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PZ Myers dissects evolutionary psychology: brief, sharp and fabulous

I admit I LOL'd at the part about lighting up "like a Christmas tree." WATCH AND LEARN all IDWs!

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The Brian Ferguson Interview
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Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Jerry Coyne is tone deaf

 Jerry Coyne, Steven Pinker's #1 fanboy, is a cranky old man who wants those kids to get off his lawn.

Not too long ago here at Pinkerite I wrote about Jerry Coyne's revulsion for new-fangled words. He's at it again:

“Tone deaf”. The technical meaning of this phrase is “unable to differentiate between different musical pitches.” And that’s fine, but it’s been co-opted, mainly by the woke, to mean, “Not able to grasp the obvious and important truths I’m trying to tell you.” And it’s all over the place.
Coyne also detests "fierce" and "gig-workers."

Tone deaf in the newer sense is a great expression and perfectly describes old reactionary race science promoting misogynists like Coyne as they bestride the earth sharing their cranky old-man conservative opinions far and wide.

I think Coyne's main problem with those words is the wrong kinds of people are using them.

If Coyne had been born a hundred years earlier he would have shit himself denouncing the word "jazz."




Sunday, November 22, 2020

The Human Strategy ~ Women's Fib

This is an interesting entry into Marvin Harris's series for Natural History Magazine, "The Human Strategy." In the May 1972 issue Harris published "Women's Fib." Here is a PDF of the article, which is also available as images at the bottom of this post.

Harris was always sympathetic towards feminism, in spite of the hostile-sounding title.

And as the article makes clear, Harris is not hostile towards feminism but rather to non-cultural materialism explanations for male dominance.

The last couple of paragraphs are especially interesting:

For primitive societies, the basis of female subordination is the absence of technological solutions to the military problems associated with conception, menstruation, pregnancy and lactation. For industrial societies we must look elsewhere. Perhaps it has been found that higher levels of controlled aggressiveness and brutality can be attained in males when the achievement of masculinity is linked to the subordination of females. To put it bluntly, the institutionalized privilege of being able to exploit women is the reward that modern militaristic societies give to males who serve as cannon fodder.

My analysis of the relationship between sexual hierarchy and war leads to a practical suggestion. The strategy of sexual politics requires that the superordinate males who are threatened by the sexual revolution be promised something in exchange for their lost privileges What could be better than to promise them peace?

That was written 48 years ago. At that time, newspapers had only recently ended the system of classifying job opportunities by gender. Women were still expected to quit work after getting married in spite of the fact that more women than ever were working outside the home. Women could be refused a credit card without a male co-signer, by law, until 1974.

But as we have seen in the decades since, response to the increasing power of woman was not peace so much as allowing women themselves to become cannon fodder. And the gains in military participation for women have not been due to the United States military pushing for it, but because of women themselves.

Being cannon fodder is not a great occupation, nor a high status one. But the fact that women have fought for the chance to be cannon fodder is a pretty clear indication that the traditional role of women as economic dependents of men was considered by many worse than the life of cannon fodder.

And in the military, at least, there was a chance of moving up the ranks. The traditional role of women was to move down the ranks as age reduced a woman's value to society as a pretty baby-maker. 

Thanks to women's increasing socio-economic power, they are no longer so easy to turn into passive rewards for the men who serve as cannon fodder. This is why some men, from the Taliban to the Proud Boys, are hostile to the idea of women doing anything other than having children. 

And you see IDW member Jordan Peterson calling for "enforced monogamy," echoed by George Mason University professor Robin Hanson and right-wing New York Times columnist Ross Douthat.

As feminist male ally David Futrelle wrote:

A month ago, a disturbed young man drove a rented van into a crowd of pedestrians on a crowded Toronto sidewalk, killing ten and injuring 16 others. In a Facebook message posted shortly before the attack, the alleged mass killer claimed to be opening a new front in the “incel rebellion” against the “Chads and Staceys” of the world, and honoring the legacy of “Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger,” who killed six in 2014 in what he saw as an act of “retribution” against women for sexually rejecting him.

While Canadians, who are less used to mass murders than we are here in the US, mourned the dead, the self-described “involuntary celibates” who populate online forums like Incels.me were cheering. “Alek Minassian,” wrote one, lauding the alleged killer. “Spread that name, speak of his sacrifice for our cause, worship him for he gave his life for our future.” Other incels hoped that his van rampage would encourage future murder sprees, mass rapes, and acid attacks – all acts of revenge against a society that was denying them the sex they were entitled to.
Recently Minassian's legal team has used the defense that Minassian is on the autism spectrum

Without a dictatorship, it doesn't seem likely that women will be forced out of the job market, and so will continue to become increasingly less dependent on men.

It should be noted that recognizing that women's increasing economic power is the cause of women's increasing independence from men is a standard cultural materialist approach.





Thursday, November 19, 2020

Pinkerite's second anniversary

Pinkerite's second anniversary was November 17 and it seems that very little has changed in the world of Steven Pinker, the Intellectual Dark Web and Race Science in the past two years. 



But a few things have changed since Pinkerite's first anniversary:
Some Pinkerite accomplishments this year:

Top posts of the second year:

I was surprised that my series on Why Robin DiAngelo is Bad, published in June 2019 suddenly became popular in 2020. It seems that bigger media hitters than Pinkerite had discovered how wacky DiAngeloism is and began to criticize the concept of "white fragility." 

It's nice that I'm not a lone voice howling in the wilderness about DiAngelo any more. I will be writing a follow-up on DiAngelo soon.

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Steven Pinker still supporting right-wing, race science promoting Quillette

 Quillette is thrilled that Steven Pinker is praising its trash "analyses." Quillette has at least one actual racist on its staff - Bo Winegard, as well as right-wing extremist, Trump-loving grifter Andy Ngo.

Quillette is a complete shitshow. No wonder Peter Thiel loves it.

Peter Thiel Met With The Racist Fringe As He Went All In On Trump





Sunday, November 15, 2020

Pinkerite predicts!

 Now that Trump has nothing left and will soon lose the power of the presidency it was predictable that Trump would look to his pal Andy Ngo, the keeper of the ANTIFA grifting flame to promote the "law-and-order" tactics of the most lawless POTUS ever seen.



In fact it was so predictable that I predicted it a week ago.




Andy Ngo has been accused of doctoring a video in an attempt to portray a right-wing thug as a victim.







Thursday, November 12, 2020

The Human Strategy: A Trip Through Ma Bell's Zoo

The second installment of Marvin Harris's column for Natural History Magazine, "The Human Strategy" appeared in the April 1972 issue and it's an odd one. Harris tackles the question of why some animal names are used as human surname (zoonymics) while others are not. It's the only work by Harris I've ever seen accompanied by illustrations.

I've posted it below as images and here is a link to a complete PDF of the article.

The first installment of "The Human Strategy" can be found here.









Wednesday, November 11, 2020

"Defending Western Civilization" is a dog whistle for white supremacy

The latest news about The Proud Boys in Raw Story:

Civil war brewing inside Proud Boys as top leader says he’s done pretending he isn’t a Nazi

It begins:

The far-right Proud Boys gang has long denied that it is a white nationalist organization and has instead claimed that it only exists to defend “Western Civilization.”

However, Newsweek reports that some members of the group are ready to openly embrace being a racist organization and are dropping any pretenses of wanting support of non-white people.

And ends:

(Kyle Chapman) also made clear that he believed talk of defending “Western Civilization” was really just a racist dog whistle all along.

“We recognize that the West was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race,” he wrote.

"the West was built by the White Race" is the most likely reason Quillette staff member and obvious racist Bo Winegard and his brother Ben Winegard declare their love for "the West" and "Western Civilization" in their Twitter profiles.







So what are the connections between the Proud Boys and the Intellectual Dark Web?





There are likely more. 

Speaking of McInnes - he likes to portray himself as a decent family man victimized by the Left, often mentioning his wife - who appears to be as extremist as he is - but McInnes made a less than wife-guy appearance in the latest issue of The Atlantic, Why the Alt-Right’s Most Famous Woman Disappeared:
(Lauren) Southern finished on set and ordered an Uber to the airport for her flight home to Toronto. Partway through the ride, her phone rang. It was McInnes. Southern listened to him closely for a few seconds.

“We shouldn’t be talking about this at all,” she said, laughing uncomfortably. Then her face tightened. “See, the thing is, because my moral compass tells me you have a wife and kids, it’s not even in my realm of consideration.” McInnes, according to Southern, had just reiterated an offer he’d made the night before, when she’d been out with him and a group of other far-right friends: “You know you want to fuck me; I’m your childhood hero.”

(When reached for comment, McInnes stated, “As a married man, I have never sexually propositioned Lauren Southern or any other woman.”)

With a grimace, Southern hustled him off the phone. She was speechless for a moment. “Send help,” she said feebly. “Help.”
But really considering how incredibly misogynist Gavin McInnes is - and I don't mean he hates feminists I mean he despises women and especially women's bodies (McInnes is obsessed with ovaries) - you have to wonder what the hell is wrong with Gavin McInnes' wife.



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