Mick Hartley

From the Telegraph:

A University of Oxford museum will not display an African mask because the culture which created it forbids women from seeing it.

The decision by the Pitt Rivers Museum is part of new policies in the interest of “cultural safety”.

The museum has also removed online photos of the mask made by the Igbo people in Nigeria, which would originally have been used in a male-only ritual.

Masks are a central part of Igbo culture, and some masquerade rituals carried out by men wearing the ceremonial objects are entirely male-only and carried out in secret away from female spectators.

The new policy, a first for a major British collection, comes as part of a “decolonisation process” at the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is aiming to address a collection “closely tied to British Imperial expansion”.

An online trigger warning on the museum’s collection database states that the Igbo mask “may be culturally sensitive” and “not normally be used in certain public or community contexts”.

The wooden mask has been given the label “must not be seen by women”, is not on display, and has no photographs available to view online.

A note on the museum website explains that, while photographs exist, curators “are unable to show the media publicly”.

This effort to ensure that women do not see the mask follows a suite of policies aiming to ensure “cultural safety” with regard to taboos around secret ceremonies, human remains, nudity and gender roles.

Concerns have been raised.

Ruth Millington, an art critic and author, whose book Muse tackles the female subject, has raised concerns about the push for synergy creating a dangerous precedent.

She said: “To deny all women, of all cultures, sight of something because that is a taboo in one particular culture seems an extreme stance, particularly given that this country is a modern, liberal and enlightened society.

“Surely women should be given the right to decide, after reading about any cultural sensitivities, if they wish to look upon the artefact or not. When it comes to art, we should all have equal rights, regardless of sex, to view what we would like to.

“Does this position also imply that only male curators in the museum can handle, care for and interpret this object? This stance seems to imply that no woman has ever seen the mask, which I think is highly unlikely.

“As a feminist art historian, I now want to see it all the more.”

You can see the dilemma. To put the mask on show to the general public – members of, as Ruth Millington puts it, a modern, liberal and enlightened society – would imply that we are now in a superior postion to the Igbo, and look, with a degree of colonial condescension perhaps, on the artefacts of a more primitive society. That would never do in a time of decolonisation and cultural sensitivity. On the other hand to put the mask on display to men only, thus respecting the cultural significance of the mask, would be even worse – living as we do in that, yes, modern, liberal and enlightened society.

Hmm. So we stick it away in the bottom drawer….to show how, um, modern, liberal and enlightened we are.

Update: see statement from Prof. Laura Van Broekhoven, Director of the Pitt-Rivers (link in comments). "This is a non-story…."

Jo Bartosch in The Critic, on Gareth Roberts' analysis of how trans activists took over the gay rights struggle:

Have you ever seen footage of a beetle moving under the control of a parasite? Hollowed out, the horrifying, brainless critter stumbles forward as a hostile entity compels its legs to take stilted steps. This is the grisly picture that comes to mind reading Gareth Roberts’ Gay Shame: The Rise of Gender Ideology and the New Homophobia. 

In his riotously funny yet gravely depressing polemic, Roberts charts how trans activists took over the once worthy gay rights struggle, devouring the hosts from the inside out and setting the animated corpse on a path to oblivion. 

Roberts is ruthless in his appraisal of gay male culture, dissecting it with the withering accuracy of a queen critiquing the sartorial choices of passers-by from a Soho café. And he displays basalt balls when taking on his brethren by facing up to gay male misogyny and tweaking the plastic nipples of drag queens. 

He is explicit about the “percolating resentment and sexual jealousy of women” of many homosexual men. He traces these sentiments from the closed male communities of his youth where “open disgust for women’s bodies and anatomy” was the norm, through to Ru Paul’s Drag Race, where gay men make jokes about women’s sexual organs for a mass television audience.

This deep-rooted, unspoken envy of womanhood that many gay men harbour is why, Roberts says, so many cheer on the young women chopping off their breasts to become simulacra of men. It is also, he argues, behind the attitudes of men such as Owen Jones, who profess to believe that “trans women are women” until they decide to find a surrogate to start a family. 

He pithily notes that to such gay male trans activists “a man becomes a woman with a click of his fingers; and a womb is a free-floating commercial service that some people just happen to possess”.

The book follows the illogical logic of transgenderism to its end point: the “elimination of homosexuality — as taken to the extreme in the ideology of the Iranian state”.

Queers for Palestine, anyone?

Detroit ca. 1908. "Packard Model 30 Limousine, Packard Motor Car Company. 'Auto — Alger' on negative; 'R.A.A.' monogram on car door."

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing]

Russell A. Alger Jr. "was instrumental in persuading the Packard Motor Car Company to move from Ohio to Michigan. He built a palatial Italian Renaissance style estate, "The Moorings," in Grosse Pointe."

 

Hadley Freeman on the Omnicause, the fatberg of activism:

Gender, environment, Gaza: they’re all the same, even though LGBT people live under the threat of death in Palestine, and I haven’t heard too much from Hamas about the environment. According to The Omnicause, they’re all magically connected. It’s the fatberg of causes, and the fat gluing them all together is Western narcissism.

Fossil Free Books, for example, is very much part of The Omnicause. You have doubtless read about FFB: the shadowy pressure group that has decided the best way to fight climate change is to campaign against wealthy investment companies from funding arts events. Yeah, shut down a little book festival in the north of England: that’ll fix the environment! But of course, FFB aren’t only interested in the environment – that would be impossible. Despite their name, their social media feed suggests their main interest is – can you guess? – Palestine, or, more specifically, campaigning against Israel. Their main complaint against Baillie Gifford, which – until FFB had its way – supported most book festivals in the UK, was that it had a tiny amount of investment in companies connected to Israel.

If you had any doubt of the clod-hopping, philistine stupidity of Fossil Free Books and all who travel on its dead-end coattails, Jeremy Corbyn has been cheering it on, tweeting triumphally after Barclays withdrew its funding for UK music events, “We will continue to demand all arts festivals stand on the side of humanity and peace.”

Ah yes, because there’s nothing that screams “war-mongering genocide” more loudly than, say, a music festival in a London park on a summer’s evening. Still, it must be hard for Jeremy to care about the arts when his cultural hinterland begins with regular appearances on Russian TV and ends with similar gigs on Iranian TV. Thank God he’s taken a stand against that true cultural evil: British book festivals….

A lot of this has to do with – as I said – narcissism: idiots who cannot fathom the idea that their issues are totally irrelevant to other people’s issues, and maybe the Israeli-Hamas conflict has actually nothing in common with, say, a middle class life in Brighton. Ignorance is part of it, of course, in that these people are totally ignorant of all Middle East history, but that’s really down to narcissism, because if they weren’t such raging narcissists they’d read something other than their own tweets, the online version of masturbation.

But really, this is about conspiracy theories. For the past decade, progressives have been obsessed with finding a single source for all oppression. For a while it was “patriarchy.” Then it was “white supremacy.” For the hardcore there was “heteronormative cis supremacy.” And now it’s “Zionism.”

But history doesn’t work in single, simple ways, alas. It would be so much easier if it did, but it doesn’t, and part of growing up is learning this fairly basic truth. You can resist it if you like, and reside in a state of arrested development, clinging with your fingernails to the fatberg Omnicause, but don’t kid yourself that you’re doing any good. All you are, really, is a crank and a conspiracy theorist.

We've heard how North Korea has recently abandoned all talk of reunification – once a key feature of Great leader Kim Il-Sung's philosophy – and now identifies South Korea as the "principal enemy". The destruction of Pyongyang's famous Arch of Reunification in April was a symbolic confirmation of this new thinking.

The latest development:

North Korea has built what appear to be anti-tank barriers along the inter-Korean border, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), in a move that experts identified as part of Pyongyang’s efforts to broadcast its readiness for war amid escalating military tensions.

A JCS official confirmed the discovery in a defense ministry briefing on Monday, after it was first revealed by Seoul’s National Security Director Chang Ho-jin in an interview with Yonhap News TV.

“What has been identified so far is closer to barriers similar to anti-tank obstacles,” Chang said during the interview, while discussing reports of the North Korean military’s recent construction activities along the demilitarized zone (DMZ).

The JCS official added that the military has also identified ongoing DPRK activity related to the “reinforcement of tactical roads, the laying of mines and the clearing of wasteland.”…

Experts assessed that North Korea’s motivation for installing such structures reflects North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s frequent calls for the military to prepare for war with the South and the U.S.

“The detection of anti-tank barriers indicates preparations not just for localized skirmishes but for a full-scale war, seeking to send the message that North Korea is speeding up preparations for a potential second Korean War,” Ban Kil-joo, a professor at the Ilmin International Relations Institute from Korea University, told NK News.

Seeking to send a message is not the same as actually planning for a full-scale war, of course, but the rumour of a Putin visit to the North doesn't exactly help to reassure.

An editorial today at South Korea's Chosun Ilbo is less alarmist, offering the old Berlin Wall comparison:

It has been reported that North Korea is constructing a barrier along the armistice line.South Korean military surveillance has detected construction activities in the North that appear to be for a barrier, approximately 1 km north of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) in the western, eastern, and central fronts.

Recently, an incident occurred where about 10 North Korean soldiers crossed 50 meters into our territory on the central front, likely related to the barrier construction. North Korea is also laying military roads to connect the barrier to frontline units and planting additional mines north of the MDL. If barriers and mines are added to the barbed wire along the armistice line, the North and South will be completely separated….

In late 2020, Kim Jong-un enacted the ‘anti-reactionary thought law’ to block the Korean Wave (Hallyu). The law states that those who watch or distribute S. Korean dramas will be executed, even specifying to ‘break their spines to death.’

He fears that admiration for South Korea could destabilize the Kim family’s hereditary rule. Defectors who attempted to go to S. Korea or had contact with S. Koreans or churches were sent to political prison camps or summarily executed. To prevent North Korean residents from escaping, Kim Jong-un sealed the entire 1,400 km North Korea-China border with barbed wire.

The North Korean MZ generation, known as the ‘Jangmadang (market generation),’ is different from previous generations. Having experienced that it is the market, not the Workers’ Party, that feeds them, therefore they do not unconditionally obey Kim Jong-un’s authority.

Currently, 500,000 to 600,000 MZ generation North Koreans are serving at the armistice line. If loudspeaker broadcasts to North Korea resume, frontline North Korean soldiers will inevitably be exposed to the Korean Wave and external information. Considering the structure of the North Korean regime, information from the free world is far more threatening than American missiles. The barrier at the armistice line is primarily to prevent the defection of ‘MZ’ North Korean soldiers.

East Germany built the Berlin Wall in 1961 but could not stop the influx of information from the free world. When internal dissatisfaction and contradictions exploded, the wall collapsed in an instant. The same could happen in North Korea.

Ca. 1900. "Man and boy fishing with cane pole from shore." American pastoral, with a definite Huck Finn vibe:

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Photographic Company]

From MEMRI TV:

Sheikh Dr. Ali Ahmed said in a Friday, June 7, 2024 sermon at the Islamic Center of Connecticut that Muslims should address LGBT subjects from a position of superiority, authority, and confidence, and not from a position of inferiority, because their values are 100% pure and given by Allah. He criticized Muslim parents who assume cartoons are harmless and allow their children to watch them unmonitored, asserting that the cartoons indoctrinate children with pro-LGBT values, and he commented that the LGBT agenda is the most "intolerant, aggressive, and criminal agenda there is today." He also said that the liberal left promotes gender-affirming surgery – which he described as disfigurement and mutilation – while condemning Islam for its well-established practice of female circumcision.

Well, he's got a point.

Sure, I'll bite. In several ways, actually.

First, you understand that trans activism seeks to erase "sex" as a definable category right? After all, if any male can simply identify into the female sex simply by saying "I identify as a woman" than "sex" has no real meaning as a… pic.twitter.com/bhLadtMip9

— The Heretical Liberal 🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈 (@Rob_ThaBuilder) June 17, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Full text:

First, you understand that trans activism seeks to erase "sex" as a definable category right? After all, if any male can simply identify into the female sex simply by saying "I identify as a woman" than "sex" has no real meaning as a definable identity group.

And then you understand that the ONLY defining trait of homosexuals is same-SEX attraction, yes? By definition, if we eliminate 'sex' we eliminate 'same-sex attraction ', and by extension, homosexuals. We don't ACTUALLY eliminate them, of course, the real life homosexuals who actually exist would still exist. We've just forced them back in the closet by removing their only way to define themselves. And if they can't legally define themselves, they cannot legally protect themselves as a group. I'm surprised this needs to be said, but yes, rolling back the legal rights of homosexuals is homophobic.

As if that wasn't bad enough, trans activism is a primary driver of medical gay conversion therapy, by attempting to surgically convert gender non-conforming gay teens into their "straight" counterpart. Confused feminine gay boys and butch lesbians get brainwashed with the pseudo religious belief that all humans have a metaphysical , innate "gendered soul" that is separate and distinct from the body, and that this metaphysical "gender soul" is sometimes a different sex than someone's physical sexed body.

Once they fill their head with that poison, they convince these gay kids the dangerous lie that their gender non conformity means that they're ACTUALLY the opposite sex (and thus, "straight"). So a masculine butch lesbian is told she's ACTUALLY a man. And since she's now a man attracted to women – voila! – through the magic of trans alchemy, we have successfully converted a butch lesbian into a "straight" man. Again, I'm surprised this needs to be said, but medically converting young gay teens into their "straight" counterpart is hella homophobic.

To sum up: Gender ideology seeks to roll back LGB rights by making it impossible for homosexuals to define themselves, and then it sterilizes and mutilates gender non-conforming gay teens in an impossible attempt at medically converting them to their straight counterpart. Humans cannot change sex, we ALL know this (even the ones pretending that they don't) and we are destroying thousands of people's lives when we pretend to believe these hateful lies.

A better question is, how can you NOT see this ideology as homophobic to its core?

This is almost a companion piece to the speech I posted yesterday from Monika Schwarz-Friesel – another powerful response from a German speaker to the extraordinary explosion of celebration in the West that greeted the Hamas pogrom of October 7th.

An open letter from Nobel Prize winner Herta Muller:

In most narratives about the war in Gaza, the war does not begin where it began. The war did not start in Gaza. The war began on October 7, exactly 50 years after Egypt and Syria invaded Israel. Palestinian Hamas terrorists committed an unimaginable massacre in Israel. They filmed themselves as heroes and celebrated their bloodbath. Their victory celebrations continued back home in Gaza, where the terrorists dragged severely abused hostages and presented them as spoils of war to the jubilant Palestinian population. This macabre jubilation extended all the way to Berlin. In the Neukölln district there was dancing on the streets and the Palestinian organization Samidoun distributed sweets. The internet was buzzing with happy comments.

More than 1,200 people died in the massacre. After torture, mutilation and rape, 239 people were abducted. This massacre by Hamas is a total derailment from civilization. There is an archaic horror in this bloodlust that I no longer thought possible in this day and age. This massacre has the pattern of annihilation through pogroms, a pattern that the Jews have known for centuries. That is why the whole country has been traumatized, because the founding of the state of Israel was intended to protect against such pogroms. And until October 7, it was believed to be protected. Although Hamas has been sitting on the state of Israel’s neck since 1987. The Hamas founding charter clearly stated that the destruction of the Jews was the goal, and that “death for God is our noblest wish”.

Even though there have been changes to this charter since then, it is clear that nothing has changed: the destruction of the Jews and the destruction of Israel remain the goal and desire of Hamas. This is exactly the same as in Iran. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the destruction of the Jews has also been state doctrine since its foundation, that is, since 1979….

The mullahs’ and Hamas’ obsession with war is so dominant that – when it comes to the extermination of Jews – it even transcends the religious divide between Shiites and Sunnis. Everything else is subordinated to this obsession with war. The population is deliberately kept in poverty, while at the same time the wealth of the Hamas leadership is increasing immeasurably – in Qatar, Ismael Haniye is said to have billions at his disposal. And the contempt for humanity knows no bounds. For the population, there is almost nothing left except martyrdom. Military plus religion as a complete surveillance. There is literally no room for dissenting opinions within Palestinian politics in Gaza. Hamas has driven out all other political currents from the Gaza Strip with incredible brutality. After Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2007, Fatah members were thrown from a fifteen-storey building as a deterrent.

This is how Hamas seized control of the entire Gaza Strip and established an unchallenged dictatorship. Unchallenged because no one who questions it lives long. Instead of a social network for the population, Hamas has built a network of tunnels under the feet of the Palestinians. Even under hospitals, schools and kindergartens financed by the international community. Gaza is a single military barracks, a deep state of anti-Semitism underground. Complete and yet invisible. In Iran, there is a saying: Israel needs its weapons to protect its people. And Hamas needs its people to protect its weapons.

This saying is the shortest description of the dilemma that in Gaza you cannot separate the civilian from the military. And that applies not only to the buildings, but also to the personnel in the buildings. The Israeli army was forced into this trap in its response to October 7. Not lured, but forced. Forced to defend itself and to make itself guilty by destroying the infrastructure with all the civilian victims. And it is precisely this inevitability that Hamas wanted and is exploiting. Since then, it has been directing the news that goes out to the world. The sight of suffering disturbs us daily. But no war reporter can work independently in Gaza. Hamas controls the selection of images and orchestrates our feelings. Our feelings are their strongest weapon against Israel. And by selecting the images, it even manages to present itself as the sole defender of the Palestinians. This cynical calculation has paid off…

I lived in a dictatorship for over thirty years [Romania – MH] And when I came to Western Europe, I could not imagine that democracy could ever be called into question in such a way. I thought that in a dictatorship, people are systematically brainwashed. And that in democracies, people learn to think for themselves because the individual counts. Unlike in a dictatorship, where independent thought is forbidden and the forced collective trains people. And where the individual is not a part of the collective, but an enemy. I am appalled that young people, students in the West, are so confused that they are no longer aware of their freedom. That they have apparently lost the ability to distinguish between democracy and dictatorship…

But yes, read it all.