Pointless But It Does My Head In

[Benny B]

What does typically constitute "male" leadership to begin with?
.

Male leadership typically serves to maintain male power. But if the entire system is set up to benefit men, having a female leader isn't likely to change that dynamic very much on its own.

[Mr. Tea]

(of course maybe there was discrimination on another axis, and you do seem to be implying that there was some class element to it).

I think this was a case of middle-class people who're very, very into identity politics forgetting about the inequalities of wealth and class because it's just not really on their radar. I wonder if there was element of this when I mentioned in a post a while back that white boys from poor families have worse average school achievement and are less likely to go to university than kids from any other demographic, which Benny dismissed as a "typical Tea post". Now that fact does not cancel out, by any means, the relative paucity of women and non-white people among professors, judges or CEOs - in other words, it's not a denial of the privilege that comes with being white and/or male. But it does mean you have to look at the socioeconomic background of the people who stand a chance of achieving any sort of job like that in the first place, and appreciate that there is a dimension of privilege other than gender/ethnicity/culture.

All of which is not to say that identity politics should be forgotten about while the great task of overthrowing capitalism and abolishing class remains unachieved - just that it's good to keep the one issue in mind even while you're mainly discussing the other.

As to the rest,it's impossible to work out what your overall position is...

To be entirely honest, my position is not really clear even to me, and I admit I probably need to rethink some things. A big part of it is just the dissonance between a world which in many respects is getting more and more authoritarian and reactionary all the time, and the vast amounts of time and energy being invested by a great number of people into social activism of various kinds.

Relatively minor point, but more female leaders would only lead to the results you suggest, if the overall power balance/hegemonic attitudes shifted enough to allow women to be leaders on their own terms, rather than 'forced' (if they want to succeed) to adopt exactly the same characteristics as has typically constituted male leadership. It's a complex one though.

Yeah, I'm sure I've heard somewhere a variant along the lines of "to succeed in a man's world, a woman has to be more manly than the men" - something like that, anyway. Which is naturally an oversimplification but I think probably contains a certain amount of truth. It's notable that the two female PMs this country has had so far haven't exactly been great forces for progress (ahem). Which is a bugger, because it's not like we haven't got plenty of great female MPs.

[Martin D]

Morrissey

[Mr. Tea]

Why are modern cars almost universally either bland-looking at best, if not downright hideous? Watch a film from the 40s/50s/60s - the flash cars are stunning and even the family runarounds have a charm that's pretty rare these days. Why can't manufacturers make cars that are as reliable/safe/efficient/easy to drive as modern cars but have a bit of aesthetic flair on the outside? I'm not wholly keen on unimaginative retro-fetishism but even if all the good ideas have been had already, they could do a lot worse than just copy the designs from 50-60 years ago.

En route to work this morning I found myself behind a Honda Civic with this year's plates on it, that looked a bit like it had been modelled on Judge Dredd's car. I mean, it was kind of cool, but at the same time it made me think of a film director in 1995 wondering what cars might look like in "the year" 2017. Sort of cartoonish. It did at least look a bit different from most of the other traffic, though.

honda-civic-hatchback-prototype-inline2-photo-666478-s-original.jpg

[firefinga]

...That crappy FB is STILL growing, and I am not referring to Asia or Latin America.

[baboon2004]

(Well, this complaint is certainly not pointless, but this thread has long since morphed into a general 'does my head in' thread, whether pointless or very pointed.)

The number of people I've seen on social media recently, including people I know, who claim that nazis can and should be debated. What do people not get about the difference between, say, a political group with political demands, however radical, and a group of people that simply wants to enact violence against/eradicate another group of human beings (for reasons totally unconnected with that group's actions), which IS their ideology? You can't have fucking truth and reconciliation with nazis, ffs. So many people sounding just like Donald Trump, whilst of course maintaining that they despise Donald Trump and are just standing up for free speech (repeat ad infinitum). "And by the way, how can liberals really criticise the White Power movement pretty much the same as when someone from Black Lives Matter said they'd like to kill police officers?"

Dear god, the insanity of it.

Makes me fear for the very near future (which I already did, obviously).

[Leo]

what is it about guys -- seemingly often english guys but not exclusively -- dressing up as nazis "for a laugh"? it's always for some party, hahaha and all. are they completely clueless? do they think it's "just a bit naughty"? or is there a real undercurrent of transgression going on?

[Mr. Tea]

Possibly many British people think it's a privilege earned by having "beaten" the Nazis (despite the fact that if any country has the right to do this, it's Russia - or more accurately the former USSR).

Possibly we're just a nation of massive wazzocks.

[Slothrop]

The number of people I've seen on social media recently, including people I know, who claim that nazis can and should be debated.

Oh jesus gods yes. "Wouldn't it be better to let them have a platform to say their piece and then counter them with our Rational Arguments?" Like, fuck, yes, Rational Arguments, it's so simple! Why did no-one think of this before? If only someone in Munich had thought to break out some Rational Arguments in the 20s we could have saved everyone a shit-ton of fuss. FFS.

[Martin D]

Flat Earth

[firefinga]

So, in the 1990s there were too many people who went on to study medicine and become medical doctors in Austria - resulting in jobless doctors or MD's leaving the country. So, as a reaction, the (more or less) neoliberal government (I write more or less bc it was a bit less neoliberal when the social democrats were in a coalition government, however the conservatives were part of any coalition in all those years) reduced the study spaces offered by the public universities. At the same time private universities offered the same curriculum, but demanded horrendous tuition fees.

So now, 20 years later, the reduced output of medial faculties here is starting to undermine the health care system - more doctors are needed again, especially in the mid-term future. Which can only be done by expanding the numer of study spaces for medicine again. And here's what the conservative-led government is going to do here now: instead of funding the public universities, they will "buy" extremely expensive study spaces at a private university. And here's the kicker: that private university is being owned (at least partly) by Red Bull head honcho Dietrich Mateschitz. Criticism got countered by the government by claiming the shortage of doctors need immediate remedy which could only be done via the descibed way above.

That's how neoliberalism works.