I want to do something but there’s hardly anything for me to do from Brasil besides spreading the word and not letting these testimonies fall on deaf ears. I’m asking you to do this same ant work from wherever you are.
I must not explain the joke. Explaining the joke is the joke-killer. I will face my followers who did not get the joke. I will permit them to pass over me and through me
“Jack of all trades, master of none” … “but ofttimes better than a master of one.”
“Blood is thicker than water.” “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the waters of the womb.”
“Money is the root of all evil.” “The love of money is the root of all evil.”
there’s also “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” which conservatives are oh so fond of saying
bootstraps are, well, straps on your boots. you cannot physically pull yourself up by them, and that’s what the original phrase meant. “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” is meant to be an impossible task
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”
The second part really matters.
There’s a time travel paradox called the bootstrap paradox. It creates an impossibility.
Gonna debunk some of these
The original phrase was just “The customer is always right”. “In matters of taste” is a later addition, it did not originate with Selfridge.
“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the waters of the womb” was a modern invention by a writer and a rabbi who did not substantiate their claims. The original phrase “blood is thicker than water” has existed in some form since the 1300’s, and similar phrases can be found in other languages and cultures.
“Jack of all trades, master of none” … “but ofttimes better than a master of one” - The original phrase was just “jack of all trades”, and it was used as a compliment. “Master of none” was added later in the 18th century. “But ofttimes better than a master of one” is again a modern addition.
“The love of money is the root of all evil” - this one’s actually kind of true! The original phrase is in Latin: Radix malorum est cupiditas or Radix omnium malorum est cupiditas is a Biblical quotation in Latin that translates to “the root of evil is greed”, or “the root of evil is want”.
“Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” is meant to be an impossible task - This one’s true.
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” - this quote is from Oscar Wilde, but an older version originated in 1714, which simply read “Imitation is a kind of artless flattery”.
A big reason MRA/Andrew Tate stuff is appealing to so many normies is that it’s *significantly* more logical and rigorous than the queer theory stuff that’s suddenly become mandated by most institutions.
Now, of course, I’m not saying I believe it. All I’m saying is a young person today is presented with two options: the first says that biological sex is fake and that were it not for oppressive social structures humanity would default into a genderless mass in which everyone looked the same and have no discernable preferences in regards to sexual attraction. The other says no, actually, that’s complete bullshit.
Oh, and also, the now-mainstream side is very openly disdainful of young men and male heterosexuality in particular, to the extent that it’s perfectly normal for young men to be told that their very existence is the cause of all the world’s problems and they will never be able to cleanse themselves of their evil.
Gee golly I wonder why they’d listen to literally anyone else?
People have a natural aversion to ideas that are very obviously insane. Most people have some degree of dignity, or at least a lack of burning self-hatred. It takes a very specific form of prolonged conditioning to make anyone stupid enough to fall for this shit, and I’m sorry but there’s just not enough English majors out there to make your little project socially viable.
“People are sexist because I think queer theory is stupid”
Jesus christ, shut the fuck up.
Time and again, I encounter left identitarians who become apoplectic at the notion that their words and actions could ever influence the behavior of others.
Here, sexists are simply born sexist. They are evil from the womb. No one could ever persuade them to be otherwise, and they certainly didn’t develop their beliefs in response to the stuff my comrades and I have been screaming at them.
Men are attracted to Andrew Tate stuff because it gives them a coherent (Notice I didn’t use words like good or kind) ethical vision which they can use to inform their future actions.
Being a heterosexual man, kind of isolated from the world but reading a lot of third wave pop feminism stuff and having a genuinely left-wing friend group made me entirely neurotic about women and completely ashamed of my own sexual desire.
If I saw an attractive stranger, I’d think, “You know, it’s gross men like you who think that just because a woman is wearing a low-cut top that she must be sexually available, and that’s exactly why women can’t even just exist in public without being sexualized”
And if I had a crush on a friend I’d think, “You’re exactly the kind of gross ‘Nice Guy’ who thinks that just because he does the bare minimum every woman around you ought to get down on her hands and knees and suck your cock, you’re exactly the kind of scumbag who makes life miserable for the women around you.”
Not long ago I finally started talking to people about these feelings, and I got two responses:
People who weren’t in left-wing circles went, “Jesus, you need to get a new social group immediately and stop taking that stuff so seriously, it’s not nearly as true as you think it is.”
People who are in left-wing circles have a lot more trouble, because I can object, “Aren’t you also the ones saying these things out loud all the time, and saying that believing them is one of the most important things men can do?”
At which point they’d kind of suck air through their teeth and go, “Yeah… but isn’t there a way you could take that stuff, like, seriously, but not like, you know seriously? Can you just kind of… silently figure out when it applies and when it doesn’t? And kind of like… act like heterosexual men have always acted AND completely revolutionize and unlearn all the behavior that heterosexual men have had foisted on them by patriarchal society?”
Which… No? I think that’s an infuriating attitude. As far as I can tell pop feminism and queer theory stuff have no idea how heterosexual men ought to express their wants and needs, and are, if anything, frustrated and often even angry that men should want ethical guidance in these areas, while simultaneously believing that there needs to be a radical and complete transformation in how heterosexual men express themselves.
It is stifiling. There are a lot of men like me, trying to take this stuff seriously and going silently insane, and on top of that, a lot of men who just sense the hostility and figure that any ideology that lets them defend themselves against it must be worthwhile.
And it’s that stifling feeling that really makes me bristle at the idea that Tate or the more obnoxious MRA people are more “rigorous” or “logical” because, if you’re, say, gay, or a woman, or a genderfluid pansexual, does Tate have anything to offer you? Any single solitary worthwhile thing at all?
Or is it just a mirror image of the same shit, a philosophy that wants you to behave a certain way but can’t even begin to care about you as an end rather than a means to someone else’s ends?
One thing people always say to try to get shy people less scared of asking people out, is, “Well, what’s the worst that could happen, she says no?”
And my answer to that, which I believed seriously for a long time, and have trouble really shaking even now, was,
“No, the worst thing that could happen is that I could contribute to a patriarchal society that believes that all women who dress or look a certain way are sexually available, forcing women to deal with constant unwanted sexual attention whenever they try to simply exist in society.
"And also I could put an individual in a position where they have to turn me down despite knowing that men often become angry, irrational or even violent when turned down, forcing her to push back her actual feelings to placate a potentially dangerous stranger.
"THAT’S the worst thing that could happen. That actually sounds so bad that I don’t see how I can justify taking the risk just because potentially causing that kind of thing might make me happy.”
And what I have spent a long time grappling with is that the more of an “online leftist” type someone is, the more unprepared they are for that to come out of a man’s mouth.
If I’m talking to normie centrists they say, “Wow, it sounds like that’s some people who have had some very bad experiences projecting those experiences onto the whole world, and not everybody feels that way.”
Various strains of right-wingers will go, “Well, yeah, no shit, you’re coming to the wrong conclusions because the premise is wrong, but of course you’d believe that if everybody around you keeps saying it all the time.”
But online leftist types get stuck in the bind of simultaneously having to agree that, yes, I am repeating things that they say a lot, and yes, it IS important that I be very aware of that stuff, but like, the conclusion is wrong so there must be an error somewhere.
The best I’ve been able to get from a committed lefty on this stuff is, “Well, YOU know that you’ll react reasonably if you say no, so it’s not a big deal, right?”
To which my answer is, “That doesn’t make any sense. Suppose I met a stranger at a bar and we had a conversation for twenty minutes, would it be okay to go, 'Hey, could I borrow your car for a while?’ After all, I know that I’m going to be responsible with their car and give it back and I know that if they say 'No’ I’ll be reasonable, but they don’t know that, and it puts them in an incredibly awkward position. How can dating and sex be more dangerous then lending somebody your car but less of a big deal to ask for?”
And then they just go, “Man, it sounds like you need therapy.”
It’s not just that in left-wing circles there is often hostility towards men, it’s that there’s also this sort of complete inability to even imagine a coherent way in which men could understand themselves or their place in society. An emphasis on the necessity of a total transformation in male thought lives side by side with a total inability to deal with men who actually try to make that transformation, and even a kind of impatience. As a man you must simultaneously take all of this stuff extremely seriously and simultaneously blow it off, and the two possible reactions to that are to go insane or become comfortable with truly massive amounts of hypocrisy around some of the most important things in your life.
Whatever else you can say about various right-wing countermovements, a giant part of their appeal is that they offer a way out of that bind.
PS - Also, I really want to emphasize this: Both normie centrists and right-wing weirdos are very willing to go, “Wow, those are some very extreme positions you’ve been exposed to, no wonder you’re nervous when people are always using such heightened language to talk about this stuff!”
Lefties tend to have this reaction of confusion as to why you’re reaching such histrionic conclusions. Like, they get genuinely confused as to how reading, “Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them” over and over would ever lead to a man thinking he made the women around him afraid?
“And also I could put an individual in a position where they have to turn me down despite knowing that men often become angry, irrational or even violent when turned down, forcing her to push back her actual feelings to placate a potentially dangerous stranger. "THAT’S the worst thing that could happen. That actually sounds so bad that I don’t see how I can justify taking the risk just because potentially causing that kind of thing might make me happy.”
This is bullshit.
This is vaguely true, and also bullshit.
This is real: If a guy asks a woman to go out with him, he is indeed putting her in a position where she might have to say no, knowing that some guys get angry, irrational, even violent if rejected. For her own safety, she may have to either modify her response to have some measure of excuse he’d accept (“I’m really busy right now; midterms coming up; don’t have a spare moment!”) or just decide to accept the invitation, knowing she doesn’t want it, but a bad date or two is better than risking violence.
This situation DOES NOT CHANGE regardless of how guilty he feels over it. And it sounds like he’s decided that this is terrible (…it is) and so he just…. refuses to feel guilty over the situation.
The ACTUAL SOLUTION is not, “he decides: fuck it, he will just ask her out if he wants, and she can say no, and he will not get angry or violent about it, and if she doesn’t say no but doesn’t want to go out - that’s her problem.”
The Actual Solution is: He PAYS ATTENTION to her. He doesn’t treat her as a mysterious black box o’ mystery, such that no man could possibly comprehend whether she has an interest in him before he directly asks her (and maybe not even then, because What If She Is Lying).
This “problem” is bullshit, and it is based on this myth:
ALT
Women are not “more complicated” than men. Women are forced to be hypervigilant, because not watching the moods of the men around them can result in, well, dead women. Women have to play 5-dimensional chess to deal with a simple “hey wanna go out for coffee sometime?” because if they don’t, if they guess wrong and it turns out Mr. Coworker is actually Mr. Rapist, they will (1) be deeply traumatized and (2) be told it was their fault for not reading the signs correctly.
So they learn to read the signs, or they at least try to read the signs, and they damn well learn to hide the fact that they’re doing it because, sigh, otherwise they can wind up - you know.
Like, they get genuinely confused as to how reading, “Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them” over and over would ever lead to a man thinking he made the women around him afraid?
That does not make it less true.
Women. Are afraid. Men. Will kill them.
If you are a man, some of the women around you are afraid of you.
Because you share some traits with people who have harmed them, who have dismissed them, who have ignored their pain and their needs, and often with people who have outright traumatized them. Sometimes you share traits with people who have tried to kill them.
“But I’m not like that!” you say.
Fine. Good. Don’t be like that. Most men aren’t, actually. We know this. We just can’t do anything about the ones that are, and they’re often pretty damn good at hiding.
What are you doing to convince other guys to not be like that, because WE CAN’T.
Is it your job, your responsibility, to convince the other guys not to be sexist jerks?
Nah.
Not unless you want to be able to ask a woman on a date without wondering if she’s secretly agreeing because it’s easier than finding out if you’re actually a stalker-killer.
You don’t have to feel guilty. Women do not care if you feel guilty. We care if you are making the world a safer place for women.
There are a million ways to do this - they don’t all involve direct confrontation with other men - but none of them involve navel-gazing over how much guilt you should have over sharing a genitalia type with someone’s abuser.
And if you’re saying “I can’t possibly tell what’s too forward; I don’t know where the line is between friendly and coercive; how can I tell if she means no if she doesn’t say that exact syllable” – you’re putting yourself in this camp:
(Note: If you ask a coworker if they can drive you home after work on Friday, and they say “ahh, I have a surgery followup that afternoon; I’m gonna be on heavy painkillers all evening” - are you going to be waiting around for them after work? Or are you going to figure out that they meant “no” without saying the word?)
One thing that isn’t really explained by any of these posts is Andrew Tate’s popularity with prepubescent boys. I hear so many stories from parents and teachers of pre-teen boys who are openly disrespectful towards their teachers on the basis of their gender, won’t read about female historical figures, or call their female classmates “golddiggers” and say that they “work for their money” when they’re not old enough to have jobs.
This is not even remotely based on the daily reality that these boys live in. That’s not because of “feminism”. That’s the result of young boys being lured in by the siren’s song of a sex offender who carries himself with confidence and authority and tells them they’re on Team Good Guys and actually they’re fucking awesome, women are whores and you don’t owe them shit, not even respect or kindness.
Saw another tiktok of someone making fun of pretentious cinephiles who like eight hour long Latvian movies or whatever and I’m so tired of this shit, man, I’m tired of the stupid explanations people come up with to wave away this dumb, dumb joke
Crazy how their hypothetical “bad” movie is always foreign. I’m sure that doesn’t betray something about the person making the claim at all, no sir
Carefully navigating a pin over a global map and seeing how far east I can go before getting in trouble, constantly glancing back at my audience for approval.
“Eight hour long… Hungarian movie?”
[Audience titters]
“Eight hour long… Turkish movie?”
[Fewer chuckles, some muttering]
“How about those boring eight hour long… Iranian movies?”
love when men say that women “only want money” when it turns out that even in equal-earning homes, women are actually adding caregiver burdens and housework from previous years, whereas men have been expanding leisure time and hobbies. in equal-earning households, men spend an average of 3.5 hours extra in leisure time per week, which is 182 hours per year - a little over a week of paid vacation time that the other partner does not receive. kinda sounds like he wants her money.
love that men have decided women are frail and weak and annoying when we scream in surprise but it turns out it’s actually women who are more reliable in an emergency because men need to be convinced to actually take action and respond to the threat. like, actually, for-real: men experience such a strong sense of pride about their pre-supposed abilities that it gets them and their families killed. they are so used to dismissing women that it literally kills them.
love it. told my father this and he said there’s lies, damned lies, and statistics. a year ago i tried to get him to evacuate the house during a flash flood. he ignored me and got injured. he has told me, laughing, that he never washes his hands. he has said in the last week that women are just happier when we’re cooking or cleaning.
maybe i’m overly nostalgic. but it didn’t used to feel so fucking bleak. it used to feel like at least a little shameful to consider women to be sheep. it just feels like the earth is round and we are still having conversations about it being flat - except these conversations are about the most obvious forms of patriarchy. like, we know about this stuff. we’ve known since well before the 50’s.
recently andrew tate tried to justify cheating on his partner as being the “male prerogative.” i don’t know what the prerogative for the rest of us would be. just sitting at home, watching the slow erosion of our humanity.
speaking as a Jew, i’m extra-super dubious of all that stuff that talks about cartoon witches being an antisemitic stereotype. I can get where the thing with the nose is coming from, but the claims about the hats are based on flimsy claims that require a lot of mental reaching. The hats that Jews were forced to wear were not a universal thing, and I’ve yet to see any evidence that they were part of the cultural consciousness by the time the image of the pointy-hatted witch became common.
The biggest points against the hat hypothesis:
Wrong time period: witch hats as we know them seem to have only started appearing in art around the 17th-18th century; in the period when the Judenhut was well-established, witches in art just wore whatever was common for women of the region.
Wrong region: the pointed witch hat originated in English art, as far as i’ve seen. Antisemitic laws in England mandated badges, not headwear.
Wrong gender: Jewish hats were mandated for men, not women—illustrations of witches with pointed hats very rarely included male witches, until fairly recently.
Wrong shape: there are many styles of mandated Jewish hat throughout history, but few of them are even a near match for the very specific look of the Witch hat.
You know what kind of hat does closely fit?
The hat in this painting (“Portrait of Mrs Salesbury with her Grandchildren Edward and Elizabeth Bagot” by J.M. Wright; circa 1675) was “a type worn by affluent women throughout Britain at this date”. Look at that hat. Any modern viewer looking at this painting might think it was supposed to be a character created by J.K. Rowling.
It’s a match in design, gender, region, and most importantly, time period: by the time that pointed witch hats started to appear in artwork in England and English colonies, this style of hat would have been associated in the cultural consciousness with elderly women, especially those who were clinging to decades-old fashions.
The easy, simple answer to where the witch hat came from: it’s exactly what a woman with all the stereotypical qualities of a witch would have worn in the first place, in the time and place the trope originated.
Old-fashioned but not by several centuries, severe and somber, and popular with a class of women that people would have spread nasty rumors about in the first place (somany accusations of witchcraft were directed specifically at women who were independently well-off, whether out of simple envy or else scheming).
Seemed like about time to bring this back up.
Another very obvious and often explicitly stated basis for the CLOTHING of the cartoon witch is Puritan costume from the 18th century… seeing as Puritans were famous for their witch trials.
The green skin, curly hair, big nose, warts etc are all definitely at least racialized things. Though big nose and warts are associated with age the combined picture is pretty much just a racial caricature.
Important input on the witchy costume debate, from a Jewish person who’s clearly done a bit of homework on the origins of pointy hats and green makeup. (And who also seems to be a pretty cool person into the bargain.)
I’ve reblogged this before, but it’s got new info, which is great
I’d also argue that, though certain aspects of the stereotypical witch align with antisemitic tropes, it’s far more likely that witches’ stereotypical looks actually emerged by being the polar opposite of what the beautiful, and therefore ideal, 17th century woman looked like. This was to emphasize that a witch was the OPPOSITE of an ideal woman, and she could thus be placed in opposition to the beautiful, ideal heroine.
Where beauty (according to 17th century standards) was young, witches were old. Where beauty had fine, delicate features, witches had exaggerated, rough features. Where beauty was relatively unmarred (a rarity in pre-vaccination days), witches had moles and other marks. Where beauty had silky blonde hair (a treasured prize in Renaissance times, to the point that women falsely lightened their hair or wore wigs), witches had rough black hair.
As I said, some of these line up with antisemitic tropes. However, I’d argue that associating Jews with these tropes was a result of already-established patriarchal beauty tropes that had been ingrained in northern Europe for centuries. The fact that the stereotypical Jewish woman happened to defy the beauty ideals of northern Europe was used as an excuse to further oppress Jewish people, not the other way around.
In other words, I’d guess that it went like this:
“Ugliness/evil looks like this” -> “Some Jewish women (who we hate) look like this” -> “here’s proof that Jewish women are ugly and evil”
Rather than:
“Jewish women look like this” -> “we hate Jewish people” -> “Ugliness and evil looks like this”
Of course, once both tropes (ugly witches, ugly Jews) were established, I imagine that they fed into one another, but I’m dubious of the claim that the source of the ugly witch was the Jewish woman, especially since northern European ideas of beauty and fears of malevolent witches seem to go back further than northern European stereotypes of the ugly Jewish woman.
Augh, and COMPLETELY forgot to talk about this, but the stereotypical witch outfit? It comes from traditional English brewsters/alewives, aka, female beer-brewers.
Who used brooms mounted above the door as a way to signal their trade to passerby:
And who made their trade making strange concoctions in cauldrons:
And who happened to wear hats just like this:
Brewsters/alewives used to have a monopoly on beer-making. They handed down brewing secrets from mother to daughter and basically controlled the alcohol market. And men weren’t terribly keen on that - they wanted in on this immensely lucrative, influential field. There were some male brewsters, but the trade was overwhelmingly female, to the point that even male brewsters were still called brewsters - a female noun.
So what do men do when they want to push women out of a trade? They demonise them.
Suddenly the broom isn’t just a business sign, it’s a tool for going to meet the devil. The cauldron isn’t just a tool, it’s a place to create evil. The hat isn’t just a trade uniform, it’s a mark of malevolent intent and arcane knowledge.
Coincidentally, many women who became brewsters/alewives became independently wealthy and quite powerful locally. They didn’t need to marry and could provide for their entire households with their trade. They could grow old without marrying, or they could stay unmarried after their first husband dies rather than remarrying. They could also pull strings and influence things in their favour, making local politics ‘mysteriously’ go their way.
And so the stereotype of the ugly spinster brewster-witch is born.
And, as I’ve said above, ugly women look a certain way: harsh, marred features, dark, tangled hair, and above all, old.
Note old Mother Louse up there. She was a well-respected brewster in her town, with plenty of influence, but here she is already being portrayed with stereotypical witch features: a big, hooked nose, and a pointy chin, hollow eyes, sharp cheekbones (not a good thing in premordern times - beauties had rounder faces, as sharp cheekbones were a sign of hunger or oldness). Mother Louse isn’t being portrayed as Jewish, but as an elderly, ugly spinster, who engages in the lucrative, powerful - but suspect - business of brewing.
Know who else this happened to? Midwives. Another female trade, passed down from woman to woman, dealing in business secrets from which men were barred - and this in regard to the most mysterious power of all: the power to bring life into the world. And midwives do pretty well for themselves, too: plenty of families are willing to pay a bundle to make sure their babies are delivered safe and sound in a world with high infant mortality. Just like male physicians, midwives knew how to create tinctures and mix herbs, but now, once again, rudimentary chemistry and herb-lore become demonised when women are the ones doing it. Now, if your baby is born sick, deformed, or dead, it’s clearly the spinster midwife’s doing, full of spite because she has no children of her own.
Anyway, there’s your witch history for the day. The hooked nose and black hair are already something of a stretch, but the claim that the typical witch hat is somehow linked to anti-semitism and not brewsters is totally ahistorical.
ALT
