The Bluestocking, vol 99: Dark webs and dumped tortoises
Happy Friday!
And it is pretty happy one, as I'm sitting at home with sunlight pouring through the windows and daffodils on the desk in front of me. I love spring - all the promise of summer, without the sweat and the bees.
This week, the final part of my Radio 4 series on overwork aired. I talked to the author Brigid Schulte about why we confuse being busy with being important. Although if you only listen to one episode, I would beg you to make it the interview with Aaron Tatlow, a Deliveroo biker, as he gives an incredibly knowledgeable and clear insight into how a job like his works. Upside: you can work as many hours as you need to pay your bills! Downside: you always wonder if you should be working more!
Helen
PS. As ever, I'm trying to read less Twitter, more books. I really love historical fiction (whether Jean Plaidy or Hilary Mantel). Does anyone have a recommendation for what I could read next? I particularly like: queens and the 18th century.
The Voice of the Intellectual Dark Web
Ben Winegard, an assistant professor of psychology at Hillsdale College, a small Christian school in Michigan, isn’t as sanguine as Lehmann. In 2016, he co-authored an article for Quillette titled “On the Reality of Race and the Abhorrence of Racism,” arguing that race exists and corresponds to genetic differences, and that denying this fact “leaves a vacuum for extremists to exploit.” It’s not something Winegard, who identifies as a “New Deal Democrat,” would write today. “I have had to stop writing about race because it’s just so toxic and not even responsible to do,” he told me.
Winegard remains an avid Quillette reader and says the work it does is “important.” But there are risks inherent in a research forum raising difficult questions about gender, race and intelligence, he says: Young people might glom on with a wrongheaded view of the data. He also worries that the site, ironically, is becoming an echo chamber in the name of radical openness. “There’s a risk,” he says, “that it does just become an outlet for a lot of people who feel grievances about identity politics and political correctness.”
Interesting profile of Quillette, which has become the in-house journal of the "Intellectual Dark Web". There have been pieces I've enjoyed on Quillette, but this longread about it points up one undeniable fact: for all the freeeee speeech, we're-so-heterodox, saying-the-unsayable blah, it's just as partisan and predictable as any traditional newspaper. And, indeed, the "IDW" themselves are often boringly homogenous in their palette of controversial opinions, which just happen to be opposed to the mainstream liberal consensus.
I think that's fine, but we shouldn't for a minute mistake that for them being a Higher Level of Truth Seeker than mere lefty-liberals. They have just as many holes in their knowledge: I was surprised when I interviewed Jordan Peterson and he appeared not to have read any of the foundational texts of feminism, when he's such a trenchant critic of it. When it comes to politics and ideology, I think most people (me included) are tempted just to buy the package. What do people who agree with me on X think about Y? It's far harder, and far more work, to research each issue on its merits.
Cruel and Unusual Punishment
This erasure impulse hails primarily from terror: that the roving black cloud of calumny will move on to any individual or institution complicit in distributing a vilified artist’s work. If you join in denouncing whoever’s got it in the neck this week, presumably they won’t come for you. Severing ties even to an artist’s output also provides cultural middlemen a precious opportunity for public moral posturing, to the benefit of the brand. Erasure is also a form of rewriting history—a popular impulse of late. In this touched-up version of events, we were never taken in by these disgusting specimens. In the historical rewrite, there was always something fishy about Bill Cosby; he was never America’s dad.
Having written myself about the relationship between art and the people who make it, I was interested in this Lionel Shriver piece. I don't feel entirely convinced by her argument - where there are credible rape accusations against someone, it does feel like a duty of care issue to allow them on set.
But this bit jumped out. Is the scrubbing of Bad Men and Women from the record an attempt at a "historical rewrite"? Is it actually about television executives - and the rest of us - letting themselves off the hook, refusing to confront the fact that we all ignored warning signs about a host of powerful people? I can think of at least one example from my career where I held my nose and worked with someone that I shouldn't have, because ... why? Making a fuss would have made me unpopular? Because I didn't have hard proof? (But did I look hard for it?) If we "disappear" people, then we also make those tough questions disappear.
The Celebrity Tortoise Break-Up That Rocked the World
But one day in November of 2011, something changed. A keeper approached their shared home, only to see Bibi rear forward and bite a large chunk off of Poldi’s shell. (She drew blood.) Galápagos tortosies lack teeth at any age, but they do have powerful, jagged-edged jaws. If the two kept fighting like this, the keepers were afraid they’d kill each other. And so the tortoises—who had spent nearly a century sleeping with their shells touching—were separated.
Nothing lasts for ever, not even the love of giant tortoises.
Quick links
"Soft and sentimental, Forrest Gump was, happily, out in the world before social media. If it were released now, we’d never stop arguing about it." Thoroughly enjoyable ranking of all the Best Picture Oscar winners.
Windfalls: 15 people who received an unexpected lump sum reveal what they spent it on.
Guest gif: I'll be there for you...
See you next time...