Forgive me for making the same basic point I made in somewhat more profane terms recently, but via a reader I learn that Princeton intends to make its application process even more opaque - and, of course, in the name of fairness and diversity, and certainly not for their own cynical self-interest:
lol at my state school, football players were provided *by the school* with note-takers who went to their classes for them. To think famous people aren’t getting every handout in the book.
Well, there is one criteria: whether or not these kids can actually do the work. But this only applies if these schools don't grade-inflate and let everyone pass.
Since I actually personally know some of the people who make these sorts of decisions (and at Princeton specifically, I know people who know those decision makers), part of your cynicism is misplaced. The impetus REALLY IS greater RACIAL diversity. They didn't need to dump the SAT to game legacy admits, athlete admits (which drive sports success which drives future donations: as UC President Clark Kerr once famously put it, "the job of a university president is to provide sex for the students, football for the alumni, and parking for the faculty"), etc. Dropping the SAT is ENTIRELY a respone to SJW pressure. They are horrified as being thought "racist", and worry that the SAT really might be racist (because most of them don't understand statistics, and the ones who do turn a blind eye).
Of course the policies they are adopting actually are racist by the dictionary definition of the word, but not by the modern wokist paradigm.
Of course it can. According to Kendi, a racial disparity in outcomes is positive proof of a racist process. This definition of racism is widely accepted within woke/SJW circcles. If whites turn out to do better (as a group) than blacks (as a group) on the WAEC, then it is a racist test, period.
it's not about racism it's about tests that the suburban hyper-organized straight-A average intelligence kids can't game and get a perfect score on. So basically any test that measures reading comprehension can't be used.
In my perfect world we'd have a federalized education system with a central non-profit body that creates a standardized test and then colleges admit you based on 50% that 50% GPA
I wouldn't do so but I appreciate you proactively telling me not to. I think there's a case to be made for state run education and that would definitely be a step up from private institutions (I think Jacobin had something called "turn Harvard into uMass Cambridge" or something like that"). But I'm generally skeptical of devolving authority to states which are more fiscally constrained than the federal government. I'm sure you could do something like medicaid or some kind of federal match thing but to be honest those programs tend to have layers of bureaucracy that make them complicated and unpredictable.
Also, they cause a lot of regional inequity depending on what a given state tries to prioritize. You can't have federal money be fully equalizing without some kind of moral hazard that would result in education being fully federally funded anyways.
Besides that, an increasing number of people attend college not in their home state. A national admissions process could eliminate regional inequities in higher-ed financing. And finally, it's just inherently more efficient to have fewer very large institutions that draw students nationally than relying on state run institutions. I don't know that I find the point about regional specialization in education to be super compelling. I agree there are different geographical needs but you still have a shit load of kids majoring in "math" or "political science" we definitely need more agriculture schools and we 1,000% need more trade schools but I don't know that you can't get there w/ a federal system. Insofar as it is a factor, I think we Americans with our federalism schtick often forget that you can simply have regional offices of federal administrations and respond to local concerns that way. Why couldn't the feds open a "national school of agriculture" in Nebraska? The federal government has a "department of agriculture" presumably to specialize in that same thing!
Honestly I think the logic of "local entities know local needs better than national entities" has lead to WAY too much devolution in how we do anything in the US to the point where no one fully understands how any system works, petty corruption is easier to hide, and systems are complex, bureaucratic and inefficient.
Just my two cents. I don't write off rural states! My dad and maternal grandfather both grew up in coal country! I'm not elitist and I think those states are failed in pretty routine and troubling ways if not by our economic politics then certainly by our cultural politics. I'm in the unique position of having family of that social group while growing up in Vermont where out of touch "liberal" white ladies gleefully celebrate "rural conservative hicks" dying.
How can you provide an argument against what is not an argument in the first place? It's entirely, "these people are good, trust me I know them personally."
It's not that they're "good", but that misunderstanding their motivations leads to poor tactics. IMO, they would be susceptible to the factual arguments Freddie has made elsewhere that their actions are harming many of those that they would genuinely (in my estimation of how they think) like to help. Knowing that is useful.
And again, that's just highly implausible. For example, look up the bio of the current president of Harvard. That a person with his background has now agreed to be nothing more than a tool of the ultrarich is simply not believable, IMO.
And I think we're talking about two different things here. I have no doubt some people at these universities genuinely want (edit: think they want) "racial diversity" (ie less Asians). I don't think the point is that we read their minds and found them to be liars. We can never really know people's true motivations, even our own. The point is that this ideology stems from the material wants of the ruling class and upper middle class. A sort of mini-ideological super structure.
I agree that there are individuals at Princeton who genuinely want more Black and Latino students for the “right” reasons. I’ve met several at similar institutions.
But the people who are responsible for bringing in new donors via admissions will use those good intentions for things like this decision to conceal their data—giving them more power with less oversight.
They will use this power for optics (racial diversity) and to bring in more rich kids. Both will come at the expense of Asian kids who don’t help either goal.
According to Matt Taibbi’s reporting, efforts to diversify a selective high school at the expense of Asian kids resulted in a number of families voting Republican for the first time. Ross Barkin wrote about something similar in New York too.
“See that?” whispers Raj Patel. “Another Indian who would never vote Republican before just took the Republican ballot.” .... He shakes his head. “You watch. Indian and Chinese immigrants who typically vote Democratic will vote the other way because education for children is their number one issue. It’s why they came here.”
Patel is one of the switchers. He was “pretty liberal” after graduating from UC-Berkeley many years ago, then steadily became more moderate in his views, which did not mean voting for Donald Trump. “Honestly, I voted for Hillary Clinton,” he says, clarifying that he’s for “common sense,” not being “right-wing” or conspiratorial, “none of that garbage.” Eventually, he returns to the subject of education. “When you start messing with schools, that’s when you’ll get typical Democrats to flip.”
I used to work at two news publications. The are the journalists and editors, and then there's the marketing team. At schools, there's the teachers, and then there's PR.
That’s fair. There are people responsible for bringing in donations, and I think everyone assumes they nudge the admissions office when a potential donor has an 18yo.
And there are people responsible for constructing a class that includes kids who can pay and are likely to donate along with some % who will need lots of aid. I’m not sure how much financial considerations are discussed explicitly verses being baked in (such as legacy) since I’ve never worked in admissions.
I was a pocket protector math nerd who attended one of these universities and occasionally end up interacting with these people too. I think Freddie imagines there is some central person or group who has the power to decide that The Endowment is the main concern and order people to act accordingly. But there really isn't. These are large institutions where power is distributed across many competing groups. Add in intimate ties to government, industry and media at all levels, and you are left with a clusterfuck of an informal org chart. This is exactly the type of place where a tide of SJW pressure can sweep through.
True, but when the endowment ROI slips, all hell breaks loose in the president's offices. Harvard is referred to as a hedge fund with a little college attached. And it's true power is distributed so that really no one makes decisions alone and no one takes responsibility alone for mistakes (like lots of big corporations) so the school just keeps on keepin' on. Less risky than making a big change that might be wrong or unpopular.
I see impugning of motives happening all over the place -- right vs. left, identitarian vs. socialist left, libertarian vs. liberal left -- it makes it hard to have an actual conversation when people are entering it with uncharitable assumptions and accusations about those with opposing views. Maybe I'm still, at age 54, too naive, but I lean toward assuming people have good intentions until they prove otherwise. I think a lot of what's going on among the Woke Left is conformity bias, going along with what everyone they know and respect seem to think.
To reflect on the earlier post on student loan debt forgiveness:. I would more willingly support it if the Ivies and their ilk had to kick in 80% of their endowment.
Yeah I know. I was being facetious in a friendly way. If we did away entirely with the Ivy League and the Chicago School, we'd all be much better off, and that's not hyperbolic.
I'm reminded that Harvard admitted Jazz Jennings. I don't think it was because of grades. She sort of couldn't handle it so took a leave of absence pretty much a week after starting; she's supposed to have gone back under some sort of probationary period. Observing idly from afar, Jazz is 21 but behaves like an extremely sheltered 14 year old. Great for their brochure though, I guess.
Lots of 21 and even 31 year olds in this country act like sheltered, entitled 14 year olds. Hell, women in their 50s in my neighborhood too. I'm sure if Jazz ever goes back and finishes her Ivy League degree, there'll be a nice cushy job waiting for her on Wall Street or K Street. That is, if she was so inclined - being a social media influencer probably entails a lot more actual work than a career on either street.
I'm glad I don't live in your neighborhood. Women in their 50s acting 14, really?
Jazz Jennings was implanted with puberty blocking hormone drugs at 11 years of age. She's clinically obese and depressed now and barely leaves her house. She has never had an orgasm and never will. Jazz doesn't know what that is. It's a monstrous experiment gone wrong, her family constantly gaslights her that her misery has nothing to do with her botched multiple sex-reassignment surgeries, penis removal and being treated like a lab animal since she was 11. Or 3 if you listen to her insane Munchausen-by-proxy mother who still controls her life.
She's mentally stuck at the age of 14 or so, Harvard accepted her anyway despite no record of academic distinction. I was responding directly to Freddie's mentioning of how Ivy League colleges admit people all the time (like hypothetically, Timothee Chalamet) as they choose future elites. You're telling me, "That's nothing! Women in their 50s in my neighborhood are the same way!" I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about.
What in the ever living fuck does any of that have to do with my point about Ivy League schools and the bullshit cushy jobs people get from having the opportunity to network at them (skull and bones anyone?) Perhaps that reply would've been better suited for someone else's post in this sub-thread.
And yes, when a 50 year old woman in a Lexus or Range Rover runs a stop sign for no apparent reason at a school crosswalk during school hours and then later rather vigorously defends her behavior on social media by claiming she was taking food to elderly people and therefore was justified in so doing, that's fucking 14 year old behavior.
Get over it and get a grip. Srsly why do any of us care about Jazz when it comes to admissions much less her fucking orgasms? Did you miss the big scandal a few years ago?
Karen? How shallow and common, what a waste of an insult flinging it at a middle aged gay white man. You're the one being weird, bitching about 50 year old women acting like teenagers and Range Rovers and.. oh my God. Nonsense. Thanks for the worthless conversation. Waste. Of. Time.
This is such a classically absurd response to a problem.
The problem: We are afraid our high GPA average and high SAT average will discourage students with lower GPA scores and SATs from applying.
The solution: stop showing that our averages are so high.
The rational response: if we really do admit people with many different scores, but the average ends up being high, we could either 1) admit more people with lower scores so that the average actually reflects the kinds of students we want, or 2) release *more* data that shows the "spread" of our admittance is quite high; even if the average is, say, 1350, the distribution includes a lot of 1000s and a lot 1600s.
Edit: Forgot to include: this says to me that either Princeton is not being entirely honest about the reasons it's not releasing these numbers, or that its admissions folks are not very creative or forthright in how they solve problems. Or both.
Trying to fix these places is like greasing a guillotine or putting padding on an electric chair. So what's the solution to the problem? It's right there but it's the one thing no one want to hear - get off the fucking treadmill! Get off! Go to the woods, literally or metaphorically, but go, for the same reason Thoreau went:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to reach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear."
What these places want you to live is not life. There's no "fix" for that.
I’d definitely feel worse about this if I felt like the Ivies were a great _educational_ opportunity for those who were currently shut out. Right now they’re just indoctrination factories for the super-striving and super-compliant.
As it is, I’m disgusted by their behavior but also feel kinda like “rich people gonna rich.” They have their institutions and their clubs and they keep tight control over who’s in and who’s out. It’s always been the case.
There was a period of time in the late 20th century when “poor but ‘deserving’ ” (high test score) kids got into these schools. Now the demographic variables of interest have shifted to “racially diverse.”
Whichever method they use to let the outsiders in, they let a few kids into their clubs and then try to brainwash them into being “one of us”—effectively neutralizing them.
When I was the “scholarship kid” at a very prestigious boarding school, we were told constantly how special and deserving we were, how we were proof the system worked, how we would be running the world someday. Coming from a very different view of the world and how it worked, I experienced this as if it were attempted brainwashing.
Letting a few “poor but ‘deserving’ “ or “racially diverse” kids into your school is proof our system works in the same way a winning Lotto ticket is a viable retirement plan. Except you’re also told you really, really deserved and earned that ticket, and all the schlubs back in the old neighborhood are a bunch of losers.
The problem is, of course, that if your political economy pours vast amounts of resources into the control of a class of people who are not even trying to be meritorious, productive, or useful by any objective criterion, they simply won't be. We all sort of vaguely say, as a way to be edgy, that the elites are parasites on the working man, but we're going to quickly start seeing what it's like when they really are that and nothing more.
And (just adding on to your thought) — there’s also the issue of _how_ people are judged meritorious, productive, or useful.
Maybe I’m just a codger misremembering the good old days, but it seems to me that to be meritorious, productive and useful used to mean to be an original thinker, to be someone willing to take risks, blah blah.
Now, kids have the impression you absolutely “have to” have the maximum number of clubs, activities, sports, volunteer gigs, summer institutes, AP classes to “get in anywhere.”
The competitive college-bound kids my daughter’s age have absolutely no free time or life outside of school, and that includes those who end up at the local state university. It’s weird. Their pre-college education seems to be grooming them for a future career as dedicated but not very imaginative worker bees.
And forget just the most elite: Is that what we want from our professional class? Just to work hard, follow orders, please the authorities, and to believe uncritically what they’re told?
Do you want a surgeon like that? A lawyer?
I’m sure that’s why we have so many doctors going along with the woke nonsense of “transwomen are women” etc. and acting like it’s just fine to sterilize kids, give them off-label medications, and perform cosmetic surgeries on them, and then post the results on social media and expect praise and woke cookies for it.
A strong professional class of critical thinkers keeps society lurching forward.
I know a fair number of recent (past ~10 years) Ivy grads. One teaches poor kids in Mexico. Another is a family-practice doctor in an impoverished area. Another is a public defender lawyer. Several are in grad school (at poverty-level wages) doing biomedical research. Etc etc.
In my experience, the rich-kid-I've-got-mine-don't-care-about-anybody-else caricature applies only to a small minority.
Often those who are living on poverty-level wages have lots of help from affluent parents (they have nice reliable cars, they’re on dad’s good health insurance, etc.). But no doubt — just like any group of people —there are among Ivy grads a bunch of nice people doing good in the world.
My comments were more based on the attitude of the institutions (“we’re so elite”) and not on the kids who attend the schools. Often, kids attend the schools their parents guide them to (for whatever reasons the parents have to do so). They might or might not have the same values. I wish them well in the world.
I just very strongly disagree with your characterization of the Ivies as "just indoctrination factories for the super-striving and super-compliant". It certainly wasn't remotely true when I attended one 45 years ago (on full scholarship, I was the first kid in the 150 year history of my high school to go to an Ivy). And my anecdotal experience with more recent Ivy grads indicates it's not true now either.
Oh yeah it's much more insidious. The people attending, in order to preserve their mental health, convince themselves that it's a virtuous system and that they're deserving. Most of these things work a similar way. It's pretty hard for most people to be blatantly evil but very easy to invent a narrative where their self interest is virtuous.
The education is more than indoctrination—if you study physics or math or literature, you will learn those subjects. Perhaps it’s not better than being an undergrad elsewhere, but I wouldn’t write it off like no learning takes place.
I think my point about the Ivies as indoctrination factories came across as more all-encompassing than I intended.
You can still learn stuff yes. (You can also learn stuff at other schools.)
The current “woke” thinking has done a lot of damage to critical thinking and independent thought, but that’s true of other schools too.
(Perhaps a case can be made that the elite schools are more woke than less prestigious schools, and that that is a disadvantage to learning, but that would require a thread of its own, and would not cover any points you probably haven’t already heard about wokeism a hundred times before, elsewhere.)
But what I mean by an indoctrination factory is that there is very much an attitude — overtly expressed by the institutions themselves — that “we’re so great, we’re so special, we have nice things because we deserve them, we deserve to be leaders or future leaders, we know better than others”— this was true in my day, and it’s true today, the difference being:
Thinking you’re special, deserving, and “know best” is particularly pernicious in a context where you’ve spent your high school career trying to get into such a school (and not having any outside life, or thinking about what it is that you want to do with your life), followed by four years learning acceptable groupthink (ie, absorbing wokeism and its simplistic truths), as well as being told that you have what you have because you’re very deserving instead of just incredibly lucky.
That’s all. They’re still great schools of course. I always took issue with the “we’re so special” narrative and felt that it did great harm.
How about “we’re so special that we get to come to this elite institution that most kids will never get a chance to attend, and so we owe our society a lot in return”?
Jordan Peterson helps. He makes a very compelling case that the primary human pursuit is status in the dominance hierarchy. I would add that this is really a primary component of the top self-actualization needs pursuit that follows things like making sure you can eat, are safe and are loved. This need also explains tribalism. We become tribal only if we see our association with the tribe as helping to fulfill our needs.
This is where American society has gone off the rails.
Before the late 70s and 80s there were two primary macro-paths to dominance hierarchy ascendancy. One was the academic path and the other was the path of the successful private sector producer. However, with some exception, the academic path generally did not pay commensurate with the effort to achieve the academic credentials. Highly educated people tended to work in the public sector... where they would seethe with resentment that the B-average team football captain worked his way up in sales and then opened a chain of restaurants and is an influential man of society.
Then the math-brained quants started heading to investment banking. And the big academic brains in education, politics and government started to recognize that their inability to gain higher social status was related to the competition for status from the successful producers in the private economy.
So they went to work, some with knowing malice... but most just led by their baked in insecurities and resentments (see Liz Warren against Elon Musk)... to dismantle our productive economy and turn it into an information economy where the highly-educated would have the upper hand in social dominance.
It isn't that those with the greater academic achievements are more capable to do great things for humanity... generally quite the opposite... it is that they have effectively destroyed their competition. A competition that Donald J. Trump wanted to resurrect.
And they saw the risk in DJT succeeding, and so they got together with their globalist ilk to go for it... the Great Reset project that would lock in the world into the totalitarian power of the elite academic set.
The opaque admissions rule changes are simply their way of keeping out the knowing, and educating more sheep clones of their project to once and for all, destroy the free and open economy where Elon Musks can grow to dominance over them. Note that Elon only has a bachelors degree.
We are in the middle of WWW-III and we are only debating around the edges because we are stupid enough to adopt the new absurdity of the enemy as something worthy of debate.
Puts me in mind of the old joke, How do you know when (person X) is lying? Easy, his lips are moving.
This needs to be updated to: How do you know when (person or institution X) is lying? Easy, they claim to be doing X ......in the name of fairness and diversity....
Once I understood how easily the left fell for things like "banning dihydrous monoxide" (water by another name) because it was in our water supplies and killed thousands of people every year I began to look far more closely at "rescuer" activity among them for that same lack of critical thinking (or any kind of useful knowledge base about the real world). I remember the first time I was totally rocked out of my comfortable left nurturing blankets. I was reading a Harper's magazine and they had a short snippet from a book entitled "A woman whose calling is men." It is a book a former sex worker wrote, the snippet contradicted everything I had read in the media and had been told and was widely believed by the majority of the left.
So, I began to read in earnest the works of former or current sex workers as well as numerous texts by female anthropologists who had studied prostitution in all its various forms for decades in numerous countries around the globe. The picture that emerged had (and has) nothing to do with the common picture that is regularly presented in the media or in conversations. Few are drug addicts, many have advanced degrees, nearly all view it as just a job (they don't seem to have the ick factor that protestants normally do), some even, as that Harper's writer did, actually enjoy the work. All of them make far more money than otherwise, the vast majority of them are in charge of their work, not all that many work with pimps.
In fact, in my correspondence with them and with a number of the anthropologists, what I found was a highly articulate group of women (I was focusing on women sex workers at that point) who found it highly offensive to be told they were suffering from false consciousness, that they had been so infected by the patriarchy that they could no longer reason. They seemed pretty sure that that attitude was itself patriarchal. This same dynamic is continuing in an odd fashion when it comes to "people who menstruate" instead of women who menstruate. A number of women have made the point that the whole thing is misogynistic and the easiest way to see it is that no one is routinely saying "people who produce semen" or "People who have erections."
This kind of thing is rampant now, the University processes Freddie talks about here are only one example. The problem is the lack of intellectual rigor among those who insist that they are educated and that the flyover states are filled with the ignorant. Thus complex, nuanced discussions cannot take place. The end result is, as Hannah Arendt put it, the truly guilty go unrecognized and those who really are responsible will never be held accountable.
It has been difficult for a great many true leftists, social democrats (as I am myself), progressives, and Enlightenment liberals to stomach, it grows more difficult every day. But truly, the left as it is now constructed is merely our version of Qanon. Many of them might have received a college degree, even advanced degrees, but they surely are not educated, only schooled.
I guess the picture one has of prostituted women depends on whom you interview and include.
Prostitution is not a happy job choice. The two people I’ve known who were involved in sex work were (1) a single mom whose partner abandoned her and it was the quickest/easiest way to pay her bills, but she was disgusted by it, and got out of it as soon as she could; and (2) a woman who was pimped as a runaway foster kid (and she was out of it when I met her). To say she hated and feared it is to state the obvious.
So my sample size of two people is not exactly impressive. But just as there are only a few CEOs, somewhat more middle managers, and a whole ton of exploited minimum-wage workers, I really have to suppose that there are a lot more exploited or desperate women at the bottom of the prostitution heap than there are educated women with designer gowns and good orthodontia at the top.
no, it is not impressive. before you decide that two examples are universal, that such proves the assertions of anti-sex activists, you should take the time to become educated. that you responded based on only two examples without deep study, without hearing the stories of thousands of sex workers or reading their articles, you are merely someone barely schooled, not educated, and certainly not engaging in depth of thought, complexity or nuance. It is exactly the problem i am speaking of. And you should go deeper. Why is it okay for me to sell their bodies for money (mines, laborers, farm workers) and not for women to do so? I do know exactly what will happen if you examine that, you will come to some conclusion that sex is somehow different. That is the expression of a belief you got from someplace else and which you have never examined.
When I defend sex work on any boards, whether conservative or liberal, I am almost universally opposed; told I am defending trafficking; that I don't know what I am talking about; that it's icky, immoral, disturbing, unclean, unwholesome. I have read quite a bit from women who consciously choose to pursue the trade and have gleaned information from other resources as well. I have often wondered, exactly as you do: What IS the difference between selling our bodies for certain types of labor and (voltional) sex work? I do not see a difference.
What I do see is that many, many people think THEY should get to decide how, when, where, and with whom a woman uses her sexual and reproductive organs. Sometimes I feel like I was born several hundred years too early. I yearn for liberation but I fear that “it will be a long time coming.” /Triple entendre intentional./
Yeah, it is strange and, well, oddly stupid. I found Laura Agustin and her book Sex at the Margins to be the best overview. She would pin people down (usually upper middle class anti sex activists) and they would just finally say, well, sex is just different than carrying dishes or building houses. Something about the innate purity and specialness of untainted young women seemed to be the essential point for them. It is difficult on this issue, virtually nothing in the media or people's beliefs are accurate but they don't care. One activist said, "i don't care if what we are saying is true or not, it should be."
You bet. Oddly stupid is a great way of putting it.
I just checked out your site and stole your Steinbeck quote for a comment on FdB's latest post (You Can't Be Good Enough). I have added the book you mentioned to my reading list. I had a pleasant exchange with Antonia Crane, author of “Spent: A Memoir” several years ago. You might want to check it out if you haven't already read it. It's about her 20 year journey in sex work. I am currently reading “Pussy: A Reclamation” by Regena Thomashauer. I am always on the lookout for evidence of the resurgence of the Divine Feminine. We so need it for balance in this world. Be well~
lol at my state school, football players were provided *by the school* with note-takers who went to their classes for them. To think famous people aren’t getting every handout in the book.
Personally, letting a bunch of anonymous people judge me "holistically" sounds a lot more stressful than a test I can practice and study for.
Don't worry Princeton Review has a course in the works. Only $399.
Agreed. And “holistically” sounds like “anyone we want, and therefore there can be no criteria and thus no criticism of how we choose whom we choose.”
Well, there is one criteria: whether or not these kids can actually do the work. But this only applies if these schools don't grade-inflate and let everyone pass.
Lot of grade inflation going on these days. I can’t speak to Princeton specifically though.
not me. I hold up very well under even severe scrutiny. (Name that TV quote!)
Ok, Angela!
👏🏼
Since I actually personally know some of the people who make these sorts of decisions (and at Princeton specifically, I know people who know those decision makers), part of your cynicism is misplaced. The impetus REALLY IS greater RACIAL diversity. They didn't need to dump the SAT to game legacy admits, athlete admits (which drive sports success which drives future donations: as UC President Clark Kerr once famously put it, "the job of a university president is to provide sex for the students, football for the alumni, and parking for the faculty"), etc. Dropping the SAT is ENTIRELY a respone to SJW pressure. They are horrified as being thought "racist", and worry that the SAT really might be racist (because most of them don't understand statistics, and the ones who do turn a blind eye).
Of course the policies they are adopting actually are racist by the dictionary definition of the word, but not by the modern wokist paradigm.
Of course it can. According to Kendi, a racial disparity in outcomes is positive proof of a racist process. This definition of racism is widely accepted within woke/SJW circcles. If whites turn out to do better (as a group) than blacks (as a group) on the WAEC, then it is a racist test, period.
They could just say it's racist because of colonialism. The whole ideology has epistemic closure - nothing can prove it wrong.
it's not about racism it's about tests that the suburban hyper-organized straight-A average intelligence kids can't game and get a perfect score on. So basically any test that measures reading comprehension can't be used.
In my perfect world we'd have a federalized education system with a central non-profit body that creates a standardized test and then colleges admit you based on 50% that 50% GPA
I wouldn't do so but I appreciate you proactively telling me not to. I think there's a case to be made for state run education and that would definitely be a step up from private institutions (I think Jacobin had something called "turn Harvard into uMass Cambridge" or something like that"). But I'm generally skeptical of devolving authority to states which are more fiscally constrained than the federal government. I'm sure you could do something like medicaid or some kind of federal match thing but to be honest those programs tend to have layers of bureaucracy that make them complicated and unpredictable.
Also, they cause a lot of regional inequity depending on what a given state tries to prioritize. You can't have federal money be fully equalizing without some kind of moral hazard that would result in education being fully federally funded anyways.
Besides that, an increasing number of people attend college not in their home state. A national admissions process could eliminate regional inequities in higher-ed financing. And finally, it's just inherently more efficient to have fewer very large institutions that draw students nationally than relying on state run institutions. I don't know that I find the point about regional specialization in education to be super compelling. I agree there are different geographical needs but you still have a shit load of kids majoring in "math" or "political science" we definitely need more agriculture schools and we 1,000% need more trade schools but I don't know that you can't get there w/ a federal system. Insofar as it is a factor, I think we Americans with our federalism schtick often forget that you can simply have regional offices of federal administrations and respond to local concerns that way. Why couldn't the feds open a "national school of agriculture" in Nebraska? The federal government has a "department of agriculture" presumably to specialize in that same thing!
Honestly I think the logic of "local entities know local needs better than national entities" has lead to WAY too much devolution in how we do anything in the US to the point where no one fully understands how any system works, petty corruption is easier to hide, and systems are complex, bureaucratic and inefficient.
Just my two cents. I don't write off rural states! My dad and maternal grandfather both grew up in coal country! I'm not elitist and I think those states are failed in pretty routine and troubling ways if not by our economic politics then certainly by our cultural politics. I'm in the unique position of having family of that social group while growing up in Vermont where out of touch "liberal" white ladies gleefully celebrate "rural conservative hicks" dying.
I don't mind that you got unbanned, but maybe you should have taken it as a hint to improve the quality of your posts?
I think it would be be helpful to provide an argument against what he said rather than smack-talk
How can you provide an argument against what is not an argument in the first place? It's entirely, "these people are good, trust me I know them personally."
It's not that they're "good", but that misunderstanding their motivations leads to poor tactics. IMO, they would be susceptible to the factual arguments Freddie has made elsewhere that their actions are harming many of those that they would genuinely (in my estimation of how they think) like to help. Knowing that is useful.
I think Freddie's argument is that they don't give a flying fuck about these people they're trying to pretend they'd "like to help."
And again, that's just highly implausible. For example, look up the bio of the current president of Harvard. That a person with his background has now agreed to be nothing more than a tool of the ultrarich is simply not believable, IMO.
I thought you got banned lol. Welcome back.
And I think we're talking about two different things here. I have no doubt some people at these universities genuinely want (edit: think they want) "racial diversity" (ie less Asians). I don't think the point is that we read their minds and found them to be liars. We can never really know people's true motivations, even our own. The point is that this ideology stems from the material wants of the ruling class and upper middle class. A sort of mini-ideological super structure.
24 hour ban. Me & Freddie made up and are now BFFs.
And that's about as detailed of an explanation I think any of us would like.
Y'all have a real Sam and Diane situation and it’s very stressful for the rest of us.
*it's very stressful. LOL sorry couldn't resist.
My darn tablet is super inaccurate with swipe typing. 🧐
LOL! I think it's more Moe and Larry ... but Freddie's the star, I'm just the persistent heckler in the audience.
I never saw you as a useless heckler.
I agree that there are individuals at Princeton who genuinely want more Black and Latino students for the “right” reasons. I’ve met several at similar institutions.
But the people who are responsible for bringing in new donors via admissions will use those good intentions for things like this decision to conceal their data—giving them more power with less oversight.
They will use this power for optics (racial diversity) and to bring in more rich kids. Both will come at the expense of Asian kids who don’t help either goal.
This will push a lot of Asian families to the right, I imagine.
According to Matt Taibbi’s reporting, efforts to diversify a selective high school at the expense of Asian kids resulted in a number of families voting Republican for the first time. Ross Barkin wrote about something similar in New York too.
Yup. When you turn everything into a racial issue, people are gonna vote on their race.
Do you have a link to the Taibbi piece about this?
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/loudoun-county-virginia-a-culture
Since it's paywalled, here's a couple of quotes:
“See that?” whispers Raj Patel. “Another Indian who would never vote Republican before just took the Republican ballot.” .... He shakes his head. “You watch. Indian and Chinese immigrants who typically vote Democratic will vote the other way because education for children is their number one issue. It’s why they came here.”
Patel is one of the switchers. He was “pretty liberal” after graduating from UC-Berkeley many years ago, then steadily became more moderate in his views, which did not mean voting for Donald Trump. “Honestly, I voted for Hillary Clinton,” he says, clarifying that he’s for “common sense,” not being “right-wing” or conspiratorial, “none of that garbage.” Eventually, he returns to the subject of education. “When you start messing with schools, that’s when you’ll get typical Democrats to flip.”
I've been waiting 30 years for this to happen. Maybe the time has finally come.
I used to work at two news publications. The are the journalists and editors, and then there's the marketing team. At schools, there's the teachers, and then there's PR.
There simply are no "people who are responsible for bringing in new donors via admissions". That's just not how it works.
That’s fair. There are people responsible for bringing in donations, and I think everyone assumes they nudge the admissions office when a potential donor has an 18yo.
And there are people responsible for constructing a class that includes kids who can pay and are likely to donate along with some % who will need lots of aid. I’m not sure how much financial considerations are discussed explicitly verses being baked in (such as legacy) since I’ve never worked in admissions.
Unlanded whales typically don't get special treatment for their kids, too many ways for that to go sideways.
I was a pocket protector math nerd who attended one of these universities and occasionally end up interacting with these people too. I think Freddie imagines there is some central person or group who has the power to decide that The Endowment is the main concern and order people to act accordingly. But there really isn't. These are large institutions where power is distributed across many competing groups. Add in intimate ties to government, industry and media at all levels, and you are left with a clusterfuck of an informal org chart. This is exactly the type of place where a tide of SJW pressure can sweep through.
It's also the kind of place where "SJW pressure" has to align with the broad class interest the institution serves.
“…has to align with the broad class interest the institution serves.” This phrase brought to mind this recent article from Monica Harris that compares the old and new left: https://www.letsgetunplugged.com/post/when-a-black-woman-loses-her-tribe
This is exactly right.
True, but when the endowment ROI slips, all hell breaks loose in the president's offices. Harvard is referred to as a hedge fund with a little college attached. And it's true power is distributed so that really no one makes decisions alone and no one takes responsibility alone for mistakes (like lots of big corporations) so the school just keeps on keepin' on. Less risky than making a big change that might be wrong or unpopular.
I see impugning of motives happening all over the place -- right vs. left, identitarian vs. socialist left, libertarian vs. liberal left -- it makes it hard to have an actual conversation when people are entering it with uncharitable assumptions and accusations about those with opposing views. Maybe I'm still, at age 54, too naive, but I lean toward assuming people have good intentions until they prove otherwise. I think a lot of what's going on among the Woke Left is conformity bias, going along with what everyone they know and respect seem to think.
Great book.
They may want star power to attract paying customers. They certainly flaunt their alumni.
Maybe connected kids, regardless of academic achievement.
Jeff Bezos, JFK, Sonia Sotomayor, Mrs. Obama--https://edurank.org/uni/princeton-university/alumni/
Could they be trying any harder to make the right-wing view of higher education a reality?
Everything I thought was a strawman in 2015 is now a real argument people make.
I guess we're back to claiming we're all native American. 😂
it's hard out there for a nonperformative leftist...
To reflect on the earlier post on student loan debt forgiveness:. I would more willingly support it if the Ivies and their ilk had to kick in 80% of their endowment.
"(I assure you, if Timothee Chalamet had a 1.8 GPA and an arrest record as long as your arm, Harvard would find a pretext to let him in. I promise.)"
Yes but this article wasn't about Haaahvaaahd it was about Princeton. Or are they essentially the same elite networking opportunity as the other?
All the elite schools have essentially this dynamic
Yeah I know. I was being facetious in a friendly way. If we did away entirely with the Ivy League and the Chicago School, we'd all be much better off, and that's not hyperbolic.
Yep
I'm reminded that Harvard admitted Jazz Jennings. I don't think it was because of grades. She sort of couldn't handle it so took a leave of absence pretty much a week after starting; she's supposed to have gone back under some sort of probationary period. Observing idly from afar, Jazz is 21 but behaves like an extremely sheltered 14 year old. Great for their brochure though, I guess.
Lots of 21 and even 31 year olds in this country act like sheltered, entitled 14 year olds. Hell, women in their 50s in my neighborhood too. I'm sure if Jazz ever goes back and finishes her Ivy League degree, there'll be a nice cushy job waiting for her on Wall Street or K Street. That is, if she was so inclined - being a social media influencer probably entails a lot more actual work than a career on either street.
I'm glad I don't live in your neighborhood. Women in their 50s acting 14, really?
Jazz Jennings was implanted with puberty blocking hormone drugs at 11 years of age. She's clinically obese and depressed now and barely leaves her house. She has never had an orgasm and never will. Jazz doesn't know what that is. It's a monstrous experiment gone wrong, her family constantly gaslights her that her misery has nothing to do with her botched multiple sex-reassignment surgeries, penis removal and being treated like a lab animal since she was 11. Or 3 if you listen to her insane Munchausen-by-proxy mother who still controls her life.
She's mentally stuck at the age of 14 or so, Harvard accepted her anyway despite no record of academic distinction. I was responding directly to Freddie's mentioning of how Ivy League colleges admit people all the time (like hypothetically, Timothee Chalamet) as they choose future elites. You're telling me, "That's nothing! Women in their 50s in my neighborhood are the same way!" I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about.
What in the ever living fuck does any of that have to do with my point about Ivy League schools and the bullshit cushy jobs people get from having the opportunity to network at them (skull and bones anyone?) Perhaps that reply would've been better suited for someone else's post in this sub-thread.
And yes, when a 50 year old woman in a Lexus or Range Rover runs a stop sign for no apparent reason at a school crosswalk during school hours and then later rather vigorously defends her behavior on social media by claiming she was taking food to elderly people and therefore was justified in so doing, that's fucking 14 year old behavior.
Get over it and get a grip. Srsly why do any of us care about Jazz when it comes to admissions much less her fucking orgasms? Did you miss the big scandal a few years ago?
Karen? How shallow and common, what a waste of an insult flinging it at a middle aged gay white man. You're the one being weird, bitching about 50 year old women acting like teenagers and Range Rovers and.. oh my God. Nonsense. Thanks for the worthless conversation. Waste. Of. Time.
Haha. Well maybe it would've been better for each of us to hit refresh before replying. Idiot (and me too) in this case.
This is such a classically absurd response to a problem.
The problem: We are afraid our high GPA average and high SAT average will discourage students with lower GPA scores and SATs from applying.
The solution: stop showing that our averages are so high.
The rational response: if we really do admit people with many different scores, but the average ends up being high, we could either 1) admit more people with lower scores so that the average actually reflects the kinds of students we want, or 2) release *more* data that shows the "spread" of our admittance is quite high; even if the average is, say, 1350, the distribution includes a lot of 1000s and a lot 1600s.
Edit: Forgot to include: this says to me that either Princeton is not being entirely honest about the reasons it's not releasing these numbers, or that its admissions folks are not very creative or forthright in how they solve problems. Or both.
Reminds me of people who won't let their doctors weigh them. That's not gonna help your health.
Trying to fix these places is like greasing a guillotine or putting padding on an electric chair. So what's the solution to the problem? It's right there but it's the one thing no one want to hear - get off the fucking treadmill! Get off! Go to the woods, literally or metaphorically, but go, for the same reason Thoreau went:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to reach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear."
What these places want you to live is not life. There's no "fix" for that.
I’d definitely feel worse about this if I felt like the Ivies were a great _educational_ opportunity for those who were currently shut out. Right now they’re just indoctrination factories for the super-striving and super-compliant.
As it is, I’m disgusted by their behavior but also feel kinda like “rich people gonna rich.” They have their institutions and their clubs and they keep tight control over who’s in and who’s out. It’s always been the case.
There was a period of time in the late 20th century when “poor but ‘deserving’ ” (high test score) kids got into these schools. Now the demographic variables of interest have shifted to “racially diverse.”
Whichever method they use to let the outsiders in, they let a few kids into their clubs and then try to brainwash them into being “one of us”—effectively neutralizing them.
When I was the “scholarship kid” at a very prestigious boarding school, we were told constantly how special and deserving we were, how we were proof the system worked, how we would be running the world someday. Coming from a very different view of the world and how it worked, I experienced this as if it were attempted brainwashing.
Letting a few “poor but ‘deserving’ “ or “racially diverse” kids into your school is proof our system works in the same way a winning Lotto ticket is a viable retirement plan. Except you’re also told you really, really deserved and earned that ticket, and all the schlubs back in the old neighborhood are a bunch of losers.
The problem is, of course, that if your political economy pours vast amounts of resources into the control of a class of people who are not even trying to be meritorious, productive, or useful by any objective criterion, they simply won't be. We all sort of vaguely say, as a way to be edgy, that the elites are parasites on the working man, but we're going to quickly start seeing what it's like when they really are that and nothing more.
And (just adding on to your thought) — there’s also the issue of _how_ people are judged meritorious, productive, or useful.
Maybe I’m just a codger misremembering the good old days, but it seems to me that to be meritorious, productive and useful used to mean to be an original thinker, to be someone willing to take risks, blah blah.
Now, kids have the impression you absolutely “have to” have the maximum number of clubs, activities, sports, volunteer gigs, summer institutes, AP classes to “get in anywhere.”
The competitive college-bound kids my daughter’s age have absolutely no free time or life outside of school, and that includes those who end up at the local state university. It’s weird. Their pre-college education seems to be grooming them for a future career as dedicated but not very imaginative worker bees.
And forget just the most elite: Is that what we want from our professional class? Just to work hard, follow orders, please the authorities, and to believe uncritically what they’re told?
Do you want a surgeon like that? A lawyer?
I’m sure that’s why we have so many doctors going along with the woke nonsense of “transwomen are women” etc. and acting like it’s just fine to sterilize kids, give them off-label medications, and perform cosmetic surgeries on them, and then post the results on social media and expect praise and woke cookies for it.
A strong professional class of critical thinkers keeps society lurching forward.
I know a fair number of recent (past ~10 years) Ivy grads. One teaches poor kids in Mexico. Another is a family-practice doctor in an impoverished area. Another is a public defender lawyer. Several are in grad school (at poverty-level wages) doing biomedical research. Etc etc.
In my experience, the rich-kid-I've-got-mine-don't-care-about-anybody-else caricature applies only to a small minority.
Often those who are living on poverty-level wages have lots of help from affluent parents (they have nice reliable cars, they’re on dad’s good health insurance, etc.). But no doubt — just like any group of people —there are among Ivy grads a bunch of nice people doing good in the world.
My comments were more based on the attitude of the institutions (“we’re so elite”) and not on the kids who attend the schools. Often, kids attend the schools their parents guide them to (for whatever reasons the parents have to do so). They might or might not have the same values. I wish them well in the world.
I just very strongly disagree with your characterization of the Ivies as "just indoctrination factories for the super-striving and super-compliant". It certainly wasn't remotely true when I attended one 45 years ago (on full scholarship, I was the first kid in the 150 year history of my high school to go to an Ivy). And my anecdotal experience with more recent Ivy grads indicates it's not true now either.
Oh yeah it's much more insidious. The people attending, in order to preserve their mental health, convince themselves that it's a virtuous system and that they're deserving. Most of these things work a similar way. It's pretty hard for most people to be blatantly evil but very easy to invent a narrative where their self interest is virtuous.
The education is more than indoctrination—if you study physics or math or literature, you will learn those subjects. Perhaps it’s not better than being an undergrad elsewhere, but I wouldn’t write it off like no learning takes place.
I think my point about the Ivies as indoctrination factories came across as more all-encompassing than I intended.
You can still learn stuff yes. (You can also learn stuff at other schools.)
The current “woke” thinking has done a lot of damage to critical thinking and independent thought, but that’s true of other schools too.
(Perhaps a case can be made that the elite schools are more woke than less prestigious schools, and that that is a disadvantage to learning, but that would require a thread of its own, and would not cover any points you probably haven’t already heard about wokeism a hundred times before, elsewhere.)
But what I mean by an indoctrination factory is that there is very much an attitude — overtly expressed by the institutions themselves — that “we’re so great, we’re so special, we have nice things because we deserve them, we deserve to be leaders or future leaders, we know better than others”— this was true in my day, and it’s true today, the difference being:
Thinking you’re special, deserving, and “know best” is particularly pernicious in a context where you’ve spent your high school career trying to get into such a school (and not having any outside life, or thinking about what it is that you want to do with your life), followed by four years learning acceptable groupthink (ie, absorbing wokeism and its simplistic truths), as well as being told that you have what you have because you’re very deserving instead of just incredibly lucky.
That’s all. They’re still great schools of course. I always took issue with the “we’re so special” narrative and felt that it did great harm.
How about “we’re so special that we get to come to this elite institution that most kids will never get a chance to attend, and so we owe our society a lot in return”?
That’s the missing piece.
I mean I heard harvard is like high school in that they give everyone who slay kweens the correct amount an A
yeah the "one of us" pressure is very real and kinda works 75% of the time sadly
O/T: https://nypost.com/2021/12/25/harvard-and-others-nixing-standardized-tests-reinforce-privilege-and-harm-minorities/
Disclaimer: NY Post is a rightwing tabloid level rag.
Who, Robert Reich? j/k… “the bumbling doofus children of the affluent”! What a snippet! 😹
I can explain.
Jordan Peterson helps. He makes a very compelling case that the primary human pursuit is status in the dominance hierarchy. I would add that this is really a primary component of the top self-actualization needs pursuit that follows things like making sure you can eat, are safe and are loved. This need also explains tribalism. We become tribal only if we see our association with the tribe as helping to fulfill our needs.
This is where American society has gone off the rails.
Before the late 70s and 80s there were two primary macro-paths to dominance hierarchy ascendancy. One was the academic path and the other was the path of the successful private sector producer. However, with some exception, the academic path generally did not pay commensurate with the effort to achieve the academic credentials. Highly educated people tended to work in the public sector... where they would seethe with resentment that the B-average team football captain worked his way up in sales and then opened a chain of restaurants and is an influential man of society.
Then the math-brained quants started heading to investment banking. And the big academic brains in education, politics and government started to recognize that their inability to gain higher social status was related to the competition for status from the successful producers in the private economy.
So they went to work, some with knowing malice... but most just led by their baked in insecurities and resentments (see Liz Warren against Elon Musk)... to dismantle our productive economy and turn it into an information economy where the highly-educated would have the upper hand in social dominance.
It isn't that those with the greater academic achievements are more capable to do great things for humanity... generally quite the opposite... it is that they have effectively destroyed their competition. A competition that Donald J. Trump wanted to resurrect.
And they saw the risk in DJT succeeding, and so they got together with their globalist ilk to go for it... the Great Reset project that would lock in the world into the totalitarian power of the elite academic set.
The opaque admissions rule changes are simply their way of keeping out the knowing, and educating more sheep clones of their project to once and for all, destroy the free and open economy where Elon Musks can grow to dominance over them. Note that Elon only has a bachelors degree.
We are in the middle of WWW-III and we are only debating around the edges because we are stupid enough to adopt the new absurdity of the enemy as something worthy of debate.
Puts me in mind of the old joke, How do you know when (person X) is lying? Easy, his lips are moving.
This needs to be updated to: How do you know when (person or institution X) is lying? Easy, they claim to be doing X ......in the name of fairness and diversity....
Once I understood how easily the left fell for things like "banning dihydrous monoxide" (water by another name) because it was in our water supplies and killed thousands of people every year I began to look far more closely at "rescuer" activity among them for that same lack of critical thinking (or any kind of useful knowledge base about the real world). I remember the first time I was totally rocked out of my comfortable left nurturing blankets. I was reading a Harper's magazine and they had a short snippet from a book entitled "A woman whose calling is men." It is a book a former sex worker wrote, the snippet contradicted everything I had read in the media and had been told and was widely believed by the majority of the left.
So, I began to read in earnest the works of former or current sex workers as well as numerous texts by female anthropologists who had studied prostitution in all its various forms for decades in numerous countries around the globe. The picture that emerged had (and has) nothing to do with the common picture that is regularly presented in the media or in conversations. Few are drug addicts, many have advanced degrees, nearly all view it as just a job (they don't seem to have the ick factor that protestants normally do), some even, as that Harper's writer did, actually enjoy the work. All of them make far more money than otherwise, the vast majority of them are in charge of their work, not all that many work with pimps.
In fact, in my correspondence with them and with a number of the anthropologists, what I found was a highly articulate group of women (I was focusing on women sex workers at that point) who found it highly offensive to be told they were suffering from false consciousness, that they had been so infected by the patriarchy that they could no longer reason. They seemed pretty sure that that attitude was itself patriarchal. This same dynamic is continuing in an odd fashion when it comes to "people who menstruate" instead of women who menstruate. A number of women have made the point that the whole thing is misogynistic and the easiest way to see it is that no one is routinely saying "people who produce semen" or "People who have erections."
This kind of thing is rampant now, the University processes Freddie talks about here are only one example. The problem is the lack of intellectual rigor among those who insist that they are educated and that the flyover states are filled with the ignorant. Thus complex, nuanced discussions cannot take place. The end result is, as Hannah Arendt put it, the truly guilty go unrecognized and those who really are responsible will never be held accountable.
It has been difficult for a great many true leftists, social democrats (as I am myself), progressives, and Enlightenment liberals to stomach, it grows more difficult every day. But truly, the left as it is now constructed is merely our version of Qanon. Many of them might have received a college degree, even advanced degrees, but they surely are not educated, only schooled.
I guess the picture one has of prostituted women depends on whom you interview and include.
Prostitution is not a happy job choice. The two people I’ve known who were involved in sex work were (1) a single mom whose partner abandoned her and it was the quickest/easiest way to pay her bills, but she was disgusted by it, and got out of it as soon as she could; and (2) a woman who was pimped as a runaway foster kid (and she was out of it when I met her). To say she hated and feared it is to state the obvious.
So my sample size of two people is not exactly impressive. But just as there are only a few CEOs, somewhat more middle managers, and a whole ton of exploited minimum-wage workers, I really have to suppose that there are a lot more exploited or desperate women at the bottom of the prostitution heap than there are educated women with designer gowns and good orthodontia at the top.
It depends on who you know, eh.
no, it is not impressive. before you decide that two examples are universal, that such proves the assertions of anti-sex activists, you should take the time to become educated. that you responded based on only two examples without deep study, without hearing the stories of thousands of sex workers or reading their articles, you are merely someone barely schooled, not educated, and certainly not engaging in depth of thought, complexity or nuance. It is exactly the problem i am speaking of. And you should go deeper. Why is it okay for me to sell their bodies for money (mines, laborers, farm workers) and not for women to do so? I do know exactly what will happen if you examine that, you will come to some conclusion that sex is somehow different. That is the expression of a belief you got from someplace else and which you have never examined.
Lol.
Thank you. Love the lucidity.
When I defend sex work on any boards, whether conservative or liberal, I am almost universally opposed; told I am defending trafficking; that I don't know what I am talking about; that it's icky, immoral, disturbing, unclean, unwholesome. I have read quite a bit from women who consciously choose to pursue the trade and have gleaned information from other resources as well. I have often wondered, exactly as you do: What IS the difference between selling our bodies for certain types of labor and (voltional) sex work? I do not see a difference.
What I do see is that many, many people think THEY should get to decide how, when, where, and with whom a woman uses her sexual and reproductive organs. Sometimes I feel like I was born several hundred years too early. I yearn for liberation but I fear that “it will be a long time coming.” /Triple entendre intentional./
Yeah, it is strange and, well, oddly stupid. I found Laura Agustin and her book Sex at the Margins to be the best overview. She would pin people down (usually upper middle class anti sex activists) and they would just finally say, well, sex is just different than carrying dishes or building houses. Something about the innate purity and specialness of untainted young women seemed to be the essential point for them. It is difficult on this issue, virtually nothing in the media or people's beliefs are accurate but they don't care. One activist said, "i don't care if what we are saying is true or not, it should be."
thanks for the response
You bet. Oddly stupid is a great way of putting it.
I just checked out your site and stole your Steinbeck quote for a comment on FdB's latest post (You Can't Be Good Enough). I have added the book you mentioned to my reading list. I had a pleasant exchange with Antonia Crane, author of “Spent: A Memoir” several years ago. You might want to check it out if you haven't already read it. It's about her 20 year journey in sex work. I am currently reading “Pussy: A Reclamation” by Regena Thomashauer. I am always on the lookout for evidence of the resurgence of the Divine Feminine. We so need it for balance in this world. Be well~