketing, education, technical writing, etc. Not elite by any stretch.
I think getting a four year college degree is generally an elite thing to do. I understand that people from a working class background are culturally different from people with a “middle class” background, but it does really annoy me how inconsistent we as a society are with these these terms. I’m kind of tired, for instance, of everyone claiming to be “middle class” if they aren’t in the 1%. I’m also tired of how much academics seem to look down on people from poor backgrounds. I’m annoyed with how journalists with family money see it as an important “working class” status symbol to start a union.
I think I generally agree with this ("getting a four year college degree is generally an elite thing to do") with some qualifiers in that, according to the BLS, well over half of high school graduates attend college (with a high of 70.1% in October 2009) -- and I think definitionally "elite" can't refer to something the median person does.
That said, I think it's fine and appropriate to refer to certain schools as "working class" colleges and the like -- in that the student body may be overwhelmingly raised by working class households and therefore are culturally working class (which may change as they age, after they graduate college, etc etc).
I would point to public universities that have 90%+ acceptance rates, low tuition, etc. Schools that people go to based largely on geographic proximity, and not based on things like "has a great X program". There are colleges like these everywhere, but they'd never be categorized with the likes of Michigan.
To be somewhat fair to Jesse, the acceptance rate has gone way down in recent years. When he was there (I was there at the same time, but I was instate) it was was still “highly selective” and a top public school but not so crazy as it is now.
Then again, the bookstore sold t shirts that said “Harvard: the Michigan of the East” so we didn’t hide that we thought we were pretty hot shit.
RE: The Great Sesame Street Character Controversy, here's my story of wearing a character suit (disclaimer I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the furry community)
As a high schooler I worked one summer at Six Flags Over Georgia (many great stories for another time). My regular job was swing shift at The Great Gasp (that's right, complete with black & yellow 1920's newsboy costumes I have photos), a now-defunct 200 ft. parachute drop that was allegedly an actual freefall until the last few feet (those important ones). Fun!
Every evening there was a parade around the park that iirc included characters from the World of Sid & Marty Krofft, H. R. Pufnstuf (stay with me) and the like. One night they were super short-handed and I was somehow recruited to walk in the parade all suited up as a huge I don't remember what.
Did I mention that I am less than 5'2" tall? See this was a real problem, the big smiling mesh "mouth" that served as an eye hole was located just north of my forehead and I basically couldn't see shit. I think I had a handler or something but I was literally flying blind and probably not only neglected to hug or shake hands with some of the kids, they were very lucky that I didn't step on them with my giant fake feet and cause irreparable physical damage in addition to the trauma of being overlooked. Oh, the $$$ that could have been left on the picnic table, I'm sure those big hot furry suits had deep pockets thanks to some faceless corporation whose name I don't recall (the Krofft brothers, perhaps?). Times were different then kids, amusement park law suits were left for the big stuff like roller coaster decapitations and such.
Just one more fun fact that anyone who's donned a costume like this to greet kids will probably attest to: while you're patting little (hopefully) heads and holding out your giant-ass hands to be embraced you will keep grinning like a mule eating briars the whole time, smiling your biggest smile like a moron even though NO ONE CAN SEE IT, and taking the old expression "dance like nobody's watching" to a whole new level. The End :-)
Truly. I was Clifford the Big Red Dog at a library event when I was seventeen, and that’s an experience that will cure depression. (Not really, but.) It’s actually life-affirming.
Just don’t hand your baby to Clifford. Clifford can’t see well and his manual dexterity is - look, he’s wearing slippers on his hands. Come on now.
I teach Kindergarten, and can confirm that little kids are a LOT, but they're also the best people on earth. They're so kind, and curious, and strange, and smart, and sincere... Getting to hang out with them is the biggest perk of the job. The second biggest perk is the teacher salad bar. It's only a buck fifty. You can't beat that deal with a stick.
Basically anyone that works in a large organisation, be it corporate, academic or NGO would find this assertion by two niche podcasters surprising to say the least
I guess it's all their focus on the book-writing but a bit of a pattern of lack of curiosity developing at barpod.....
Sorry but neither of us said that DEI isn't a thing in 2024. I won't speak for Jesse but this is certainly not something I believe and it's definitely not a direct quote, which I know because I checked the transcript.
~32 mins J: "the whole DEI scene is thoroughly chewed over" - K: "Totally"
~33 mins K: after essentially saying the movie is past its prime "[names from movie] have lost their spot at the top of the heap" and then you imply wokeness is dying.
You follow all of that with a statement that people don't want to admit "wokeness" is on the way out, because they need something to fight against. Perhaps the problem is conflating the idea of DEI and being woke, but I walked away with essentially the same impression as OP. You and Jesse both said the movie (and thus the conversation about DEI programming/hiring/etc) was past its prime, and seemed to imply we could just glide back to sanity and let these people shrink into obsolescence.
And maybe you're right, but I personally don't think it'll happen without thoroughly dissecting (and shaming) the style of thinking that got us here... And the "facilitators" featured in the movie are far from thinking of themselves as irrelevant (Matt Walsh said in his Rogan interview he let them set the price for their on camera engagements, btw).
So with all of that, as a corporate drone, I can tell you that while it may have peaked, it certainly hasn't retreated meaningfully. The grifters are still in the house, so to speak, and the cultural trappings are firmly lodged in the way many institutions operate. It was jarring for me to hear you imply DEI is dead within weeks of my company announcing yet another DEI (though not named that) initiative, along with our first ever struggle sessions. That and the seemingly endless parade of new affinity group e-mails coming through my inbox.
Yah my big read here is that Katie and Jessie see it as not making concrete progress anymore…but umm it has lost very little purchase in the actual bureaucracy of most corporations and government entities.
There is also the reality of what happens as more and more people educated in the 70s-90s leave the workforce and get replaced by younger people.
The movement has certainly lost a lot of momentum, but I doubt it is even strictly speaking retreating.
And it seems like almost any random event could lead to another massive flare up with even deeper impacts.
I love this type of online interaction. Anonymous poster makes disparaging and condescending ad hominem comment about a public facing content creator. Creator does not back down, responds directly. Anonymous poster nowhere to be found.
There is an interesting conversation you might appreciate about this in reference to the CBS/Coates affair on the most recent episode of The Fifth Column that considers the way some of this has become "baked in the cake" of many of the institutions.
An accurate statement would be "in 2024, DEI no longer garners the heavy media coverage it did right after George Floyd, but is very much alive, especially in elite institurions like CBS News."
It's all over state governments as well. I live in Washington state and they have a fund called the Community reinvestment Fund that is de facto reparations for the four percent of Washington state residents that are black. It was over 200 million in the last budget and they are asking for more in the next. They have a huge d e i infrastructure all over state government with hundreds of employees spread out over multiple agencies. This cancer is spreading, not diminishing
They didn’t say it wasn’t a thing anymore, they said it’s thoroughly chewed over and no longer taboo. I interpreted it more from their perspective as writers/podcasters where there isn’t really pushback on discussing it and many liberal leaning writers have already said their peace on it so it’s kind of a boring subject for them at this point.
It should be “piece” as in “piece of my mind”, ie your opinion.
Found a source:
‘Say your piece and hold your peace are separate idioms. "Say your piece" refers to stating your opinion, or your "piece" or "part" of the conversation. This is often confused with "hold your peace," which is often associated with marriage objections and refers to remaining silent and peaceful. Frequently, even in professional writing, the confusion is apparent and written as "say your peace."’
You are presumably confusing that phrase with the old-timey "speak now or forever hold your peace", which is using the term "peace" in the same sense one might speak of a "justice of the peace;" i.e. civil peace. In a society where people are no longer subject to threats of physical violence or death for bigamous, morganatic, or religiously impure weddings, it has lost all relevant meaning and is just an archaicism.
Also they’re wrong about people being too afraid to speak up about how nonsense it is. I work for a federal agency and several of the guys in my shop and I had to stand up and say the optional training we were in was ridiculous and offensive
So it seems you lost consciousness in the middle of one of their sentences but they literally talk about DEI in the workplace as an insidious issue and criticise the Am I racist film for not being able to penetrate that space and talk about the Starbucks guy doing so in a more timely fashion
Notwithstanding the Corporate DEI-ism, as it still survives.
I have absolutely no numbers to back any of this up, but I’m gonna guess that if you find yourself trapped in some 3 hour or 3 day DEI “exercise,” that in 2024 more people will have the gumption to stand up and say, politely, “This is all fucking bullshit.” Not true?
To be fair, getting into graduate programs at elite schools is SIGNIFICANTLY easier than getting into the undergraduate programs at those same schools the overwhelming majority of the time. I’m amazed by the number of people I’ve met who are just generally mediocre and not-particularly-bright who went to “average” schools for undergrad but then got graduate degrees from Ivy League programs. Most of these programs do not have insane admission standards. Some of the more obscure programs will basically accept anyone with a pulse.
I used to think it was half tongue in cheek but in starting to think Jesse really has no idea how elite he is. The only reasonable response from him about being elite is "yeah haha I know." He's just one of those people who is around or at least witnesses extremely rich and powerful people enough that in his own mind he's nowhere near their level. Forgetting the fact that the entire rest of the world exists. At least that's the reason I've seen normally thoughtful elites deny their obvious elitism.
Elite is inherently subjective. It is always relative to who you are comparing yourself too. I think it's a bit human nature to compare yourself against the people who have more rather than those who have less. Part of our negativity bias i suppose. As well it is culturally reinforced. Generally people don't wants to claim the mantle of elite. Aside from the extreme ends of the spectrum most everyone can claim the title of an elite or non elite depending on the comparison groups. A lot of folks seem to want to treat the term as a lot more substantive and objective than it is. I think to use the term meaningful or in non tongue and cheek way you need to be specific on what comparing and the groups/people your comparing to each other. It is term that is thrown around pretty lazily and relied on too heavily for rhetorical arguments
By global standards basically everyone in the US is an elite, or at least everyone who has an income and nonzero assets. The global per capita annual income isn't even legal to pay a full-time worker in the US; I think it's still below the federal minimum wage-- and that's despite it doubling in the last 40 years, while the US federal minimum has hardly budged, thanks to entrenched Republican desire to keep standards of living for the working class sufficiently desperate.
And by galactic standards, everyone on the globe is privileged because we have an atmosphere and all the various elements necessary to support carbon based life. But zooming out like that actually muddles the conversation about relative value, because duh no one cares if the subject of conversation is elite compared to someone born on a pile of garbage in the Central African Republic, we're talking about American culture and politics.
A sense of "elitism" is almost entirely about where you started from. Show me someone from a poor, small town family with the same credentials as Jesse and there's almost no chance we would clock them as "elitist" - even if they themselves are "elite". It's proof that the journey matters just as much as the destination.
I don't know if you're from another country, but Americans can absolutely graduate into elitism, and do often. Regardless, that doesn't apply to Jesse, afaik.
From where I’m standing, both hosts of this show are elitists. I’m a poor kid from the sticks who should probably hate all ‘y’all just because. But I don’t. ‘Cuz, in part, I did go to college and (apparently) expanded my social/cultural understanding. So instead of hating them for their obvious privilege, instead I appreciate their open-mindedness, humor and yes, humility. Maybe it’s just refreshing to hear what people actually think, not what they think they’re supposed to think.
One angle that I would actually love to see explored is the actual legality of these trainings. From what has been described, some of these mandatory workplace trainings with more ideologically rigid facilitators sound like they tip over into racial harassment/creating a hostile work environment, but no one has really sued over them, maybe because no one wants that reputation or something.
So a documentary covering the legal issues, giving the attendees the opportunity to tell their stories even just anonymously, and putting facilitators on camera to demonstrate their ignorance of civil rights law would be fascinating. But I guess that would probably require Walsh to care about the other participants, or the actual reasons that workplaces hold these trainings, and there would be fewer opportunities for dunking on the libs or putting himself on camera.
In Toronto there was the tragic case of Richard Bilkszto. He *did* file a complaint with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, and it did say there was abuse and workplace harassment at the DEI session. Bilkszto did file a lawsuit against the school board. I hope it will continue, despite his suicide.
Oh yeah, I remember that now, that was awful. Yes, hopefully something does come of his lawsuit, although even if it does, this is probably an example of why people would rather not stick their head above the parapet, so to speak.
I often think abut the woman doing the training who essentially bullied this guy to death. Does she feel any guilt? Or maybe she ( probably correctly) tells herself that it was his own friends throwing him under the bus who hold the blame. Or his depression.
If this board is anything to go by, it seems like a lot of folks simply want to go from policing other people’s speech to other people’s sexual practices. I’ll take neither side of the culture wars - everybody involved in it, right, left, and, yes, centrists are seriously fucked and need to learn to mind their own fucking business.
How in the closet does someone with unconventional sexual practices have to be in order to get a pass from the prude brigade here? This sounds a lot like “It’s OK to be gay, just as long as they keep quiet about it” that I remember from just a few decades ago.
Oddly enough I feel this way about pretty much all kink stuff even though I have been rather sexually adventurous in my life. Nothing to do with hetero/queer or anything, I just don't really want to hear anything about what makes people get aroused without some sort of explicit conversational signal that that's what we're talking about. But this is a subset of thinking that "[insert legally permitted but not looked favorably up on by everyone] Pride" is a terrible thing that has birthed lots of narcissism is all kinds of different communities from kinkiness to fandom.
You make a reasonable point, but again, just how in the closet does someone have to be? I’m putting aside cases where people are being deliberately over-sharing or in-your-face, which I don’t care for either. (I find starting a conversation with “My pronouns are….” to be incredibly cringe.) At the same time, it doesn’t strike me that other people knowing about it and not liking it is a reasonable standard at all. It seems like the folks who are put off by someone’s lifestyle have some duty not to make it their business. Also, there’s cases where the law still comes down on people - BDSM has never been fully decriminalized in the UK. Sex workers still get arrested or otherwise harassed by the law. Why are those groups less entitled to organize against this, and even use “I do this and I’m not a monster” as an argument, as countless other movements have done previously? The thing that I seem to be hearing from a lot of the centrist/heterodox crowd is, “Lesbian and gay liberation was needed, everything else is going too far”. As you might have noticed, that idea when expressed in a kneejerk way really ticks me off, but I’m willing to unpack that.
The centrist/heterodox crowd simultaneously regards all past protest movements as necessary and important and also regards all current protest movements as shrill and unreasonable activists who want to go too far. They're against everything until it becomes popular, at which point they were always for it.
Interesting! So, thinking as I am typing here, heterosexuality was the "default" but heterosexual sex was still taboo. It was/is still something you talk about in trusted company. Nobody wants to know about the mechanics of a hetero couples sex life anymore than a gay couple.
So what are kinksters being liberated from exactly? It's entirely inappropriate for me, a heterosexual monogamous female, to go into work or a party or a family gathering and start talking about how I fuck.
It seems to me that there are more than a few folks making the sexual practices of these folks their business, then being really pissed off at what their finding out and somehow putting the onus on the kinksters for not being derp enough in the closet. Me, I think the onus is on busybodies to mind their own fucking business. If someone’s being in-your-face or oversharing, it’s good to draw some boundaries, but I don’t see that’s what’s taking place here.
“So what are kinksters being liberated from exactly?” I hate to be “educate yourself”, but for fuck sake, there’s a long history of people literally being prosecuted for consensual sexual activity, especially BDSM, which in some places is treated as assault, and in some cases, such laws are still on the books. Look up “Operation Spanner” sometime for a historically recent example.
Ah we have a problem here. I don't care about BDSM being illegal. I care more about the men who have been given lenient sentences for killing their girlfriends using a rough sex defence. If that means you have to be extra careful practising your kinks by keeping them secret and making sure you only do them with trusted partners... Good?
“How in the closet does someone with unconventional sexual practices have to be in order to get a pass…”
Would kind of depend on the particular nature of the practices, don’t you think?
“It’s OK to be caged, humiliated, get your ass welted and be dom fucked by a leather nazi, just as long as they keep quiet about it” actually sounds about right. Essentially different than the case of being gay.
That’s pretty arbitrary, if you ask me. And while I’m not saying it’s identical to being gay, you’re argument pretty much IS identical to the kind of argument that used to be made as to why gay people should stay deep in the closet, because of the supposed instinctual revulsion ‘normal’ people might feel toward such a practice. Times changed and social norms changed.
It's worth noting that there are no victims otherwise lack of consent to what sadomasochists are doing. Merely the 'ick' factor, and I don't consider that to be a sufficient moral judgement to condemn and formally or informally penalize a practice.
Dude, there’s nothing wrong with opposing a sloppy off-hours orgy in the kiddie play place, come on. What consenting adults do with poop guns in the privacy of their own homes is something nobody really cares about so long as nobody talks about it at the office water cooler.
First, proof, please, that we’re talking about an actual “kiddie play space” here rather than a claim made by some who’s trying to throw the worst kind of shade on kinky folks they clearly don’t like. (I would suggest if you’re up in arms about sex-being-had in a space where children may later be present, you might have some bigger concerns about motels and bnbs.) Second, your standard for “too public” is if it becomes “office water-cooler gossip”? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s the very opposite of minding your own damned business.
Did Zagarna recruit an asshole apprentice or something?
I don’t know what painful personal issues you’re dealing with that make you want to lash out at everyone here over the tiniest things, but you really need to calm down. These attitudes that you’re projecting onto everyone here are entirely in your head.
I haven’t encountered Zagarna before, but I don’t disagree with him if that’s what you’re asking. I’m merely consistent in my pro-personal freedom and anti-cancel culture politics. Unlike some culture warriors billing themselves as reasonable centrists.
Point me to an argument that equates freedom of speech with freedom to have sex anywhere you like. The latter is just not a thing in any country, as far as I'm aware.
Who’s having sex anywhere they like? So far, all that I know is that a group of people had sadomasochistic sex in a rented private space. If that puts a bee in your bonnet, don’t patronize such places. And, yes, I do think freedom of expression does include the right to be out as a sadomasochist without the state coming down on you, which seems to be what’s being asked for here. A more general ”culture of free speech” argument might include the right to be out and not suffer private retaliatory acts (aka “cancel culture“). BTW, if the roles were reversed and the normies were being threatened by the freaks, I think there are a lot of folks here who are pissed at the kinksters would be talking out the other side of their mouths.
You're talking about policing other people's sexual practices. That is absolutely a thing. You can't just fuck anywhere you feel like it. It's wildly different to policing speech.
I think one point you're missing here is that the practice was covert so people didn't have the choice not to take their children to places they would not have been comfortable with.
edit: nobody IRL was going after the participants for what they were into as far as I can tell, it was more of a "not here"?
edit2: I think _most_ of us here dgaf what you do in your private life but there's a fundamental difference between freedom of expression as pertains to sexuality liberty and public expression of sexual behaviour.
The statement was "if you don't like it, go elsewhere"; the obvious response being that people can't make that choice when they don't know about the activity in the first place. Most people don't assume that sex parties are happening in spaces their kids play in.
At least in the US, the standard for proving racial or sexual harassment is so difficult that such a claim would be de facto pointless/a waste of resources to bring. If we had less of a "basically anything short of literally raping your employees or calling them n*****s goes" approach to harassment, it might be a different story.
It would be absurdly ironic, however, if the one exception to the rule that harassment cases were virtually impossible to win was for... harassment in the context of anti-harassment trainings.
Ah, really? I‘ll admit I don’t know that much about modern civil rights act litigation. My assumption is that these cases should be easier to prove, since by default they happen in front of a group, but then plaintiffs would probably have to subpoena and depose their coworkers which would be an awful experience for all involved.
The success rate (by which I effectively mean "got a settlement for more than the price of a coffee at Starbucks," since jury trials don't really happen anymore) for harassment cases is absurdly low-- it's like 5 percent once you account for all of the cases that miss the (very short) statute of limitations, get dismissed before discovery for failing to satisfy the judge that the claim is "plausible," get tossed at summary judgment for failing to create a triable dispute of material fact, or (the smallest percentage, but still like 2/3 of jury verdicts) lose at trial.
This is a complete aberration in the world of litigation-- I'm not familiar with any other field where the statistics for plaintiffs are anywhere near that bad. Basically, the only people willing to bring harassment cases are either chronic malcontents who don't really care if they lose (the majority), or people whose cases are so unbelievably outrageous that they might have a chance even with all of the deck stacked against them (the minority). Then because so many of what cases do get filed are filed by chronic malcontents, the legal system keeps coming up with innovative new ways to throw those cases out without a hearing, which in turn makes it even harder for the real cases to win, which makes it even less likely that abused people will file them.
The fundamental issue with harassment cases in general, and harassment cases involving training sessions are no exception, is not one of proof, but of the legal standard. Companies could admit to every allegation in your complaint (they don't, but they could) and still win on summary judgment anyway because the admitted harassment doesn't rise to the inordinately high level required to be "severe or pervasive" under US law.
Jesse and Katie said it themselves they are too inside on these issues and the figures featured in the documentary to have an opinion on the film the same way an average person would
Kind of similar to when the Cass Report came out and they were like "no biggie, we already knew that". Which was true, they did already know that, but kind of misses the point.
Agreed. Reddit-tier episode. I enjoy the spirit of this concept but they need to think through it (and do) better. Happy Columbus Day to you, brother in Christ.
This young you pick them up. Once he has a few months on him i like to let them try to settle for five minutes but in early days you have to assume they need you asap.
I don't let mine cry it out until they're old enough for sleep training (I'm a little fuzzy on the age because of sleep disruption, but when they're not newborns anymore and are starting to play their parents). Newborns get whatever they want, whenever they want, both because they're snuggly and helpless and because they really do need to eat every few hours.
Also, CIO ("cry it out") is a method I only use for getting the older babies down to sleep. I've heard of people who train their babies not to expect to get picked up if they wake in the middle of the night, but I just can't do that. I give them a couple minutes to make sure they're not crying in their sleep, and then I pick them up like the softie I am, pretty much throughout the period of childhood when they still want me in the middle of the night.
I gave my daughters a few days of picking them up to soothe them. Very soon after the hospital I would sit with them/give back rubs/head rubs, but I wouldn’t pick them up. If they needed food that’s one thing, but they learn to self soothe very quickly. At least my daughter did.
Yeah, newborns just got out of being literally closer to (inside of) their mothers than they'll ever be again so they need to be held a lot. It's kind of a gradual process of separation.
The ignorance of Americans on the subject of rectal sex is truly astonishing.
Shit leaks out. All the time.
Blood leaks out. All the time.
Denial of these basic facts is immoral. Using a cute term like "bondage" does not mitigate the profoundly unhealthy consequences of rectal fucking.
Here is what Shoreline's response should have looked like: "Cafe Aroma hosted a male homosexual fucking party in a children's playroom within an establishment that serves food. Human feces, blood and semen has inevitably contaminated the furniture and floors at Cafe Aroma. This is a gross violation of fundamental health and hygiene standards. Cafe Aroma's business license is hereby immediately revoked. The owners may re-apply for a business license after providing proof of a thorough decontamination of the premises."
For the record, this was not a gay male event, and in fact, the organizer was a woman and the cafe is own by a male/female couple. Straight people are into kink too, and I suspect gay men have more sense than to host their play parties at a coffee shop.
Of course is was a male homosexual event, hosted by medically illiterate money-grubbers.
Calling rectal fucking a "kink" is euphemistic evasion. This is an inherently destructive act that greatly accelerates the spread of many diseases. 99% of the population never engages in rectal fucking, but we all pay the cost of extraordinary medical care for this minority of promiscuous morons.
A normal [heterosexual] man who pesters his wife or girlfriend for "butt sex" is a creep. Mentally healthy women do not not suggest, "Hey, sweetie, why don't you stick it in my asshole." When the cock comes out it is covered with shit. No healthy woman wants this filthy thing touching her body or her bedclothes. She sure as hell doesn't want that stinking disease vector to go into her vagina or mouth.
The normalization of "anal" in pornography and male homosexual culture must be actively challenged. The lie that "anal" is normal is a terrible burden for women, and it's an unending death sentence for homosexual men.
The belief that "everybody does everything, so let's just chill" is an idiotic - and dangerous - fiction.
Dude we GET it you’ve been through conversion at the local baptist church and you’re straight now, no need to make such a public spectacle of yourself about it.
You seem really hung up on this specific issue, judging from this as well as the text in your bio. I encourage you to chill out on these boards...we're a relaxed bunch around here. You're welcome to your opinions, as we all are, but take it down a few rhetorical notches.
Seriously! For all the normalization we’ve done regarding anal sex, it’s a vector for the spread of disease and partaking can cause permanent damage regardless of the sex of the butthole haver. It’s a one way street!
I think it’s perfectly fine for gay men, but I think a lot of hetero women feel pressured to do it from their male partners. I don’t like that dynamic.
Thank you! I feel so bad for the younger women who think they're supposed to be into anal. I am soooo glad that my dating pool is GenX and older. Oh I'm sure some of them got porn-addicted too - but it's not very common, or at least they realize it's not real life at all.
Anal sex can absolutely be safely enjoyed by anyone as a receiving partner (if that is something they find enjoyable). But If a man is enough of an asshole to try to jam it in without lube (which can cause damage) he should immediately be kicked in the balls and see how he likes that.
The fact that rectal fucking requires artificial lubrication is proof that it is destructive and stupid. Calling it "absolutely safe" is horrific advice to give to a young person.
I look forward to your extended diatribes on the subjects of BASE jumping, free-solo rock climbing, and the operation of commercially available internal combustion vehicles at high speeds, all of which are vastly more dangerous hobbies than anal sex (although they do have the disadvantage of not being engaged in primarily by a population you want to stigmatize). Given the relative risk rates here, I'm expecting some real stemwinders!
Also you misread me! “Can Absolutely be safely enjoyed” is not identical in meaning to “absolutely safe”. And how am I supposed to know how young Blink there is? I was under the impression she was a grown-ass adult.
` it’s a vector for the spread of disease and partaking can cause permanent damage'
Vaginal intercourse can also spread disease and lead to permanent damage (both to the vagina and the penis).
`It’s a one way street!'
As many men find out in latter life when they need to take suppositories regularly, it literally is not.
Sure it's less hygienic and precarious than vaginal intercourse, and not something that everyone should or does feel comfortable engaging in, but its been widely engaged in throughout history and in nature. It's fine and good that such a common act is becoming destigmatised after being criminalised for so long.
Women being pressured into any type of sexual activity is the issue, not the particular activity.
My guy, I don’t really care if you find it gross, you pretty obviously have somewhat of an odd hang up about this. Let it go man. You’ll be happier for it.
You are acting like I’m in the street waving a flag advocating for butt sex orgies. That’s not what’s going on here. I understand that it is a somewhat unique health concern.
You can both understand that, and not come across as a jerk at the same time. It’s really not difficult.
Since the appearance of AIDS/HIIV in the early 1980's, homosexual men have consistently denied responsibility by denying facts: 1) Rectal fucking is biologically filthy; 2) Homosexual promiscuity is the singular cause of the epidemic.
Until homosexual communities take responsibility, treat promiscuity as a taboo, and end the practice of rectal fucking, they will still be committing mass suicide forty years hence.
If you want the death toll to mount, go ahead and "chill."
I’ll grant you that Kenneth Pinyan’s was likely incredibly excruciating and not very funny to Kenneth Pinyan, or “Mr Hands.” Acute peritonitis is not a great way to go. But surely you can see some shades of dark humor in a horsefucker being horsefucked to death.
If not, then you might just be a terrible improv partner.
It’s a play on “So much for the tolerant left”. I see self-described centrists as often as intolerant of what they see as sexual deviance as the social justice left is toward politically incorrect speech. Albeit, I’m also noticing that this fellow’s hangups about anal sex may not be representative. But BDSM and porn do get a lot of hate here, and get a lot of safetyist tut-tutting that heterodox folks claim to be against in other contexts.
As a person who actually went to the theater ($7 with club card on Tuesdays) to see this, I have really been looking forward to this review.
I liked the movie much better than Jesse & Katie—-probably a whole star more—I do think their review was pretty fair.
I agree with Katie’s critique of Sasha Baron Cohen but ultimately he’s better at this than Matt Walsh. He brings scenes to a stronger point and he’s cringier & funnier than Walsh.
The value of the film, and the main way I differ from the BARpod hosts, is the documentation of the insanity as the dehumanizing grift that it is. In the name of social justice, the elite have created a dehumanizing and frankly racist way of looking at the world & there is a tremendous value in Walsh calling this out and showing how harmful it is. I feel like Jesse, Katie and a good many of this podcast listeners have heard and know all of this but seeing some acknowledgment of the craziness beyond the niche of the podcast world (and Nellie Bowles' book) is important. And while we’re moving to a different stage in the newness & validity of DEI in the discourse, I know there are people who could benefit from seeing this film—mainly people that would refuse to see or review it.
The problem with the film is that Walsh is only semi successful in pulling off a take down of DEI. He doesn’t always provide the context or background about the subjects he touches on & the implications in politics, law & media. I’m glad the film was not an anti Biden Harris screed but a few more teeth would have been welcome.
Finally I loved the film’s uniting call to find our common humanity. I know Walsh’s work on the Daily Wire doesn’t always bear this out but I appreciate this message anywhere I find it. ***
` I know Walsh’s work on the Daily Wire doesn’t always bear this out'
It almost never bears this out and that's why it comes across as insincere. Of course, I suspect that I'm part of a group (trans people) that Walsh finds on the outskirts of humanity, at best.
To the extent that the movie could be considered a documentary, I think that the idea that people will go along with nonsensical BS to reduce feelings of social discomfort was kind of the point.
That is to say, if Robin DiAngelo is willing to pay black people to avoid embarrassment in a weird situation rather than because she is making a completely genuine act of reparation, it still does not reflect well on her.
To your point, I think it illustrates quite well that “even the preacher has to bend the knee”. Or some variation of that principle. I thought it was a great way to hopefully slap her with the insanity of what she is preaching. She even said “this is weird.” Sadly it seems unlikely that a full understanding of that statement was not lost on her.
Jesse and Katie. I think you missed the point of Am I Racist because you’re much too involved in the space already.
1. I agree it was much worse than What Is A Woman.
2. I agree it could have been timelier.
But, I don’t think Am I Racist was meant to show all the tendrils of this thought in society. And, I don’t think it was supposed to be a deep dive rebuttal to the arguments. I think it was meant to just make a mockery of it.
What Is A Woman lended itself to this much better because the foundations that movement are based on are so transparently insane you can just ask “what is a woman” and it collapses. In that manner, Matt could talk directly with the *experts* on the topic and it immediately revealed how idiotic the whole movement is.
Am I Racist isn’t so easily formulated. Of course as you point out, the normal person on the street doesn’t think like these DEI experts. As you’ve pointed out, this has already been written about at well received publications. However, these ideas are still everywhere and at least in my mind people may not agree with the entire overarching ideology but they will still believe these people are well thought through, that they probably have a point somewhere in there, and that they’re smart people with an honest outlook on these issues. I think this movie was again made just to mock it. To show people how ridiculous it all is without getting lost in the weeds. Without getting bogged down in discussions of red-lining and the history of slavery. Without talking about police violence and potential instances of unconscious bias.
For the general public, instead of going point by point and knocking them down showing why the ideology is wrong, I think the movie is meant to basically say “you know when your company does these DEI things? Understand they were put together by THESE sorts of deranged lunatics who make race the center of everything and are almost purely driven off of a monetary incentive. It is a complete racket, there is no reason to believe there is any good here”. And just leave it at that.
If Walsh went into a history of red lining, that clearly is a bad thing, and some people would lose the thread. Get into the history of slavery, clearly a horrendous thing, and some people would lose the thread. That is DEIs biggest strength. They muddy the waters with actual bad things that have occurred that they’re claiming to address. At the very least it has the potential to make people believe there is more to what DEI folks are doing than what they actually are, nothing.
Again, a weaker movie overall. But, I think was successful in making this movement look as ridiculous as it is. I also think you all are understating the impact of DiAngelo, Kendi, Rao, etc. by 1/10,000th. The 2020 protests were built on the backs of their work and is the biggest movement of my lifetime by 5-10x. Made OccupyWallStreet look like kids having a tea party. Hell, 2014 Michael Brown shooting and the protests afterwards barely have a toehold in memory after 2020. BLM was built on the backs of these people. The local company I work for doing DEI training was built on them. There is an entire legal field dedicated to what they have helped implement. (Hence the DEI training meant to provide the company protection from discrimination lawsuits). Think every person I know knows hiring at their company has changed away from talent/merit to “diversity” (in the emptiest sense) to protect from lawsuits. Yes, this is seemingly all on the back-end down slope from the peak. But, very prevalent still and worth addressing.
Lastly, pretty sure this was recorded prior to this happening. But CBS is currently self immolating after the Coates interview. You could say that is about Israel and Gaza…. But that is definitively not why Coates was being interviewed or why his absolute trash is considered in high regard. He himself says he doesn’t know shit about Israel/Gaza, that’s basically the tagline of The Message. CBS didn’t have Coates on because of his enlightened mind that’s delved through all the intricacies of Israel Gaza and will be able to inform people on what he’s learned. CBS had Coates on because of Between the World and Me and Beautiful Struggle. And there was backlash against the interview because his ideology that is the foundation of Between the World and Me and Beautiful Struggle was questioned. That foundation is absolutely identical to any DiAngelo, Kendi, Rao, etc would lay out.
My Committee on Belonging still wants us to bring our whole selves to work and CELEBRATE 🎉 learning from our mistakes. They are not yet done. Oh and please volunteer at your LGBTQA2S+ events.
As a society we need to be more sex negative.
As a society, people need to learn to mind their own fucking business. That goes for both the social conservatives strongly represented on this board and the social justice types you’re at war with. Both of y’all are mirror images of each other’s worst tendencies and really need to get a grip.
I never knew I was a social conservative until someone told me it was unreasonable to oppose having bodily fluids from sex parties in places where the general public eats and children play. How grossly intolerant of me!
I think “as a society, we need to be more sex-negative” together with comments elsewhere about taking away kids from people involved in kink, and restigmatizing anal sex to be ‘80s Moral Majority-level social conservatism, yes. I guess I’m weird that way. But do go on about how you’re feeling about how the libs are so intolerant while spouting this kind of shit out of the other side of your mouths.
I'm fairly confident Abby's remark was tongue-in-cheek. More a reference to over-sharing of something that a lot of people just don't really want to know?
Nobody wants to hear about a stranger's sex life
Dial it back, she was making a joke. This hysteria is unwarranted.
No "hysteria" in my game. I'm just challenging a very stupid sentiment that I don't think holds up to well even in a less extreme form. Sorry, not sorry if that goes against a certain kind of groupthink in this community.
It was clearly a joke.
You do come off as responding in a hysterical and disproportionate manner to a fairly vanilla joke. . . .
Again, it was a tongue in cheek response to a pretty wild and rather disgusting story. We are allowed to make a little joke here now and then. You're being overly sensitive.
How about you just criticize the comments that are actually challenging your world view rather than playing the correlation game and simplifying things for yourself so all your political enemies are in the same boat?
I am literally criticizing a statement - “as a society, we need to be more sex-negative”. And I don't find that statement "challenging" so much as straight up reactionary. If you agree with that statement, how about offering a coherent argument for it rather than getting pissy at me.
But it was clearly read as a joke by everyone else…I thought her tone made it obvious.
Yes of all the people here, pissy is most accurate coming from you, about another individual. Welcome to the internet.
If anything is going to turn *me* into a social conservative, it would be stories like that.
But they did say everybody had to use a barriers between their genitalia and the kiddy furniture!
Some things should not be mixed
I hear you. I am also over the crypto-conservatives on this board.
This particular story, however, deserves all the ire it has received. A place where kids play is not a place that should stage orgies.
Hell, I’m an adult and also would prefer not to inadvertently put my hand in a sex party’s aggregate splooge.
Why? Some conservatives have great taste in podcasts.
Sadly, I suspect the issue-- and I very much mean this to apply to both social conservatives and certain overwoke types-- is precisely that their ideology is such that they deem these issues to BE their business. "You need to care less about this thing that you care about" is just not an effective approach.
Minding one's own business is great, but if I was a patron of that place, I would definitely appreciate knowing what's going on in the kids play area after closing time.
No way anybody is getting *all* that jism from off the various surfaces. This seems relevant to the community and its coffee drinkers.
"No way anybody is getting *all* that jism from off the various surfaces."
You've got to be kidding me. Eating establishments that want A-grade health inspections are cleaned at a level that would make any Real Housewife's kitchen look like the stereotype of a trailer-trasher's. The odds of any of this activity doing anyone physical harm are somewhere between minute and infinitesimal.
There were couches that attendees were encouraged to "make creative use of" - that inevitably entails someone's load getting dumped on them or someone's smeg getting smeared across a cushion. You cannot undo that.
Is there any good sourcing that this space was, in fact, a “kids play area” at other times? So far, this has the status of unconfirmed accusation, not confirmed fact. It sounds to me like the classic case of someone after the fact linking unconventional sexual practices to kids in order to throw some very dark shade.
Well the owner knew of the accusations and did not deny it, so that coupled with his glaring lack of common sense in allowing such an event within his place of business leads me to believe that it's probably true.
Either way, serious red flags all over the place, for the cafe owners and the group who staged the event.
Based on my own research, all of the specifics that are claimed against the event are disputed, and B&R definitely did not present both sides, but rather, only the side of the cancellers. This reeks of double-standards and culture war against the pervs, plain and simple.
that's a bit much.
You are, may Allah forgive me, a groomer.
Just so everyone knows, this guy is an actual troll and the only thing you need to be doing is reporting him. Do not engage. It's what they want.
Agreed. Reported and … blocked. Oh shit!
“ anything I don’t like is a troll” go back to Reddit if you can’t live without jannies curating your opinions for you. Keep yourself safe
Oh and for everyone reading, "keep yourself safe," is a code for "kill yourself(KYS)," and the only reason he's saying is to avoid a ban trigger. Which means he does this on other websites too. Sad life.
Nah it means for you to keep yourself safe, stop looking for things to get mad about and go outside away from the Jannie’s you keep crying for, idiot.
“Oh no there’s free speech in the comment section of the free speech podcast!! Save me Jannies!!!! Ban it!!!!!! 😭 I’m a weak negative chin soyboi help!!!!!!!”
Groomer accusations? That’s what this board has devolved into? Get a grip!
It is true, this is a sex pervert defending haram degeneracy against the will of Allah
Just to clarify: “Allah” is an imaginary construction and, whatever good may come, now and then, from the imagined “words” of this construction, it pales in comparison to the horror, hatred, destruction, and death that the concept and worship of this imaginary entity has created in our modern world. Just the same as for the other sky daddies “the Lord” and “Yahweh” (and all the rest of them). Just checking in to make sure we’re all on the same page here!
Disgusting blasphemy. Go back to Reddit, incel.
Go fly a plane into my tower.
You are a bastard!
Good ol' FourteenWordsLong showing up to defend the honor of the race again, eh
Keep yourself safe you fucking racist shithead
We need more shame. Bullying and shame.
I'm pretty sure the sex recession is a bigger societal problem than the fetish/kink people are.
Like people are having less sex? That’s because we’ve gone so far into sex positive that half of dudes are content to sit at home being losers and jerking off to all the fucked up porn out there along with the sex positive internet hoes.
Sex negative, seemed to lead to more sex and babies. Cuz Jesus or something.
So basically we need less internet and more church.
That’s my stance on that, I guess. Definitely less internet.
That is...definitely a take.
I think actual human beings having sex with each other is generally better than the internet stuff. However, I see no reason to believe that the internet is pulling people away. In fact, I think we're maximizing our real-world opportunities, and the rather precipitous declines in sexual activity, relationships, and childbearing reflect real material declines in the conditions that lead to those outcomes. And given that there are not a lot of real relationships to be had, the internet is just the easiest alternative.
I may be stupid but I honestly didn’t follow much of that.
What about material declines?
And im quite sure there is a serious internet porn epidemic. A large number of internet heavy countries, advanced first world countries, are having real problems with this. Birth rates are down, marriage rates are down. Why improve yourself for a mate when you can sedate yourself with the drug-like rabbit hole of online porn?
The internet gives you easy access to fuck, especially if you’re a no strings attached loose person, it doesn’t translate as well to good long lasting relationships.
I also seem to remember hearing a statistic that a smaller percentage of people were having a larger portion of the sex. Maybe BS, but from what I can see in the modern world I wouldn’t be surprised.
In any case, I do firmly believe the internet is doing real harm to people socially, in a lot of serious ways. Like catastrophic, society fracturing ways. And porn and the proliferation of hook up apps are a big deal.
There are lots of material declines. In the U.S. in particular, the threat of non-judicial punishment hangs over the tiniest action. People don't talk to each other because they're afraid of what might happen. People don't even talk about relationships or sexuality in the abstract. The educated coastal American has regressed to the stereotypical Victorian Age.
This compounds with the mental health crisis affecting young women. I'm generally of the Haidt-ian view that it's caused by social media, which is not porn per se, as well as overly restrictive parenting and supervision.
And then there's the obesity crisis. Whether it's spending too much time inside or eating processed crappy foods or microplastics in the water, whatever the cause, the effect is pretty clear.
Hook up apps and the social media world aren't porn, but they do have the effect of making it quite visible to everyone how unequal the sexual marketplace is, and it reducing the quality of real-life interactions between the sexes.
Everyone has a bias, and my perspective is that I turned 21 without even knowing what pornography was, but my life was almost ended by a nightmare woman, my only experiences of being physically touched by another human being were of being abused, I'd already adopted the baseline assumption that male heterosexuality was illegal, and I was stuck with an enormous unsatisfied sex drive and no plausible method of even trying to satisfy it. Porn was the cause of none of that. It certainly is not a perfect solution, but it's a lot better than nothing, and nothing is what's out there for a large segment of the population. I'm just completely baffled as to what anyone thinks the alternative is.
The sex recession is more of a numbers issue than attitudinal shift. Married people have and have always had more sex. A decline in marriage has a direct relationship on the aggregate number of fucks per capita.
Are you having sex in a church? I’m confused.
…you’re not?
Weirdly, I actually agree with this, and I think that's the first time I can say this about something by this poster. It's not a problem for society that people (thanks to birth control) aren't having kids by accident and (thanks to women being semi-respected) aren't having kids by coercion. It is absolutely a problem for society that (thanks to kids being costly and annoying to deal with and everyone being on their phones and afraid to interact in person) people aren't having kids on purpose.
Sex is wonderful. Meaningless sex is a gateway to self hatred.
I dunno kink weirdos really do find sex to be pretty meaningful I’d say. It’s their favorite hobby for sure.
What we have here is a major “wrong place / wrong time” issue
Just wrong place really. There wasn't any time that was going to be more suitable.
lol fair. Although maybe in the far future when this place gets converted from a cafe to a full time private sex dungeon?
True. So long as nobody is offering babycinos to children or small animals in the sex dungeon?
Actually I wonder if the café is complying with Food Safety requirements re bodily fluids? 'Cause I can't take my family's very good doggos into some cafés. For any period of time.
Imagine the response if someone tried to change a baby’s diaper on a cafe table just before the orgy broke out,
Yeah, I’ve known a few kink weirdos in. Y time and been (platonic) friends with them. That’s… what I’m basing my opinion on lol
My unpopular opinion is that the kinksters would do better to deal with their issues and resolve them rather than reinforce them with sex.
So if you have a humiliation kink, work on the issue underlying that. It does not come from a healthy well adjusted place.
Yeah not sure that working through your feelings about your dad beating you with a belt by letting strangers choke them is really as healing as they think it is…
Meaningless sex is fucking awesome. God, people must really hate bodies to not enjoy the exploration and interaction all sex provides.
This is an innate difference between men and women. It’s why gay men are so carnal and why lesbians are so sexless and boring. I love sex with my partner but have never once achieved orgasm with a stranger, and I think that’s true for most women (even the ones who claim to love meaningless sex are getting something else out of it, I think.)
I have long thought that gay men and women are the most pure expressions of male and female sexuality respectively
Well, it would make sense. There’s no need to mollify a different set of instincts; there are of course positives and negatives to that on both sides. I’m a lesbian, and it works for me 😅
I have no experience with lesbian relationships, but I do with very long term hetero relationships. I have never lost any interest in getting busy with my guy, except for right after giving birth.
As you've been very willing to exclaim, your guy is almost certainly better looking than most guys, at least at his age. Most relationships don't work like that.
Gay men seem to like lots of casual sex with lots of other gay men. Most hetero women aren't into that.
And lesbians aren't into that either usually. The old joke is what does a lesbian bring to a second date? A U-Haul.
There are some differences between men and women, but I wonder if it is more with regards to the behavior that precedes the sex rather than the rewards that come after.
Every week some new statistic comes out about the enormous number of young women who have mental health diagnoses or are on medications for such. It might be that they need more affection whether they want to admit it or not, and whether they're willing to do what it takes to get it or not.
What I mean is, women aren’t actually mentally ill they’re just on unnecessary medications.
Honestly that’s just because we’ve medicalised all negative feelings and American doctors are more than willing to stuff you full of pills if you tell them you’re sad.
Overmedicalization is a problem, I'll agree.
But if the conventional wisdom is that men have a sex drive that has to be satisfied and women do not, I question that.
Oh, I agree completely. It’s the most obvious cause of increasing rates of erectile dysfunction among young men as well. FAIR in Medicine did a webinar on informed consent and SSRIs recently and talked about this a lot.
I’m of the “lifestyle medicine” persuasion, where I think what a lot of people really need is an exercise prescription (a recommendation from their doctor to find some physical activity), a decrease in eating food that isn’t really food, and (gasp) more social connection.
The conventional narrative that we’re sold is that men who are single are failures who are unworthy of affection, while women who are single are higher beings who shouldn’t stoop to the level of showing interest in a man. Maybe try the thought experiment of flipping that around, but land on something that doesn’t presuppose that the correct outcome for either sex is being alone.
I think mileage differs for people based on both nature and nurture. I know many many women who enjoy casual sex and many who don’t. Or at least express that they don’t. Women certainly are encouraged to be more modest in public but we’ve had 50 years since Nancy Friday exploded that ‘women don’t lust’ myth in My Secret Garden. Women enjoy sex in all forms just as much as men, but modesty comes from both social pressure and a form of physical protection from non-consensual sexual attack. Which is entirely understandable.
Women do not enjoy sex in all forms as much as men. Women have far more preferential restrictions on "form." Imagine a man saying "I've never achieved orgasm with a stranger." That just means he hasn't had sex with a stranger. Or at least one that wasn't a horrible experience.
And I have had casual sex, it was shit so I didn’t do it again.
The solution to this riddle really should have been obvious to you. Remember that riddle about the car accident and the surgeon?
Nah mate, that’s BS. I grew up in a sex positive household and I’m a prude because it just doesn’t interest me and plenty of women are like that, it’s just not something they throw a parade for. Sex positive women are more visible and more likely to have a Substack or some shit, and definitely more likely to be at the kind of party you like to attend, but are they a majority of women? The numbers just don’t add up.
And that’s fine! Only wanting sex occasionally with someone you love is actually not bad at all.
Also, it's entirely possible- and quite common- to be sex positive in a monogamous relationship.
I’m not sure what point you’re disagreeing with me - I’ve said women (and indeed men) can either be into sex or not and that it’s a mixture of nature and nurture. I’m saying it’s all highly subjective and individualistic. Men who don’t enjoy sex (performance issues, body image issues, disinterest) are as quiet as sex-positive women are loud. This stuff is entirely individual and subjective and claiming an inherent gender difference is misplaced. Your sexuality is a product of your relation to your own body, to your upbringing and to your.social interests. It’s not ‘men are carnal, women are shrinking violets’.
Degenerate. May you come to forgiveness through prayer and asking the Prophet (PBUH) for forgiveness. Else face the suffering of one thousand swords to the bowel a day for eternity.
It's just objectifying people though. I'm not really down with that.
Honestly what does that even mean? First of all escaping objectifying people in life is impossible. Saying you’re not down with ‘that’ is redundant. It may make you feel good to say but it’s not actually something you can achieve. Secondly how every individual approaches a moment of intimacy is unique and so you can’t say objectification is inherent in the act. Maybe it is for you but that’s entirely subjective.
I can’t respect ‘it’s objectifying people, I’m not down with that’ as an answer, it’s both meaningless and self-serving. It’s one of those plethora of semi-intellectual answers the world would be better off without.
The fact that you feel you have to denigrate my position on this is telling.
What’s it telling you… go on….
Inshallah
I agree. I don't mind people embracing whatever kink they have, I just don't want to hear about it. And yes, people must be able to talk about sex, but I'd prefer they did it less, I don't want to know who does what and I dont want to talk about it either.
#bringbackshame
#BringBackKinkShaming
Amen. Bring back prudes
I am a proud prude. Can we have a "Prude Pride" week?
Eh
Concur. You certainly started a firestorm with this amusing comment. We're even having religious fights downstairs.
"University of Michigan is not elitest!"
Lol. 18% acceptance rate. NYT in 2015 found 9.3% of the student body had parental incomes exceeding $630,000 (in 2015 dollars).
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-michigan-ann-arbor
Jesse your elitism is showing again lmao
As a former wolverine, Yes we are elitists
Former? You've renounced your sins?
Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa
For some reason Michigan Wolverines starter jackets were a prestige clothing item in the very well to do CT town where I went to middle school, so I just assumed Michigan was as well regarded as Ivies/NESCAC schools.
Traditionally, Michigan, Texas, Berkeley and Virginia are considered "public Ivies".
Those jackets were also super popular in the small central MN town I grew up in.
Guessing that was more of a Fab 5 thing rather than a statement of academic admiration.
Oh you’ve changed pronouns
Wolverines!
Forever Go Blue!
Haha, this is what I was coming here to comment on. Going to Michigan as an out-of-state student costs about as much as going to most liberal arts colleges. And it's a much better school than Princeton if you're going for STEM or many of the performing arts.
I find this discourse to be a little funny. In many ways you would think being accepted to an elite university would be something to be proud of. However, the underlying assumption is that these kids are born elite and don't deserve what they have. Maybe that is not entirely wrong, but I still think folks should take some level pride in the fact they achieved high level educations. You can still acknowledge your priveldge in getting that education, but you still go it. You can be privileged towards a lot of things.
People come from different experiences and have different knowledge and skills that can be appreciated. Folks who have highly college educated parents are probably going to do something requires a high level of college education, but if you're come from parents who worked construction or logging or whatever blue collar profession than you're going to be privileged for that early on. Yes it is hard to bridge gap if you're a blue collar kid wanting to be a lawyer something, but I would say it also pretty darn hard to bridge the gap going the other way. You don't get a lot kids from east coast wealth moving out west to be ranch hands or whatever. I think it is cool when people do bridge gap because it shows that much more dedication.
I just think that the elitist rhetoric always has this undertone disparaging the "educated elites" and glorifying the working class heroes. It would be nice see more of an egalitarian view between the two worlds. I think a lot of this is just silly cultural perception and I think our populist moment feed into a lot of that.
I think this misses the forest for the trees in this context.
Jesse isn't not "proud of" going to Michigan because he contextualizes it against his elite upbringing and is weighting it against his advantages. He is, quite literally, *wrongly* stating Michigan is not an "elite" school. He is leaning in to his privilege in being the son of wealth (of highly successful attorney for a dad -- not sure about his mom) from one of the richest suburbs in Massachusetts and mistakenly thinking Michigan is not an upper echelon university, as viewed by everyone who grew up outside of his uhble.
It's fine, and in my opinion excusable because he is largely not always defaulting to his privileged upbringing. But he isn't doing the thing you're saying. He just has big blind spots on privilege -- not that I am a huge "you must declare your privilege before speaking" person. It's just good context to have when contextualizing Jesse's takes on certain socioeconomic issues.
My response
https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-231-is-we-racist/comment/72399033?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1dvvyx
BUCKEYES RISE UP (student body is also pretty damn high SES compared to your average Ohioan)
For sure it is now! It was a basic state school when I went in the 90s. I probably wouldn't be accepted there now as my SATs were average. And I couldn't afford it!
I was shocked at how many of my classmates were private school alums. I thought state schools were for middle class, public school kids and felt disappointed by the lack of economic diversity. And of course, that OSU, like most schools, prioritizes international student and student athletes above all else.
But still.. time and change will surely show.
How firm thy friendship o HI o. Man, I loved OSU!
Oh, you went to One of Several Ohio State Universities? Where it takes two people to spell a four letter word? :P
Katie called him out so thoroughly and succinctly.
Anyone who has been to UMich’s art gallery would not say it was a particularly plebian institution.
I once heard someone describe going to a state flagship university as “working-class college” and on some level I get it, aspiring working class students don’t always aim for the Ivies (at least not in my generation), but also goddamn, if you have a college degree, you do hope to not be a plumber.
My Alma mater is referred to by professors as a mid level, blue collar, state university. It's more because the student body come from blue collar/working class families, as well as a certain amount of families below the poverty line. Most students are studying criminal justice, business, marketing, education, technical writing, etc. Not elite by any stretch.
I think getting a four year college degree is generally an elite thing to do. I understand that people from a working class background are culturally different from people with a “middle class” background, but it does really annoy me how inconsistent we as a society are with these these terms. I’m kind of tired, for instance, of everyone claiming to be “middle class” if they aren’t in the 1%. I’m also tired of how much academics seem to look down on people from poor backgrounds. I’m annoyed with how journalists with family money see it as an important “working class” status symbol to start a union.
It's really simple:
Middle class is what you are
Rich is what people wealthier than you are
Poor is what people far less wealthy than you are
And these definitions shift with the SES of the speaker, forever and ever amen
I think I generally agree with this ("getting a four year college degree is generally an elite thing to do") with some qualifiers in that, according to the BLS, well over half of high school graduates attend college (with a high of 70.1% in October 2009) -- and I think definitionally "elite" can't refer to something the median person does.
That said, I think it's fine and appropriate to refer to certain schools as "working class" colleges and the like -- in that the student body may be overwhelmingly raised by working class households and therefore are culturally working class (which may change as they age, after they graduate college, etc etc).
I would point to public universities that have 90%+ acceptance rates, low tuition, etc. Schools that people go to based largely on geographic proximity, and not based on things like "has a great X program". There are colleges like these everywhere, but they'd never be categorized with the likes of Michigan.
Kamala grew up middle class and allegedly worked at McDonalds.
Riiiiiiiiight, sure.
To be somewhat fair to Jesse, the acceptance rate has gone way down in recent years. When he was there (I was there at the same time, but I was instate) it was was still “highly selective” and a top public school but not so crazy as it is now.
Then again, the bookstore sold t shirts that said “Harvard: the Michigan of the East” so we didn’t hide that we thought we were pretty hot shit.
To be less fair to Jesse, even then if you were paying out of state tuition, you came from money.
“No deliberate feces”
Thank you, my life is now complete.
The quote you need, not the quote you deserve.
new punk band name just dropped: accidental feces
Those guys are asking for more than just bottles of piss to be lobbed at the stage.
the things you see when you don't have a poop gun
This is now going on your tombstone.
Midwest Molly
19xx-20xx
Pretty good person.
Please no deliberate feces.
RE: The Great Sesame Street Character Controversy, here's my story of wearing a character suit (disclaimer I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the furry community)
As a high schooler I worked one summer at Six Flags Over Georgia (many great stories for another time). My regular job was swing shift at The Great Gasp (that's right, complete with black & yellow 1920's newsboy costumes I have photos), a now-defunct 200 ft. parachute drop that was allegedly an actual freefall until the last few feet (those important ones). Fun!
Every evening there was a parade around the park that iirc included characters from the World of Sid & Marty Krofft, H. R. Pufnstuf (stay with me) and the like. One night they were super short-handed and I was somehow recruited to walk in the parade all suited up as a huge I don't remember what.
Did I mention that I am less than 5'2" tall? See this was a real problem, the big smiling mesh "mouth" that served as an eye hole was located just north of my forehead and I basically couldn't see shit. I think I had a handler or something but I was literally flying blind and probably not only neglected to hug or shake hands with some of the kids, they were very lucky that I didn't step on them with my giant fake feet and cause irreparable physical damage in addition to the trauma of being overlooked. Oh, the $$$ that could have been left on the picnic table, I'm sure those big hot furry suits had deep pockets thanks to some faceless corporation whose name I don't recall (the Krofft brothers, perhaps?). Times were different then kids, amusement park law suits were left for the big stuff like roller coaster decapitations and such.
Just one more fun fact that anyone who's donned a costume like this to greet kids will probably attest to: while you're patting little (hopefully) heads and holding out your giant-ass hands to be embraced you will keep grinning like a mule eating briars the whole time, smiling your biggest smile like a moron even though NO ONE CAN SEE IT, and taking the old expression "dance like nobody's watching" to a whole new level. The End :-)
Truly. I was Clifford the Big Red Dog at a library event when I was seventeen, and that’s an experience that will cure depression. (Not really, but.) It’s actually life-affirming.
Just don’t hand your baby to Clifford. Clifford can’t see well and his manual dexterity is - look, he’s wearing slippers on his hands. Come on now.
That was interesting and entertaining, thanks for sharing!
🙏😉
I teach Kindergarten, and can confirm that little kids are a LOT, but they're also the best people on earth. They're so kind, and curious, and strange, and smart, and sincere... Getting to hang out with them is the biggest perk of the job. The second biggest perk is the teacher salad bar. It's only a buck fifty. You can't beat that deal with a stick.
"DEI is really not a thing anymore in 2024"
Basically anyone that works in a large organisation, be it corporate, academic or NGO would find this assertion by two niche podcasters surprising to say the least
I guess it's all their focus on the book-writing but a bit of a pattern of lack of curiosity developing at barpod.....
Sorry but neither of us said that DEI isn't a thing in 2024. I won't speak for Jesse but this is certainly not something I believe and it's definitely not a direct quote, which I know because I checked the transcript.
~32 mins J: "the whole DEI scene is thoroughly chewed over" - K: "Totally"
~33 mins K: after essentially saying the movie is past its prime "[names from movie] have lost their spot at the top of the heap" and then you imply wokeness is dying.
You follow all of that with a statement that people don't want to admit "wokeness" is on the way out, because they need something to fight against. Perhaps the problem is conflating the idea of DEI and being woke, but I walked away with essentially the same impression as OP. You and Jesse both said the movie (and thus the conversation about DEI programming/hiring/etc) was past its prime, and seemed to imply we could just glide back to sanity and let these people shrink into obsolescence.
And maybe you're right, but I personally don't think it'll happen without thoroughly dissecting (and shaming) the style of thinking that got us here... And the "facilitators" featured in the movie are far from thinking of themselves as irrelevant (Matt Walsh said in his Rogan interview he let them set the price for their on camera engagements, btw).
So with all of that, as a corporate drone, I can tell you that while it may have peaked, it certainly hasn't retreated meaningfully. The grifters are still in the house, so to speak, and the cultural trappings are firmly lodged in the way many institutions operate. It was jarring for me to hear you imply DEI is dead within weeks of my company announcing yet another DEI (though not named that) initiative, along with our first ever struggle sessions. That and the seemingly endless parade of new affinity group e-mails coming through my inbox.
Yah my big read here is that Katie and Jessie see it as not making concrete progress anymore…but umm it has lost very little purchase in the actual bureaucracy of most corporations and government entities.
There is also the reality of what happens as more and more people educated in the 70s-90s leave the workforce and get replaced by younger people.
The movement has certainly lost a lot of momentum, but I doubt it is even strictly speaking retreating.
And it seems like almost any random event could lead to another massive flare up with even deeper impacts.
I love this type of online interaction. Anonymous poster makes disparaging and condescending ad hominem comment about a public facing content creator. Creator does not back down, responds directly. Anonymous poster nowhere to be found.
Boom
There is an interesting conversation you might appreciate about this in reference to the CBS/Coates affair on the most recent episode of The Fifth Column that considers the way some of this has become "baked in the cake" of many of the institutions.
An accurate statement would be "in 2024, DEI no longer garners the heavy media coverage it did right after George Floyd, but is very much alive, especially in elite institurions like CBS News."
https://www.persuasion.community/p/woke-is-here-to-stay
It's all over state governments as well. I live in Washington state and they have a fund called the Community reinvestment Fund that is de facto reparations for the four percent of Washington state residents that are black. It was over 200 million in the last budget and they are asking for more in the next. They have a huge d e i infrastructure all over state government with hundreds of employees spread out over multiple agencies. This cancer is spreading, not diminishing
This is exactly what I thought of when listening to this episode. I think the 5th Column guys were correct.
That said, the movie sounds cringy.
What’s the episode title? I find FC episode descriptions next to useless for navigational purposes.
So true! It’s the most recent #474.
They didn’t say it wasn’t a thing anymore, they said it’s thoroughly chewed over and no longer taboo. I interpreted it more from their perspective as writers/podcasters where there isn’t really pushback on discussing it and many liberal leaning writers have already said their peace on it so it’s kind of a boring subject for them at this point.
On an even more boring subject, does one say their piece or say their peace?
It should be “piece” as in “piece of my mind”, ie your opinion.
Found a source:
‘Say your piece and hold your peace are separate idioms. "Say your piece" refers to stating your opinion, or your "piece" or "part" of the conversation. This is often confused with "hold your peace," which is often associated with marriage objections and refers to remaining silent and peaceful. Frequently, even in professional writing, the confusion is apparent and written as "say your peace."’
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/say-your-piece-versus-peace-usage
Piece.
You are presumably confusing that phrase with the old-timey "speak now or forever hold your peace", which is using the term "peace" in the same sense one might speak of a "justice of the peace;" i.e. civil peace. In a society where people are no longer subject to threats of physical violence or death for bigamous, morganatic, or religiously impure weddings, it has lost all relevant meaning and is just an archaicism.
Two individuals sitting at home and mostly communicating remotely without being in a normal workplace since before covid....
Also they’re wrong about people being too afraid to speak up about how nonsense it is. I work for a federal agency and several of the guys in my shop and I had to stand up and say the optional training we were in was ridiculous and offensive
So it seems you lost consciousness in the middle of one of their sentences but they literally talk about DEI in the workplace as an insidious issue and criticise the Am I racist film for not being able to penetrate that space and talk about the Starbucks guy doing so in a more timely fashion
Aw hell, I’m gonna go ahead and say it:
We HAVE passed Peak Woke.
Notwithstanding the Corporate DEI-ism, as it still survives.
I have absolutely no numbers to back any of this up, but I’m gonna guess that if you find yourself trapped in some 3 hour or 3 day DEI “exercise,” that in 2024 more people will have the gumption to stand up and say, politely, “This is all fucking bullshit.” Not true?
Just gonna keep spamming this link I guess
https://www.persuasion.community/p/woke-is-here-to-stay
Ok, well thanks for depressing me! No, it’s good to have actual metrics on this, for sure. And yes, I am guilty of wishful thinking!
https://www.persuasion.community/p/woke-is-here-to-stay
"Grad school, not college!" Has to be the most hilariously elitist statement I've heard recently. And that's ok, embrace your high SES Jesse 😂
To be fair, getting into graduate programs at elite schools is SIGNIFICANTLY easier than getting into the undergraduate programs at those same schools the overwhelming majority of the time. I’m amazed by the number of people I’ve met who are just generally mediocre and not-particularly-bright who went to “average” schools for undergrad but then got graduate degrees from Ivy League programs. Most of these programs do not have insane admission standards. Some of the more obscure programs will basically accept anyone with a pulse.
Only elites would know or at least certainly experience this.
Being dumb does not stop people from having high socioeconomic status, but point taken re: the various Ivy extension schools.
I’m not even talking about the extension schools. I’m talking about smaller, more obscure, often online-only programs run by the “actual” schools.
I used to think it was half tongue in cheek but in starting to think Jesse really has no idea how elite he is. The only reasonable response from him about being elite is "yeah haha I know." He's just one of those people who is around or at least witnesses extremely rich and powerful people enough that in his own mind he's nowhere near their level. Forgetting the fact that the entire rest of the world exists. At least that's the reason I've seen normally thoughtful elites deny their obvious elitism.
Elite is inherently subjective. It is always relative to who you are comparing yourself too. I think it's a bit human nature to compare yourself against the people who have more rather than those who have less. Part of our negativity bias i suppose. As well it is culturally reinforced. Generally people don't wants to claim the mantle of elite. Aside from the extreme ends of the spectrum most everyone can claim the title of an elite or non elite depending on the comparison groups. A lot of folks seem to want to treat the term as a lot more substantive and objective than it is. I think to use the term meaningful or in non tongue and cheek way you need to be specific on what comparing and the groups/people your comparing to each other. It is term that is thrown around pretty lazily and relied on too heavily for rhetorical arguments
By global standards basically everyone in the US is an elite, or at least everyone who has an income and nonzero assets. The global per capita annual income isn't even legal to pay a full-time worker in the US; I think it's still below the federal minimum wage-- and that's despite it doubling in the last 40 years, while the US federal minimum has hardly budged, thanks to entrenched Republican desire to keep standards of living for the working class sufficiently desperate.
This is a pointless argument, in other words.
And by galactic standards, everyone on the globe is privileged because we have an atmosphere and all the various elements necessary to support carbon based life. But zooming out like that actually muddles the conversation about relative value, because duh no one cares if the subject of conversation is elite compared to someone born on a pile of garbage in the Central African Republic, we're talking about American culture and politics.
A sense of "elitism" is almost entirely about where you started from. Show me someone from a poor, small town family with the same credentials as Jesse and there's almost no chance we would clock them as "elitist" - even if they themselves are "elite". It's proof that the journey matters just as much as the destination.
I don't know if you're from another country, but Americans can absolutely graduate into elitism, and do often. Regardless, that doesn't apply to Jesse, afaik.
From where I’m standing, both hosts of this show are elitists. I’m a poor kid from the sticks who should probably hate all ‘y’all just because. But I don’t. ‘Cuz, in part, I did go to college and (apparently) expanded my social/cultural understanding. So instead of hating them for their obvious privilege, instead I appreciate their open-mindedness, humor and yes, humility. Maybe it’s just refreshing to hear what people actually think, not what they think they’re supposed to think.
If there's going to be a Barpod Sex Party I hope the free bathrobes will have "Pervert for Nuance" embroidered on the back.
Mine will just say “nuance”.
That took me a minute but now I can’t stop laughing
And barriers, lots of barriers.
And loads of kids!
The kids are in the loads. Futurewise, of course.
Hey now!
One angle that I would actually love to see explored is the actual legality of these trainings. From what has been described, some of these mandatory workplace trainings with more ideologically rigid facilitators sound like they tip over into racial harassment/creating a hostile work environment, but no one has really sued over them, maybe because no one wants that reputation or something.
So a documentary covering the legal issues, giving the attendees the opportunity to tell their stories even just anonymously, and putting facilitators on camera to demonstrate their ignorance of civil rights law would be fascinating. But I guess that would probably require Walsh to care about the other participants, or the actual reasons that workplaces hold these trainings, and there would be fewer opportunities for dunking on the libs or putting himself on camera.
In Toronto there was the tragic case of Richard Bilkszto. He *did* file a complaint with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, and it did say there was abuse and workplace harassment at the DEI session. Bilkszto did file a lawsuit against the school board. I hope it will continue, despite his suicide.
https://www.thefp.com/p/a-racist-smear-a-tarnished-career-suicide
Oh yeah, I remember that now, that was awful. Yes, hopefully something does come of his lawsuit, although even if it does, this is probably an example of why people would rather not stick their head above the parapet, so to speak.
Did they ever settle whether it’s racist to say that the US is more racist than Canada
I often think abut the woman doing the training who essentially bullied this guy to death. Does she feel any guilt? Or maybe she ( probably correctly) tells herself that it was his own friends throwing him under the bus who hold the blame. Or his depression.
If this board is anything to go by, it seems like a lot of folks simply want to go from policing other people’s speech to other people’s sexual practices. I’ll take neither side of the culture wars - everybody involved in it, right, left, and, yes, centrists are seriously fucked and need to learn to mind their own fucking business.
Nobody gives a shit about other peoples sexual practices.
Just keep it to yourself and don’t jizz all over kiddie furniture.
That’s seems supremely reasonable to me.
How in the closet does someone with unconventional sexual practices have to be in order to get a pass from the prude brigade here? This sounds a lot like “It’s OK to be gay, just as long as they keep quiet about it” that I remember from just a few decades ago.
Oddly enough I feel this way about pretty much all kink stuff even though I have been rather sexually adventurous in my life. Nothing to do with hetero/queer or anything, I just don't really want to hear anything about what makes people get aroused without some sort of explicit conversational signal that that's what we're talking about. But this is a subset of thinking that "[insert legally permitted but not looked favorably up on by everyone] Pride" is a terrible thing that has birthed lots of narcissism is all kinds of different communities from kinkiness to fandom.
You make a reasonable point, but again, just how in the closet does someone have to be? I’m putting aside cases where people are being deliberately over-sharing or in-your-face, which I don’t care for either. (I find starting a conversation with “My pronouns are….” to be incredibly cringe.) At the same time, it doesn’t strike me that other people knowing about it and not liking it is a reasonable standard at all. It seems like the folks who are put off by someone’s lifestyle have some duty not to make it their business. Also, there’s cases where the law still comes down on people - BDSM has never been fully decriminalized in the UK. Sex workers still get arrested or otherwise harassed by the law. Why are those groups less entitled to organize against this, and even use “I do this and I’m not a monster” as an argument, as countless other movements have done previously? The thing that I seem to be hearing from a lot of the centrist/heterodox crowd is, “Lesbian and gay liberation was needed, everything else is going too far”. As you might have noticed, that idea when expressed in a kneejerk way really ticks me off, but I’m willing to unpack that.
The centrist/heterodox crowd simultaneously regards all past protest movements as necessary and important and also regards all current protest movements as shrill and unreasonable activists who want to go too far. They're against everything until it becomes popular, at which point they were always for it.
Interesting! So, thinking as I am typing here, heterosexuality was the "default" but heterosexual sex was still taboo. It was/is still something you talk about in trusted company. Nobody wants to know about the mechanics of a hetero couples sex life anymore than a gay couple.
So what are kinksters being liberated from exactly? It's entirely inappropriate for me, a heterosexual monogamous female, to go into work or a party or a family gathering and start talking about how I fuck.
It seems to me that there are more than a few folks making the sexual practices of these folks their business, then being really pissed off at what their finding out and somehow putting the onus on the kinksters for not being derp enough in the closet. Me, I think the onus is on busybodies to mind their own fucking business. If someone’s being in-your-face or oversharing, it’s good to draw some boundaries, but I don’t see that’s what’s taking place here.
“So what are kinksters being liberated from exactly?” I hate to be “educate yourself”, but for fuck sake, there’s a long history of people literally being prosecuted for consensual sexual activity, especially BDSM, which in some places is treated as assault, and in some cases, such laws are still on the books. Look up “Operation Spanner” sometime for a historically recent example.
Ah we have a problem here. I don't care about BDSM being illegal. I care more about the men who have been given lenient sentences for killing their girlfriends using a rough sex defence. If that means you have to be extra careful practising your kinks by keeping them secret and making sure you only do them with trusted partners... Good?
“How in the closet does someone with unconventional sexual practices have to be in order to get a pass…”
Would kind of depend on the particular nature of the practices, don’t you think?
“It’s OK to be caged, humiliated, get your ass welted and be dom fucked by a leather nazi, just as long as they keep quiet about it” actually sounds about right. Essentially different than the case of being gay.
That’s pretty arbitrary, if you ask me. And while I’m not saying it’s identical to being gay, you’re argument pretty much IS identical to the kind of argument that used to be made as to why gay people should stay deep in the closet, because of the supposed instinctual revulsion ‘normal’ people might feel toward such a practice. Times changed and social norms changed.
It's worth noting that there are no victims otherwise lack of consent to what sadomasochists are doing. Merely the 'ick' factor, and I don't consider that to be a sufficient moral judgement to condemn and formally or informally penalize a practice.
Dude, there’s nothing wrong with opposing a sloppy off-hours orgy in the kiddie play place, come on. What consenting adults do with poop guns in the privacy of their own homes is something nobody really cares about so long as nobody talks about it at the office water cooler.
First, proof, please, that we’re talking about an actual “kiddie play space” here rather than a claim made by some who’s trying to throw the worst kind of shade on kinky folks they clearly don’t like. (I would suggest if you’re up in arms about sex-being-had in a space where children may later be present, you might have some bigger concerns about motels and bnbs.) Second, your standard for “too public” is if it becomes “office water-cooler gossip”? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s the very opposite of minding your own damned business.
Having sex in a children's play area is okay because people have sex in hotels and children sleep in hotels?
I don't love the habit of describing something by calling it by what it explicitly forebode.
Did Zagarna recruit an asshole apprentice or something?
I don’t know what painful personal issues you’re dealing with that make you want to lash out at everyone here over the tiniest things, but you really need to calm down. These attitudes that you’re projecting onto everyone here are entirely in your head.
I haven’t encountered Zagarna before, but I don’t disagree with him if that’s what you’re asking. I’m merely consistent in my pro-personal freedom and anti-cancel culture politics. Unlike some culture warriors billing themselves as reasonable centrists.
Truth hurts, does it?
No, being an asshole is irritating and toxic
Good thing I don't do that then! Glad we talked that out.
Point me to an argument that equates freedom of speech with freedom to have sex anywhere you like. The latter is just not a thing in any country, as far as I'm aware.
Thank you
Who’s having sex anywhere they like? So far, all that I know is that a group of people had sadomasochistic sex in a rented private space. If that puts a bee in your bonnet, don’t patronize such places. And, yes, I do think freedom of expression does include the right to be out as a sadomasochist without the state coming down on you, which seems to be what’s being asked for here. A more general ”culture of free speech” argument might include the right to be out and not suffer private retaliatory acts (aka “cancel culture“). BTW, if the roles were reversed and the normies were being threatened by the freaks, I think there are a lot of folks here who are pissed at the kinksters would be talking out the other side of their mouths.
You're talking about policing other people's sexual practices. That is absolutely a thing. You can't just fuck anywhere you feel like it. It's wildly different to policing speech.
I think one point you're missing here is that the practice was covert so people didn't have the choice not to take their children to places they would not have been comfortable with.
edit: nobody IRL was going after the participants for what they were into as far as I can tell, it was more of a "not here"?
edit2: I think _most_ of us here dgaf what you do in your private life but there's a fundamental difference between freedom of expression as pertains to sexuality liberty and public expression of sexual behaviour.
You want every business to be required to post one of those running counts: "Days Since Someone Last Had Private, Consensual Sex In This Space"?
I really can't roll my eyes hard enough at these comments.
The statement was "if you don't like it, go elsewhere"; the obvious response being that people can't make that choice when they don't know about the activity in the first place. Most people don't assume that sex parties are happening in spaces their kids play in.
FAIR has brought some lawsuits https://www.fairforall.org/profiles-in-courage/
Oh hey, that’s cool. I thought FAIR had collapsed but it would be great if they’re still around
At least in the US, the standard for proving racial or sexual harassment is so difficult that such a claim would be de facto pointless/a waste of resources to bring. If we had less of a "basically anything short of literally raping your employees or calling them n*****s goes" approach to harassment, it might be a different story.
It would be absurdly ironic, however, if the one exception to the rule that harassment cases were virtually impossible to win was for... harassment in the context of anti-harassment trainings.
Ah, really? I‘ll admit I don’t know that much about modern civil rights act litigation. My assumption is that these cases should be easier to prove, since by default they happen in front of a group, but then plaintiffs would probably have to subpoena and depose their coworkers which would be an awful experience for all involved.
The success rate (by which I effectively mean "got a settlement for more than the price of a coffee at Starbucks," since jury trials don't really happen anymore) for harassment cases is absurdly low-- it's like 5 percent once you account for all of the cases that miss the (very short) statute of limitations, get dismissed before discovery for failing to satisfy the judge that the claim is "plausible," get tossed at summary judgment for failing to create a triable dispute of material fact, or (the smallest percentage, but still like 2/3 of jury verdicts) lose at trial.
This is a complete aberration in the world of litigation-- I'm not familiar with any other field where the statistics for plaintiffs are anywhere near that bad. Basically, the only people willing to bring harassment cases are either chronic malcontents who don't really care if they lose (the majority), or people whose cases are so unbelievably outrageous that they might have a chance even with all of the deck stacked against them (the minority). Then because so many of what cases do get filed are filed by chronic malcontents, the legal system keeps coming up with innovative new ways to throw those cases out without a hearing, which in turn makes it even harder for the real cases to win, which makes it even less likely that abused people will file them.
The fundamental issue with harassment cases in general, and harassment cases involving training sessions are no exception, is not one of proof, but of the legal standard. Companies could admit to every allegation in your complaint (they don't, but they could) and still win on summary judgment anyway because the admitted harassment doesn't rise to the inordinately high level required to be "severe or pervasive" under US law.
TIL! That’s fascinating, thank you
….you keep replying to my comment and I’m not sure you mean to?
Yep, my bad
lol, no worries
Jesse and Katie said it themselves they are too inside on these issues and the figures featured in the documentary to have an opinion on the film the same way an average person would
Kind of similar to when the Cass Report came out and they were like "no biggie, we already knew that". Which was true, they did already know that, but kind of misses the point.
They also were trying to avoid paying for movie tickets because of the political views of Daily Wire, so they’re not starting on even footing.
Agreed. Reddit-tier episode. I enjoy the spirit of this concept but they need to think through it (and do) better. Happy Columbus Day to you, brother in Christ.
Happy indigenous peoples day. Let’s take a moment to remember whatever tribe had most recently conquered their neighbor when we showed up.
Listened to this super early thanks to newborn.
Am ready to mount a rescue operation on those children in the poly/sex party family.
What’s the news on newborns these days? Are we still doing let them (supervised) cry or are we picking them up?
This young you pick them up. Once he has a few months on him i like to let them try to settle for five minutes but in early days you have to assume they need you asap.
That makes sense. The last time I babysat they were doing let them cry. I couldn’t do it, I decided the parents were monsters.
I don't let mine cry it out until they're old enough for sleep training (I'm a little fuzzy on the age because of sleep disruption, but when they're not newborns anymore and are starting to play their parents). Newborns get whatever they want, whenever they want, both because they're snuggly and helpless and because they really do need to eat every few hours.
Also, CIO ("cry it out") is a method I only use for getting the older babies down to sleep. I've heard of people who train their babies not to expect to get picked up if they wake in the middle of the night, but I just can't do that. I give them a couple minutes to make sure they're not crying in their sleep, and then I pick them up like the softie I am, pretty much throughout the period of childhood when they still want me in the middle of the night.
Crying it out didn’t work at all with my babies.
I don’t think letting my baby cry so hard she vomited was very humane so I gave it up.
Yeah I can’t do it either.
Me either.
I
I gave my daughters a few days of picking them up to soothe them. Very soon after the hospital I would sit with them/give back rubs/head rubs, but I wouldn’t pick them up. If they needed food that’s one thing, but they learn to self soothe very quickly. At least my daughter did.
Yeah, newborns just got out of being literally closer to (inside of) their mothers than they'll ever be again so they need to be held a lot. It's kind of a gradual process of separation.
The ignorance of Americans on the subject of rectal sex is truly astonishing.
Shit leaks out. All the time.
Blood leaks out. All the time.
Denial of these basic facts is immoral. Using a cute term like "bondage" does not mitigate the profoundly unhealthy consequences of rectal fucking.
Here is what Shoreline's response should have looked like: "Cafe Aroma hosted a male homosexual fucking party in a children's playroom within an establishment that serves food. Human feces, blood and semen has inevitably contaminated the furniture and floors at Cafe Aroma. This is a gross violation of fundamental health and hygiene standards. Cafe Aroma's business license is hereby immediately revoked. The owners may re-apply for a business license after providing proof of a thorough decontamination of the premises."
For the record, this was not a gay male event, and in fact, the organizer was a woman and the cafe is own by a male/female couple. Straight people are into kink too, and I suspect gay men have more sense than to host their play parties at a coffee shop.
Of course is was a male homosexual event, hosted by medically illiterate money-grubbers.
Calling rectal fucking a "kink" is euphemistic evasion. This is an inherently destructive act that greatly accelerates the spread of many diseases. 99% of the population never engages in rectal fucking, but we all pay the cost of extraordinary medical care for this minority of promiscuous morons.
Dude, it was literally not a gay male event. I'm not sure why you think it was but straight people have butt sex.
Let’s sacrifice the homophobe to our lord ZARGARNA.
WWZD? And where?
Please use only Z—, or Z…a, or similar for any future references to Z-. Call me superstitious, but it just seems wise not to spell it out.
Dont feed the troll.
Katie going hard in the comments. I have never seen this level of response.
A normal [heterosexual] man who pesters his wife or girlfriend for "butt sex" is a creep. Mentally healthy women do not not suggest, "Hey, sweetie, why don't you stick it in my asshole." When the cock comes out it is covered with shit. No healthy woman wants this filthy thing touching her body or her bedclothes. She sure as hell doesn't want that stinking disease vector to go into her vagina or mouth.
The normalization of "anal" in pornography and male homosexual culture must be actively challenged. The lie that "anal" is normal is a terrible burden for women, and it's an unending death sentence for homosexual men.
The belief that "everybody does everything, so let's just chill" is an idiotic - and dangerous - fiction.
“Unending death sentence”
Hahahhahah
But… some women like anal.
Can we get the story on why you’re so worked up about other people enjoying something you don’t like?
Very, very few women actually like anal IRL. It IS actually super annoying that it's now supposed to just, always be on the menu.
Damaged women claim to like "anal." They are willing to please horrible men.
Or, let’s not, m’kay?
That was Thought For The Day with Conrad STRoke everybody, thanks Conrad.
I bet he has a LOT of thoughts on pegging!
Dude we GET it you’ve been through conversion at the local baptist church and you’re straight now, no need to make such a public spectacle of yourself about it.
Wait ‘til he hears about fisting.
Hi Katie! ☺️
You seem really hung up on this specific issue, judging from this as well as the text in your bio. I encourage you to chill out on these boards...we're a relaxed bunch around here. You're welcome to your opinions, as we all are, but take it down a few rhetorical notches.
No. I hate lethal lies.
Writing "hate" instead of "loathe" feels like a missed alliterative opportunity.
Can’t stand it when trolls miss opportunities for alliteration! And would it kill them to throw a rhyming scheme on their screeds?
We all loath lethal lies round these parts.
k cool
Seriously! For all the normalization we’ve done regarding anal sex, it’s a vector for the spread of disease and partaking can cause permanent damage regardless of the sex of the butthole haver. It’s a one way street!
I think it’s perfectly fine for gay men, but I think a lot of hetero women feel pressured to do it from their male partners. I don’t like that dynamic.
I completely agree!
Isn't pressuring your partner into doing things they don't want to do a healthy part of a relationship?
Thank you! I feel so bad for the younger women who think they're supposed to be into anal. I am soooo glad that my dating pool is GenX and older. Oh I'm sure some of them got porn-addicted too - but it's not very common, or at least they realize it's not real life at all.
Anal sex can absolutely be safely enjoyed by anyone as a receiving partner (if that is something they find enjoyable). But If a man is enough of an asshole to try to jam it in without lube (which can cause damage) he should immediately be kicked in the balls and see how he likes that.
The fact that rectal fucking requires artificial lubrication is proof that it is destructive and stupid. Calling it "absolutely safe" is horrific advice to give to a young person.
You are really fixated on what people do with their butts!
If it burdens the national economy with 100 billion dollars of unnecessary medical treatment, yes, I will fixate on exactly that costly stupidity.
You contend that anal sex is burdening the economy with 100 billion dollars? I need a citation on this.
Haha ok sure
Car engines, bike chains, chain saws, hinges. All things that need lube. Take it they’re destructive and stupid too?
Things That Are "destructive and stupid," By Conrad Spoke (on account of they require equipment and/or experience), A Partial List:
Meatpacking (the actual kind, not the metaphorical kind)
Virtually all agriculture
Chemistry
Fencing
Visiting Yellowstone National Park
Anal sex
For how many more decades are homosexual men going to giggle themselves to death?
I look forward to your extended diatribes on the subjects of BASE jumping, free-solo rock climbing, and the operation of commercially available internal combustion vehicles at high speeds, all of which are vastly more dangerous hobbies than anal sex (although they do have the disadvantage of not being engaged in primarily by a population you want to stigmatize). Given the relative risk rates here, I'm expecting some real stemwinders!
`The fact that X requires artificial lubrication is proof that it is destructive and stupid.'
No sex for a great number of post-menopausal women then? Sounds like a criterion that is perhaps overly limiting.
Also you misread me! “Can Absolutely be safely enjoyed” is not identical in meaning to “absolutely safe”. And how am I supposed to know how young Blink there is? I was under the impression she was a grown-ass adult.
I am! I pay taxes, my back hurts in the morning, I think about getting back into loom knitting all the time ;)
` it’s a vector for the spread of disease and partaking can cause permanent damage'
Vaginal intercourse can also spread disease and lead to permanent damage (both to the vagina and the penis).
`It’s a one way street!'
As many men find out in latter life when they need to take suppositories regularly, it literally is not.
Sure it's less hygienic and precarious than vaginal intercourse, and not something that everyone should or does feel comfortable engaging in, but its been widely engaged in throughout history and in nature. It's fine and good that such a common act is becoming destigmatised after being criminalised for so long.
Women being pressured into any type of sexual activity is the issue, not the particular activity.
My guy, I don’t really care if you find it gross, you pretty obviously have somewhat of an odd hang up about this. Let it go man. You’ll be happier for it.
Public nose picking is gross, but the only harm is to the nose picker's dignity.
Rectal fucking is physically destructive, it accelerates disease transmission, and all of society pays for the mammoth health care consequences.
Rolling your eyes is not an argument.
You are acting like I’m in the street waving a flag advocating for butt sex orgies. That’s not what’s going on here. I understand that it is a somewhat unique health concern.
You can both understand that, and not come across as a jerk at the same time. It’s really not difficult.
Stating basic medical facts does not make one a jerk.
Denying them does.
I don’t think anyone is denying the health aspects of this, but you’ve got to chill man.
Since the appearance of AIDS/HIIV in the early 1980's, homosexual men have consistently denied responsibility by denying facts: 1) Rectal fucking is biologically filthy; 2) Homosexual promiscuity is the singular cause of the epidemic.
Until homosexual communities take responsibility, treat promiscuity as a taboo, and end the practice of rectal fucking, they will still be committing mass suicide forty years hence.
If you want the death toll to mount, go ahead and "chill."
There's a reason that anal sex tends to spread STDs so readily. It's pretty dirty and tends to cause wounds.
Im really offended by the term “rectal sex.” Can we please stick to some more up to date phraseology like “buttfuckin’?”
No. Cute slang is euphemism. Homosexual men are as evasive as Victorian spinsters.
“Buttfuckin” is infinitely funnier though. Try it with a southern accent.
It’s not cutesy, it’s delightfully crass!
Death by organ failure isn't funny.
Challenge accepted!
I’ll grant you that Kenneth Pinyan’s was likely incredibly excruciating and not very funny to Kenneth Pinyan, or “Mr Hands.” Acute peritonitis is not a great way to go. But surely you can see some shades of dark humor in a horsefucker being horsefucked to death.
If not, then you might just be a terrible improv partner.
Thank you for your contribution. I will use this text for a pop-up picture book.
Would you consider yourself an expert on rectal sex? How many hours a day do spend researching this topic?
Good grief! Responses Ike this are why I’m done with the myth of the tolerant, open-minded political center.
The guy you are replying to is not “center” anything. He’s a RW wacko who’s been haunting these boards for awhile
The logic of this comment completely escapes me.
It’s a play on “So much for the tolerant left”. I see self-described centrists as often as intolerant of what they see as sexual deviance as the social justice left is toward politically incorrect speech. Albeit, I’m also noticing that this fellow’s hangups about anal sex may not be representative. But BDSM and porn do get a lot of hate here, and get a lot of safetyist tut-tutting that heterodox folks claim to be against in other contexts.
`Shit leaks out. All the time.
`Blood leaks out. All the time.'
Only if you're a lazy bottom or an inconsiderate top do these happen `all the time'.
Okay but the AI image for this is superb. Please discuss the meaning of ricastism on your next ep thank you
As a person who actually went to the theater ($7 with club card on Tuesdays) to see this, I have really been looking forward to this review.
I liked the movie much better than Jesse & Katie—-probably a whole star more—I do think their review was pretty fair.
I agree with Katie’s critique of Sasha Baron Cohen but ultimately he’s better at this than Matt Walsh. He brings scenes to a stronger point and he’s cringier & funnier than Walsh.
The value of the film, and the main way I differ from the BARpod hosts, is the documentation of the insanity as the dehumanizing grift that it is. In the name of social justice, the elite have created a dehumanizing and frankly racist way of looking at the world & there is a tremendous value in Walsh calling this out and showing how harmful it is. I feel like Jesse, Katie and a good many of this podcast listeners have heard and know all of this but seeing some acknowledgment of the craziness beyond the niche of the podcast world (and Nellie Bowles' book) is important. And while we’re moving to a different stage in the newness & validity of DEI in the discourse, I know there are people who could benefit from seeing this film—mainly people that would refuse to see or review it.
The problem with the film is that Walsh is only semi successful in pulling off a take down of DEI. He doesn’t always provide the context or background about the subjects he touches on & the implications in politics, law & media. I’m glad the film was not an anti Biden Harris screed but a few more teeth would have been welcome.
Finally I loved the film’s uniting call to find our common humanity. I know Walsh’s work on the Daily Wire doesn’t always bear this out but I appreciate this message anywhere I find it. ***
` I know Walsh’s work on the Daily Wire doesn’t always bear this out'
It almost never bears this out and that's why it comes across as insincere. Of course, I suspect that I'm part of a group (trans people) that Walsh finds on the outskirts of humanity, at best.
A fair critique of Walsh for sure. I only heard an excerpt of one of his rants against Dylan Mulvaney and it was vile.
However, I still agree with the film's critique of the DEI industry and the way it pits people against each other and stokes racial tension.
I certainly agree with the critique, just not the man making it or the way in which he makes it.
To the extent that the movie could be considered a documentary, I think that the idea that people will go along with nonsensical BS to reduce feelings of social discomfort was kind of the point.
That is to say, if Robin DiAngelo is willing to pay black people to avoid embarrassment in a weird situation rather than because she is making a completely genuine act of reparation, it still does not reflect well on her.
To your point, I think it illustrates quite well that “even the preacher has to bend the knee”. Or some variation of that principle. I thought it was a great way to hopefully slap her with the insanity of what she is preaching. She even said “this is weird.” Sadly it seems unlikely that a full understanding of that statement was not lost on her.
Exactly! And when the tables are turned, these types are perfectly happy with inflicting the same kind of discomfort on their audiences.
Jesse and Katie. I think you missed the point of Am I Racist because you’re much too involved in the space already.
1. I agree it was much worse than What Is A Woman.
2. I agree it could have been timelier.
But, I don’t think Am I Racist was meant to show all the tendrils of this thought in society. And, I don’t think it was supposed to be a deep dive rebuttal to the arguments. I think it was meant to just make a mockery of it.
What Is A Woman lended itself to this much better because the foundations that movement are based on are so transparently insane you can just ask “what is a woman” and it collapses. In that manner, Matt could talk directly with the *experts* on the topic and it immediately revealed how idiotic the whole movement is.
Am I Racist isn’t so easily formulated. Of course as you point out, the normal person on the street doesn’t think like these DEI experts. As you’ve pointed out, this has already been written about at well received publications. However, these ideas are still everywhere and at least in my mind people may not agree with the entire overarching ideology but they will still believe these people are well thought through, that they probably have a point somewhere in there, and that they’re smart people with an honest outlook on these issues. I think this movie was again made just to mock it. To show people how ridiculous it all is without getting lost in the weeds. Without getting bogged down in discussions of red-lining and the history of slavery. Without talking about police violence and potential instances of unconscious bias.
For the general public, instead of going point by point and knocking them down showing why the ideology is wrong, I think the movie is meant to basically say “you know when your company does these DEI things? Understand they were put together by THESE sorts of deranged lunatics who make race the center of everything and are almost purely driven off of a monetary incentive. It is a complete racket, there is no reason to believe there is any good here”. And just leave it at that.
If Walsh went into a history of red lining, that clearly is a bad thing, and some people would lose the thread. Get into the history of slavery, clearly a horrendous thing, and some people would lose the thread. That is DEIs biggest strength. They muddy the waters with actual bad things that have occurred that they’re claiming to address. At the very least it has the potential to make people believe there is more to what DEI folks are doing than what they actually are, nothing.
Again, a weaker movie overall. But, I think was successful in making this movement look as ridiculous as it is. I also think you all are understating the impact of DiAngelo, Kendi, Rao, etc. by 1/10,000th. The 2020 protests were built on the backs of their work and is the biggest movement of my lifetime by 5-10x. Made OccupyWallStreet look like kids having a tea party. Hell, 2014 Michael Brown shooting and the protests afterwards barely have a toehold in memory after 2020. BLM was built on the backs of these people. The local company I work for doing DEI training was built on them. There is an entire legal field dedicated to what they have helped implement. (Hence the DEI training meant to provide the company protection from discrimination lawsuits). Think every person I know knows hiring at their company has changed away from talent/merit to “diversity” (in the emptiest sense) to protect from lawsuits. Yes, this is seemingly all on the back-end down slope from the peak. But, very prevalent still and worth addressing.
Lastly, pretty sure this was recorded prior to this happening. But CBS is currently self immolating after the Coates interview. You could say that is about Israel and Gaza…. But that is definitively not why Coates was being interviewed or why his absolute trash is considered in high regard. He himself says he doesn’t know shit about Israel/Gaza, that’s basically the tagline of The Message. CBS didn’t have Coates on because of his enlightened mind that’s delved through all the intricacies of Israel Gaza and will be able to inform people on what he’s learned. CBS had Coates on because of Between the World and Me and Beautiful Struggle. And there was backlash against the interview because his ideology that is the foundation of Between the World and Me and Beautiful Struggle was questioned. That foundation is absolutely identical to any DiAngelo, Kendi, Rao, etc would lay out.
My Committee on Belonging still wants us to bring our whole selves to work and CELEBRATE 🎉 learning from our mistakes. They are not yet done. Oh and please volunteer at your LGBTQA2S+ events.
My first JEDI training at work was on the topic of "Is the term JEDI problematic?"
“Yes, because thousands of Americans declare it as their religion on the Census and I was led to believe this is a secular workplace.”
At my office they've now made the change to "bring your best self to work" after some people got way too comfortable bring their whole selves.