Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXXI. The ⚥ Edition.
We just updated our ongoing thread on the television series, The Secrets of Playboy. If you haven't read it, you ought to. It's here:
Secrets of Playboy
Why the teenage waitress from a century ago on that thread? Read it, and it'll become plain.
Anyhow, if you follow the show, you'll learn how Hugh Hefner was totally debased, and how those around him, if male, became debased, and those subject to him who were female, had their lives destroyed. He treated women like toys and there's good reason to believe he didn't like women, really. Not as human beings.
Playboy magazine was part of the Sexual Revolution, that culturally failed and destructive movement that we're still suffering from and living with. Hefner's place in that was something like Goebbles place in the Nazi revolution, if we want to look at the Nazi movement in that fashion, in the Third Reich. If you take his own claims seriously, which there is some reason to reduce, he had a place akin, perhaps, to Hitler in that movement, or Lenin in the Communist Revolution in Russia.
And yes, the comparison to those evil men is intentional. He was an evil person, albeit one, who like those earlier evil people, attracted followers.
The record is far to clear to ignore. The impact of the Sexual Revolution was wholly and entirely destructive, and women in particular, and society in general, have suffered enormously because of it, and they still do.
All of which relates, oddly enough to a series of things in the Zeitgeist in recent days.
Let's start with this headline:
Maren Morris is celebrating the way she shows off "country female sexuality" ahead of her next album release.
I didn't know until I saw the headline who Maren Morris is, and I still basically don't. I don't like country music, which is generally bad music and often has not much to do with actual country things. I learned, however, that Morris appeared topless (at least) in Playboy.
"Country female sexuality"?
Well, given what Playboy is, we could ask if she meant the Frontier brothel variant of female sexuality, as all her photos do is serve to have men check out and her naked boobs and imagine her in bed.
Her photos apparently appeared several years ago, so this revived controversy actually recalls the brothel analogy unfortunately well. It's been in the news as she revived the story, posting, apparently, one of her topless photos on the net somewhere.
This doesn't advance the cause for women in any sense, and certainly not in the bold independent women fashion. It's not a strike for, for example, female farmers, of which there are a lot. No, rather, its a strike for the objectification of women, and through a vehicle associated with their destruction and violence perpetuated upon them.
It can be argued, of course, that that has something to do with "female sexuality", but not in a good way.
We've long held that every time one woman does something like this, it sets things back for all.
Shame.
And then there's a name that's been in the news:
Deporting Alina Kabaeva?
Who?
Alina Kabaeva is a former Uzbek gymnast and Olympian. By all accounts, she was an excellent one. She's also the mother of three children.
Well, so what?
There's a campaign going on to deport her from Switzerland to Russia, along with her children.
Why?
Well, it's consistently rumored that one Vladimir Putin is the father of the children of the 38-year-old Kabaeva, who is a resident, currently, of Switzerland, but who is a Russian citizen (although not an ethnic Russian) who has, in the past, gone back and forth. Indeed, the rumors were so strong that at one time a Russian newspaper reported that they were engaged, which resulted in the newspaper being shut down.
Putin was married to Lyudmila from 1983 to 2014, but they divorced that year. Not a lot, really, is actually known about Putin's private life. The parentage of Kabaeva's children is routinely reported to be Putin, but if he is the father, it's certainly knot acknowledged publicly.
Well, again, so what.
Well, for one thing it brings up, maybe, the odd elements of power and hypocrisy. Part of the reason that Putin claims to have invaded Ukraine has to do with the Orthodox Church.
Now, the largest of the Orthodox Churches is the Russian Orthodox Church. But it's a fundamental element of every single branch of Christianity, Will Smith's apparent views aside, that extramarital sex is a mortal sin, no exceptions (are you listening to that Will?). If Putin has, and maybe he hasn't, fathered three children with Kabaeva, he's acting oddly for a man whose has cited Orthodoxy even as recently as a couple of weeks ago.
Which assumes that he has been acting badly in this area, which maybe he hasn't been. Maybe he and Kabaeva, who was a Muslim but who has converted to Christianity, are actually married. We might very well not know, and we do know that while Orthodoxy frowns on divorce, it allows it under some circumstances.
Or maybe Putin is like some monarchs of old who felt that their positions of power gave them some sort of personal pass in this area. Even Czar Nicholas II, who lived an exemplary married life, and who has been canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church, had a mistress when he was young.
Or maybe Putin is just as Orthodox as his position as a would be Czar requires him to be. It is known that his mother was a devout Orthodox Christian. Putin observes Russian Orthodox Holy Days, so maybe he is an observant member, although former advisor Sergei Pugacheve claims he is not.
At any rate, Kabaeva is a convert, and maybe she's straightened out. Should she be deported from Switzerland?
Well, at first blush that seems silly and cruel. It's not as if she invaded Ukraine, and her children certainly didn't.
On the other hand, such is the fickle fate of courtesans, if that's what she is, or the spouses of monarchs, if we want to assume a marital union. Marie Antoinette didn't retire to Paris, after all.
Choices do have implications.
Blows In Defense of Honor?
Speaking of spouses, and ones with a bit of an odd relationship to each other, the news this past week has been filled with the story of Will Smith striking a blow upon Chris Rock, in defense of the honor of his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
While everyone now knows the story, in spite of the low level of Oscar ceremony viewing, what occurred is this. Rock, who has a sort of rough sense of humor, but who is funny, made fun of Mrs. Smith's baldness, which is due to a medical condition. In this era of intentionally bald women, I don't know that female baldness is the big deal it once was, but it is a medical condition in her case and making fun of somebody's medical condition is rude, no doubt about it.
Having said that, the joke wasn't really all that aggressive, and related her condition to the movie G. I. Jane, which I havne't seen and I'm not going to. FWIW, that movie featured Demi Moore as a woman going through Navy SEAL training, and she had a shaved head.
Anyhow, Smith laughed, but Mrs. Smith cringed. Then, in reaction, Will Smith went up and violently struck Rock, who reeled from the blow. Rock actually recovered his humor, at first, quickly, making a joke of it, but it then ended up in a yelling match between the two, with Rock on the defensive.
Frankly, Smith was lucky. The slap was in the nature of what is sometimes called a "sucker punch", in that it was unexpected. Lots of men in other situations would have hit back, which Rock did not do, to his credit.
There was actually an ovation for Smith's violence at the time, although some were horrified immediately. Denzel Washington took Smith aside. Washington is the son of a Pentecostal minister, and is quite religious, warning Smith that at a person's height is when the Devil comes for them. Smith later, after winning an Oscar, gave a teary speech in which he apologized, but not to Rock (who has been silent on the matter), attributing his actions to having just appeared in The King about the father of the Williams tennis sisters. Mr. Williams condemned the violence later. At any rate, he went on about how he had been influenced by the role and felt God was calling him to protect those he loved at this stage in his life.
Well, to be blunt, he ought to get his own icky house in order in that case, assuming that he hasn't. If he has, given his public declarations on the topic, he ought to clear that situation up.
Smith was raised in a Christian household, but he's actually attended therapy in order to overcome its influences so that marital infidelity, introduced by Jada Pickett Smith to some degree, and in an unapologetic fashion, can flow along in his marriage. Neither of them has been faithful to the other, and it's an "open" marriage, and publicly so. Smith felt guilty about that at first, which apparently didn't stop him, but with counselling he was able to overcome a central feature of being married and a central tenant of his Christian faith.
What that means in terms of his current faith, I don't know, but there isn't any monotheistic religion that looks up infidelity kindly. Apostolic Christianity certainly holds it to be a mortal sin, and the tenants of any other Christian religion does as well, in so far as I know. Even those few monotheistic religions that allow polygamy don't look on infidelity kindly, and the entire "open marriage" thing is an example of the modern disease of thinking every standard of the past doesn't really apply to us as we're so modern, even though they do, and our transgression in that regard have led to untold misery.
None of which means that you can't defend the honor of somebody who isn't really that honorable in general, but this application of The Old Law is really interesting. It's the sort of thing that led to fisticuffs and even duels over the honor of women at some times. An interesting revival of a standard that once was widespread, probably still is, but hasn't been publicly acknowledged for a while.
Of course, the thing about the Old Law is that it brings up the Old Standards. The Old Standards travel together, not by themselves.
The Reappearance of the Old Order
Speaking of the men, women, and old standards, something interesting has been constantly reported on regarding the war in Ukraine, and with admiration by the press.
And what that is, is the that at the borders, most of the refugees are women and children, as "their men have returned to fight".
And nobody thinks that odd or unusual.
It's a roaring example of our Eleventh Rule of Human Behavior, and it's not the only one.
In the Russo Ukrainian tragedy, the Ukrainian men are fighting, and fighting heroically. Women are being heroic as well, taking their children where they can and fleeing, and suffering enormously. The tragic photograph of the pregnant woman being carried on a structure, whom we know lost her baby and died herself as the result of a Russian strike, will likely go down as the most famous photograph of the war.
The old order roaring back.
Now, some Ukrainian women are bearing arms. The other day, a young woman (very young, probably a teen) was interviewed in a village where she was serving as a Ukrainian militiaman. And she isn't the only example. Be that as it may, however, this is a male fight for the most part. Some women will fight in it, as wars involving partisan action have always included.
So far nobody has really remarked, however, how remarkable this really is, in our modern world where we pretend the distinction between men and women in relation to combat doesn't really exist. Not only does it exist, it's very evident here. Almost everyone in the Ukrainian service, regular and irregular, is male. All the Russian troops are male. Almost all of the Ukrainian volunteers are male. Almost all (but not quite all, I saw a photo of an Italian female pilot the other day) of the foreign volunteers are male, probably well over 90%.
Indeed, that latter fact is telling. NATO's public press likes to feature photographs of striking braided women in uniform (it's common enough that it can't be a repeated coincidence, and frankly its slightly weird). Military press photos from the US military seem to omit the secret "look at the cute girl in the beret" feature that NATO photos do, and are genuinely simply more in the nature of a certain type of news photo, which is much more businesslike.
But the concept in the West of women in combat is completely untested and the historical examples grossly exaggerated. The most commonly cited one is the Soviet example from World War Two, which was actually much more constrained than those who cite it would like to admit. Indeed, the Soviets apparently didn't regard it as hugely successful, as limited as it was, as after the war, they eliminated that role for their female citizens. The heir to the Red Army, the Russian Army, is pretty much a male deal, just like the Ukrainian Army. The same is true of the Israeli Army, in spite of the occasional citations to it.
Wars are a cultural test of massive proportions, and the old rules and orders tend to come roaring back during them.
Struggling with the New and Biological Order
Pity poor Judge Blackburn, caught in a confirmation hearing and presented with questions that pit her between the spirit of the age as seen by those who are supporting her and the spirit of the age from those who oppose them, with biology in the middle.
BLACKBURN: I’d love to get your opinion on that, and you can submit that. Do you interpret Justice Ginsburg’s meaning of men and women as male and female?
JACKSON: Again, because I don’t know the case, I do not know how I’d interpret it. I’d need to read the whole thing.
BLACKBURN: Ok. And can you provide a definition for the word “woman”?
JACKSON: Can I provide a definition?
BLACKBURN: Mmhm.
JACKSON: No. I can’t.
BLACKBURN: You can’t?
JACKSON: Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.
BLACKBURN: So, you believe the meaning of the word “woman” is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition?
JACKSON: Senator, in my work as a judge, what I do is I address disputes. If there’s a dispute about a definition, people make arguments, and I look at the law and I decide.
BLACKBURN: The fact that you can’t give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about.
Okay, the way she's been quoted, we note, is unfair. She did not say that only a biologist could define what a woman is, but rather she stated, albeit you have to know the context, that the legal definition of a woman in the context of any one case had to be understood from the law of the case. The way that American law is currently interpreted, her answer is quite correct.
But that raises a larger, indeed, an existential, question.
Earlier this week (at the time that I was posting this) there was something called the International Day of Transgender Visibility. Anyone day in the year is now designated for something, and indeed typically a lot of somethings. March 31 was also, for example, Anesthesia Tech Day, Cesar Chavez Day, Dance Marathon Day, Eiffel Tower Day, International Hug a Medievalist Day, National Bunsen Burner Day, National Clams on the Half Shell Day, National Crayon Day, National Farm Workers Day National Prom Day, National She's Funny That Way, Tater Day,Transfer Day (U.S. Virgin Islands) and World Backup Day. Some of these are obviously a lot more serious than others. Transgender Visibility Day, however, got a shout out from the President, who issued a statement recognizing, in essence, their cause and taking a position on bills that have been in this area.
Wyoming was one of the states with such a bill, and like most such efforts in this conservative but not as conservative as people think state, it didn't go anywhere in our legislature. Our bill concerned transgendered athletes, restricting sport participation to your biologically assigned gender. Utah had a similar bill which passed, was vetoed by their Governor, and then overridden by their legislature following that so that it has become law. South Dakota passed one which was signed into law by their right wing controversial governor, Kristi Noem.
Just after all of that occurred, the reason for the entire debate in athletics came into sharp focus as a genetically male swimmer who has undergone medial gender reassignment won a NCAA Division 1 swimming championship in the 500 yard freestyle event.
This does bring into focus the biological nature of the debate, and the peculiar nature of contemporary western liberalism. The swimmer is genetically a man, and he's built, and frankly looks, like one. He has a powerful male swimmers build, although if he was competing as a man, he would not have taken the title. Competing as a woman, which he can only due to surgery and pharmaceuticals, he took the championship, thereby beating out the nearest genetically female swimmer.
In some very odd way, although nobody has noted it, this actually answers the question that the Billy Jean King v. Bobby Riggs match supposed was supposed to years ago. Taking away the circus like nature of that tennis event, males will in fact beat women at sports every time for the most part, save for sports that women are uniquely biologically adapted to. There will be exceptions, to be sure, but if sports were not separated by gender, women would be so rare in most sports as to fade to nonexistent, something nobody wants.
That's what not addressing this in some fashion, however, actually argues for. The unfairness could be eliminated in sports overnight by just not having male and female sports.
Which would operate a larger, and massive, societal unfairness to women.
All of which begs the larger question, which is the one used as a "gotcha" on Judge Jackson. That is, what is trangenderism.
Nobody really knows, no matter what people may wish to claim.
The basic nature of the problem is that it's based on individual perception. That is, people who are "transgendered" have a strong feeling that they should be members of the opposite sex in spite of their DNA. That doesn't make them a member of the opposite sex, however, it only makes them desire to be. They can't achieve that goal without surgery and ongoing pharmaceuticals.
But should surgery and pharmaceuticals be used to defeat our genes? It's clear in the case of addressing a defect that few people would object. I.e., if a person can correct something like bad eyesight, or a defective organ, and return to the established obvious baseline, that's one thing. But what about things that go beyond that and fundamentally alter us in some way.
This isn't the only example, but the curious thing about this that, so far, most of the things that fit into this category involve sex in some fashion. Cosmetic surgery exists to repair all sorts of things, from birth defects to the impact of terrible injuries, but the thing that receives the most attention, and advertising, is expanding the size of boobs. That's one such example, and it's purely cosmetic, but unquestionably related to one single thing, sex appeal. Surgery and drugs to defeat natural sex assignment goes far beyond that.
But to what extent should a person do this, or be allowed to do this, on perception alone, and even if they are fully allowed, to what extent does the rest of society have to recognize the medical defeat of nature in this instance? The following stories in this area don't provide much comfort for the individuals who embark on this path.
Topics Where You Least Expect Them
This entire debate came up not only the Supreme Court nomination hearings, but also on Twitter in the form of a ban on the Babylon Bee.
For those who aren't familiar with the Babylon Bee, it's a satire site that originally was light Christian satire. I.e., the authors of the Bee are Christians, but it poked fun at things that come up in Christian circles and debates.
Early on it was quite funny, but there's probably only so much satire you can really do in this area before it becomes truly offensive or just ceases being funny and, at least in my view, the latter is the case for the Bee. And recently the Bee has crossed over from its original focus into outright satire, something that's actually quite an art to accomplish well (the best online satire entity in my view is The Beaverton, a Canadian focused website).
The Bee was banned on Twitter for its satirical post naming U.S. assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Levine as "Man of the Year". It flew in the face of woke convention by referring to Levine, born in 1957 as Richard and gender reassigned in 2011, at which point changed names to Rachel, as "he".
The Bee's satire was really not very funny, which is perhpas because effective satire is difficult, or perhaps because it was genuinely an attack and was fairly mean spirited, no matter what your view is on this. It ended up getting the Bee banned from Twitter, which hasn't caused it to back down one bit. Indeed, they're seeking paying subscribers by noting that they've been attacked by liberals. And on April 1, April Foods Day, it doubled down by issuing a false apology, which was also quite mean spirited.
Adding to a show on how this is all part of a raging culture war, political figures of the stoke the fires class immediately picked up on it, including such figures as Lauren Boebert, all of which raises a distressing question that was raised without reference to this in another forum, which we'll get to in a moment.
Before we do, however, we'll note that a similiar, but much less pronounced, Twitter storm broke out on the left due to a statement by former Trump spokesman Kayleigh McEnany, who, of course, is now on Fox News, where they all seem to go. That follows here:
The anecdote (sic, antidote) to darkness is light. And the anecdote (sic, antidote) to a really grim future is filling the world with a lot of Christian babies.
This caused a mini tempest in Cybersphere, predictably, no doubt in part because it came up in such a truly odd venue and way. But this also taps into a bunch of stuff in the culture wars.
Right away, some organs on the left went on the extreme opposite. Salon, for example, ran an article that stated "Kayleigh McEnany wants more "Christian babies": It's an overt call-out to racist paranoia". Salon goes on to claim that McEnany is espousing the "great replacement" theory.
That statement only makes sense, if it makes sense at all, from an American or at least an ethnic European prospective and a left wing one at that. Indeed, the statement itself is paranoid. Those familiar with the history of the Church would realize that while Christianity spread extraordinarily rapidly following the Resurrection, one of its claims to truth (it was amazingly fast), the first adherents were of course Jewish and the faith was (and the Apostolic Christians remain) amazingly color-blind, with one of the most important early saints, St. Augustine of Hippo, being a North African of at least half Berber descent (his mother, St. Monica, was a Berber). In the United States, the "black church" remains one of the most culturally influential Christian denominations. Therefore, "lots of Christian babies" doesn't mean a "lot of white babies" by any means. Of course, to those at Salon, chances are that they view a Christian world view as somehow racist, as it isn't an Islamic or Buddhist, or whatever, worldview.
The interesting thing about this overall, however, is how it shows a change in views over time and context, which is part of what this blog tracks.
Traditionally, large families were regarded as a blessing from God, with this view going back into antiquity. Efforts to limit family size are in fact quite recently, having really come in during the early 20th Century. An interesting part of that, however, is that it was part of what was openly discussed as part of the "Battle of the Cradle" in cultural terms, with those discussing it not regarding themselves as racist.
This depended upon the person expressing the views, of course. But in European and European American upper classes it was common to express concern that foreign overseas, non-European, cultures would pose a threat to Europeans due to their perceived high birth rate (which probably wasn't, in reality, much higher at the time, if higher at all, than the European one). None other than Theodore Roosevelt, who was an advocate of Americanism, noted in correspondence that he "had done his duty" in this regard, by having several children.
Whatever a person thinks of that view, it's also the case that birth control of the Margaret Sanger type originally came in, as people like Sanger had noticed the dropping birth rates in the upper class and worried that higher birthrates among African Americans posed a societal threat. Part, but not all, of her early birth control efforts were focused on the hope of dropping the African American birthrate based on that obviously very racist reason.
In the over century long time that's passed since then, the same demographic that Roosevelt and Sanger were part of have had their birth rates drop below the replacement level by a fairly substantial margin. Whether McEnany was expressing a variant of that fear, I don't know, but I doubt it.
I don't know what branch of Christianity she hails from or is a member of. Looking her up, she went to a Catholic high school, but that is not a reliable indicator of a person's religion really, as many non-Catholics attend those. She always refers to herself as a "Christian", but not by denomination, which suggests that she's probably a Protestant, as Protestant's are more likely to self identify in that fashion. Catholics usually identify as Catholics, which is a common way members of a minority self identify. I.e., the US is a Protestant country culturally which is obvious if you are a Catholic, and for that reason Catholics tend to identify themselves as Catholics.
Depending upon the answer to this, there would be different paths which a person might go to dive deeper into her opinion, assuming that needs to be done, or that the opinion has any additional depth to it. Given as we're not really doing that, but looking at other things, as we're inclined to do, we'll keep going down the road a bit.
One way that people can interpret it is the way the Duggers have. I.e., they're part of a "quiver full" movement. I don't know a lot about that other than it emphasizes, apparently, having a lot of children. The other way, however, is more of the traditional Apostolic Christian way, which really doesn't, even though some Apostolic Christians families do not. It might be best expressed by the statements of Fr. Hugh Babour, who is a Catholic intellectual and who often has surprisingly nuanced views on topics that a person wouldn't expect. On this topic, however, Fr. Barbour just always states that the purpose of marriage is to welcome children "and raise them up for the worship of God".
Anyhow, it's interesting how in a century or less we've gone as a culture to a point where the left wing of the culture assumes that making a statement that would have been simply regarded as an expression of faith, that most people probably held, and which the left itself held in a fashion, has gone to being one that's assumed to be racist and can only be stated on the right.
Slow Ride
Okay, onto something else.
Recently, a "trucker's convoy" was in the news, but only briefly.
Their timing was remarkably bad.
The entire concept, of course, came up due to the Canadian "Freedom Convoy" which had its origins in some truck drivers protesting being made to be tested and quarantined if they were unvaccinated and crossed from the US into Canada. It ballooned into a general Canadian right wing protest over . . . well everything. Ultimately, it got so bad in Ottawa that the Canadian government had to declare a state of emergency.
This all got a lot of press.
Then somebody got the idea of doing an American variant.
Well, no sooner had they started putting that together than the Biden Administration essentially gave upon mask requirements for most things and all sorts of states, including Democratically run ones did too. There really wasn't anything left to protest, but nonetheless the convoy got rolling.
And then Putin attacked Ukraine.
At that point, nobody was interested in this story anymore. Indeed, it had become a complete anachronism, and at a point in time in the nation where there's a trucking shortage, and the price of fuel is going up, what the heck?
Well, in Washington D. C. a biker, who may have had enough, got his revenge.
A bicyclist, that is.
He got in front of the convoy, and in spite of the trucks honking their horns and the like, he just peddled along at a crawl, and they had to crawl too.
A video of his actions was viewed 4,200,000,000,000 times.
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