Leftist chick self-flagellates because she doesn’t find her dress-wearing boyfriend sexy

Female author at The Guardian: My boyfriend’s wedding dress unveiled my own shortcomings over masculinity.
(Via Ace: http://ace.mu.nu/archives/386163.php)

This is a hilarious work of Stalinist self-criticism. A chick whose brain is colonized by the leftist mind-virus gropes toward rediscovering what any sane, normal human being could have told her: A man in a dress is ridiculous. But she rejects the obvious truth and rebukes herself for being insufficiently woke. This is what leftism does to people’s minds.

I’ve excepted it here; comments in bold.

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I’m quick to blame men for their toxic behavior, but in this case, I, the woman, was part of the problem.

My gaze scanned the racks of clothing and stopped abruptly on something I’d never expected to see: my boyfriend was clutching a wedding dress – that he wanted to buy for himself.

“Emily!” he cried with victorious glee. “I’ve found the one!”

Ian thrust the white garment into the air like a trophy. Its lace sleeves sashayed from the tapered bodice and fluffy tulle grazed the tiles of the thrift store floor.

“Oh, wow,” I managed to spit out. LOL.

We were searching for dresses to wear during the annual Mother’s Day Climb up Mount St. Helens, a tradition in which everyone scaling the volcano sports flowing garments.

I knew Ian would be among the most outrageous on the mountain. My boyfriend is aggressively fun and a flair fanatic, Uh-oh which I find wildly attractive on most occasions. Stop lying.

But I found myself unexpectedly uneasy with his new fondness for feminine frocks – a reaction that challenged the progressive ideals I’d prided myself on for decades. Yes! Admit your guilt, fascist! I’d long thought I was contributing to a progressive shift in how we define masculinity, finally allowing men to be emotional and vulnerable, or to ask for help, or to hug their male friends … or to wear dresses.

Men are perfectly capable of asking for help. If I ever need to know how to field strip an AK-47, I’ll ask a guy friend. If I ever want to know about trendy hair styles, NO, that was to see if you’re paying attention! Like that scene in In and Out where Kevin Kline is tricked into saying “What a fabulous window treatment!”

As far as hugging male friends, you’re allowed to do that under certain circumstances – the most obvious one being that you’re on a professional sports team and you just won the playoffs. Then your team is expected to embrace each other, while popping champagne and dumping a barrel of Gatorade onto your coach. You can also do it in other circumstances if you do it right. If you don’t have an intuitive sense of where the line is, just err on the side of no hugs, duh.

While I’m on the subject, Dave Barry: “When is it okay to kiss another male? When he is your brother and you are Al Pacino and this is the only really sportsmanlike way to let him know that, for business reasons, you have to have him killed.” (The Kiss of Death.) And I’m kinda leery of that. Can’t you just have him canceled without going through the bourgeois formalities?

Ian giggled. “Isn’t it beautiful?” His chest hair battled the sheer neckline. God, this is gross. I imagined him skiing down Mount St Helens in it, the lengthy rag concealing his chiseled calves and hardened quadriceps, and strained to find it an appealing vision.

This was not the first time I’d found myself a little uncomfortable with the sight of Ian in women’s wear. I hate to repeat myself, but: LOL. It’s not an unusual sight to spot him sporting a skirt, dress, or sarong at a party, picnic, or trailhead. Acknowledge the obvious, honey. He uses his unconventional apparel as a display of his individuality and a reflection of his fondness for fun. What’s a three-letter synonym for “fun” or “festive”? Starts with “G”. I adore both of those qualities, but I was realizing I was less fond of seeing them exhibited through floral numbers or tight sequined garments or wedding dresses.

While it was attraction-at-first sight with Ian, his closet full of feminine gear TALK ABOUT BURYING THE LEDE! put a tiny dent in his desirability from the very beginning… there was a disconnect between what I thought I was OK with a man wearing, and what I actually found appealing on his body.

Honey, your vagina does not want a man in a dress. Your vagina is smarter than your brain. I don’t often say this to women, but: Go with your vagina.

On the first weekend we hooked up, I had to yank a green sparkly dress over his head to unclothe him.

You need to be much, much LESS open-minded.

“That was the first time I’ve undressed a man – from a dress!” I shrieked the next morning. “Oh girl, what an exciting milestone! Congratulations!” hollered Eli, an effervescent gay man who dons many dresses himself.

Intellectually, I enjoyed that Ian was rejecting gender norms and expectations. But physically, my desire didn’t match. Those feelings illuminated some unanticipated boundaries of where I define attractiveness in men and when I still crave traditional masculinity.

You might ask yourself why traditional masculinity is traditional.

My ex-boyfriend had the emotional depth of a paper airplane and couldn’t engage with the deep pain I was enduring – or any other emotion, period. Dweeby, and probably not true, but a typical chick statement, so we’ll make allowances. When I started hanging out with Ian and he immediately wanted to talk about feelings, it was a gulp of ice-cold lemonade on a 98-degree day. Dweeby but a typical chick statement. I’d been craving this vulnerability and openness from the men I dated. Dweeby but a typical chick statement. Conversations like that one drew me to him, as did his emotional openness, his fondness for communication, and his public displays of affection for close male friends. Dweeby but WAIT, FUCKING WHAT!? Unless your boyfriend is a mob boss who’s having rat-finks iced, this signals a problem.

My boyfriend’s wedding dress Honey, pause and reflect here: Your relationship involves sequences of words like “My boyfriend’s wedding dress.” pushed me to perform a scrupulous inventory of my deepest ideas about masculinity and helped me identify my shortfalls as a woman who wants to help rewrite gender norms. As I went through this exercise, I chatted with a handful of girlfriends about it, who could all identify their own small hang-ups with masculinity: their need for men who are bigger and taller than they are, or who are better than them at sports, or who don’t cry in front of them. LOL.

As we interrogated our feelings about masculinity, we recognized gaps between our ideals and reality. I’m quick to blame men for perpetuating toxic behavior, but in this case, I, the woman, was part of the problem.

Yeah, you’re an enabler.

Mother’s Day dawned sunny and crisp in the Washington Cascades. It was a beautiful day for a wedding dress. Depends who’s wearing it.

After we reached the summit, Ian plunged down the frozen slope, his long, white train flowing behind him, whipping from side-to-side like a lacy windsock.

“Do you find your boyfriend as attractive as I do?” whispered Eli, as we watched Ian in his flowing skirt, his laughing smile nearly detectable through the back of his floral sunhat. You can’t make this shit up.

My eyes chased my boyfriend down the mountain, my sensitive, silly, affectionate, emotional, vulnerable boyfriend – skiing in his wedding dress.

“I do,” I promised[, lying my ass off.]

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Someone needs to tell this woman that the thing she suspects about her boyfriend is, in fact, true.

Bonus: Sidebar at the Guardian article: “Masculinity is a trap – which is why more men should wear skirts.” The haute reaches of the left really are just trolling their own followers now to see how much they can get away with before the followers are like, “Wait a minute.”

Political professional wants political professionals to have veto power in elections

Well… at least a few more scraps of the mask have come off.

George F. Will says, “Harumph! Heavens to Betsy! The peons are voting!” Recently in the Washington Post, Will wailed in pain that people are allowed to select their own political candidates, and cried out for someone to do something about this. Will, who has a doctorate in political science and is a former university instructor of political philosophy, wants “political professionals” to have more say in deciding whom you’re allowed to vote for. I quote from his pile of garbage below; comments in bold.

Opinion: The lure of kamikaze candidates, by George F. Will
Feb. 7, 2020

The nation… needs a nominating process that minimizes the probability of kamikaze candidacies and maximizes the probability of selecting plausible presidents. Hence it needs a retreat from the populist idea that the voice of the people is easy to ascertain and should be translated, unmediated and unrefined, directly into nominee selection.

That idea is part of democracy. (Neurotoxin is not a Dark Enlightenment blog that thinks some other system will have better results than democracy.) Don’t worry! George Will wants to save you from choosing your own rulers! Your stupid notion, you rube, is “the populist idea that the voice of the people is easy to ascertain and should be translated, unmediated and unrefined, directly into nominee selection.” Will’s infinitely more sophisticated notion is that the voice of the political class is easy to ascertain and should be translated, unmediated and unrefined, directly into nominee selection.

…And because I look like Gollum!

In 1972, Democrats made their process more plebiscitary — more primaries, less influence for political professionals — to elicit and echo the vox populi. This, however, produced a nominee favored by the party’s most intense minority, the anti-Vietnam War cohort: South Dakota Sen. George McGovern lost 49 states. Republicans didn’t have “political professionals” choosing their nominee either, and they WON 49 states. Twelve presidential election cycles later, both parties are still uncomfortably holding the populist wolf by the ears.

Political scientist Raymond J. La Raja and Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution recommend a recalibration. “Recalibration,” interesting word choice. They do not favor what political realities would not permit: abandoning primaries. …Rather, they recommend leavening (“leavening”) mass participation with vetting (“vetting”) by professionals That is, they want “professionals” to select the people for whom you’re allowed to vote.— “political careerists with skin in the game” What “skin in the game”? What the hell are you talking about? Do “elite” experts ever suffer any negative consequences from having made wrong predictions? From offering advice to people that hurts them? Did the medical experts who told people to gorge on carbs ever suffer for their fuck-witted and health-ruining advice? Have the eco-alarmists who predicted we’d all be dead by now been laughed out of academia? And how do “experts” have more “skin in the game” than anyone else, in elections? We all have to live in the country after we choose a President. Will’s “professionals” are the people who told us that Hillary Clinton was veritably guaranteed to win in 2016. How’d that work out for you, geniuses?

Indeed, “political professionals” plainly have less skin in the game than the average person, and the wrong kind of skin.
(1) University professors and others in that realm swing heavily to the left. They told us that communism was a wonderful system, while it was slaughtering 100 million people. Will: “Give them more political power!” Their incentive would be to pick the most plausible leftist candidate and the most foaming-at-the-mouth, obviously insane rightist candidate, to guarantee a leftist victory.
(2) They have less skin in the game than the average person, because they’re not in the private sector. Voters in the private sector have an incentive to think about which candidates are likely to be good for the economy, since their livelihoods depend on that. University professors keep drawing their paychecks in any case, rain or shine, recession or expansion. They have no incentive to think carefully about it. They laughed at Trump’s economic policy proposals, before he presided over a record-breaking economic performance (low unemployment, high stock markets).
(3) They have the wrong kind of skin because all a politician has to do to get their approval is to promise more funding for college and university political science departments.
Not only does this crowd brazenly announce their desire to rule us against our will, they insult our intelligence while announcing it.

Will actually thinks it’s an attractive idea to the average person to give more power to the “political professionals” in our Political Science departments, filled with Marxists, man-hating feminists, and terrorists from the 1960s who went on bombing campaigns and then got tenure in academia. My entire political philosophy – and I’m hardly alone in this – can be described as “keep people like that out of power.”

Continuing, these “professionals” will be
serving as gatekeepers or quality-control evaluators of candidates Tell ya what: We’ll decide candidates’ quality ourselves. before the primaries begin. “In 2018, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee worked aggressively to weed out weak and extreme candidates in swing districts.” I think Will’s unstated conclusion here is, “…and that worked well for the Dems.” Yeah, but Clinton was the professional/Establishment candidate in 2016 and that did not work out so well for the Dems.

Doing something similar in presidential politics is difficult. The process has no gatekeepers. “Harumph!” … The 2016 process illustrated the difficulty of aggregating voters’ preferences when there are many candidates: A demagogic charlatan won Jesus! Will’s butt is still chafed because someone from outside the Beltway won the Presidency. Will, this is a feature from the average American’s point of view, not a bug! Also, it’s been more than three years since November 2016. Get over it, man. without winning a majority of primary votes until after the nomination was effectively settled…

In 1924, the parties’ professionals blocked the presidential ambitions of industrialist Henry Ford, a racist and anti-Semite. Oh Lord, here we go with “racist.” People in the political class nowadays really do regard that word as a kind of magic incantation. Also, EVERY white person in 1924 was a “racist” by the standards of today’s chattering classes. In 1976, Democratic insiders helped clear the field in Florida’s presidential primary to enable Jimmy Carter to end the candidacy of the racist Abracadabra! George Wallace…

LOL. Seriously, “racist”? Will: “I’ve got an ironclad weapon; I’ll just say something something RACIST! No one can resist that incantation!” Will, the left calls every white person racist these days. Many explicitly say “All white people are racist.” White people’s increasing anger at this horseshit is one of the reasons Trump won.

Also, your argument amounts to, “Without my plan, sometimes candidates you disapprove of will be elected.” But in both your examples, they weren’t elected. You can’t even come up with one example in which your alleged problem even exists! Also, all systems will sometimes pick people I abhor. Also, is it the case that in the entire history of non-democratic governments, no “racist” ever took power?

La Raja and Rauch suggest various “filters” by political professionals to mitigate the “democracy fundamentalism” i.e. democracy of today’s nomination process: e.g., more political professionals as “superdelegates” eligible to vote on conventions’ first ballots; pre-primary votes of confidence in candidates by members of Congress and governors; OH DEAR LORD! THE GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO TELL US HOW TO ALTER THE GOVERNMENT!? Right, bloody brilliant! Will, you are a fucking idiot. Isn’t it sad how the least qualified people get to be prominent members of the chattering classes? Every person on my blog roll, including Bauer Hockey Equipment, is a better political thinker than George Will. Let’s let people in government decide who gets to be in government. What could go wrong?!

…Limiting and influencing voters’ choices by involving professional politicians early in the nomination process would require risk-averse political professionals to go against today’s populist i.e. democratic sensibility. But if this November the choice is between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the professionals might consider letting go of the wolf’s ears.

Sanders is an unrepentant admirer of the most genocidal regimes in the history of the human species. Trump sometimes tweets things that George F. Will thinks are coarse. Will treats them as if they’re equal, as if Trump calling someone a loser on Twitter is equivalent to Sanders praising Mao, the most murderous person ever to live.

Will, if you had the self-awareness God gave a flatworm, you’d realize that sentences like that are EXACTLY why the average person will never let people like you decide whom they can vote for.