More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Perhaps rather than derange ourselves by working out a puzzle that cannot be solved, we should instead try to find ways out of this impossible maze.
Perhaps instead of seeking out oppression and seeing oppression everywhere, we could start to exit the maze by noting the various ‘victim groups’ that aren’t oppressed or are even advantaged.
The median income of Asian men in America is consistently higher than any other group, including white Americans.
We see oppression where it doesn’t exist and have no idea how to respond to it.
We all have to be used up by something. And though I will never be a mother, I am glad to be used up by motherhood and what it leads to, just as – most of the time – I gladly belong to my wife, my children, and several head of cattle, sheep, and horses. What better way to be used up?
Their desire is not to heal but to divide, not to placate but to inflame, not to dampen but to burn.
Those who claim that our society is typified by bigotry but believe they know how to fix any and all societal ills better make sure that their route maps are well plotted. If they are not then there is reason for everyone else to be suspicious about a project whose earliest stages are being presented as rigorous science when they more closely resemble an advocacy of magic.
Yes!
the victim is not always right, or nice, deserves no praise – and may not be a victim
Victimhood rather than stoicism or heroism has become something eagerly publicized, even sought after, in our culture.
To be a victim is in some way to have won, or at least to have got a head start in the great oppression race of life.
In fact, suffering in and of itself does not make someone a better person. A gay, female, black or trans person may be as dishonest, deceitful and rude as anybody else.
One of the ways to distance ourselves from the madnesses of our times is to retain an interest in politics but not to rely on it as a source of meaning.
A sense of purpose is found in working out what is meaningful in our lives and then orientating ourselves over time as closely as possible to those centres of meaning.
To assume that sex, sexuality and skin colour mean nothing would be ridiculous. But to assume that they mean everything will be fatal.
Likewise the targeting of J. K. Rowling for her uncontroversial comments was so disproportionate that it has become clear to me that something is up. In her case not only was there a campaign by the usual activists, but also the legacy gay press ganged up on her, most of the actors she had helped to make millionaires took turns to denounce her, and there was a threat of a strike by staff at her own publishers, Hachette.
Waah!
Ayaan Hirsi Ali).
‘We’re here, we’re queer and as a result we regard penises and vaginas as imposed social constructs.
Lol!
When the statistics showed that men made up a larger number of fatalities then the same observers turned around to say that although the men may be doing more of the dying the women were somehow doing more of the suffering.
Overnight the writings of Robin DiAngelo (of White Fragility fame) and others described in this book were not only made mainstream but were suggested as compulsory reading.
Lol. For comedy purposes maybe.
My generation was brought up to be colour blind. Now we are told that not focusing on race all the time makes us racists. This does not seem to me to be progress.
