Mga app ng Google
Pangunahing menu

Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Irate Wellesley feminists v. annoying po-mo Plop artists"

60 Comments -

1 – 60 of 60
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Poogle.

2/6/14, 4:20 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Ms. Fischman said she intended to keep it on public view until the exhibition ends in July. She wanted the sleepwalker to be male, she said, partly because she thought a female sculpture would seem too exposed."

So many BS all around. She's for free expression but thought it would be inappropriate to have an 'exposed' female sculpture--and may well be one of the protesters if another artist had put up a female figure. (Otoh, I'll bet she was on Lena Dunham's side on the issue of Dunham flashing her flabby body all over the idiot panel.)

The grand narrative on the history of art is that modernism was cool because it upset bourgeois respectability and tastes(though, to be sure, the main patrons were the bourgeoisie), but now, college students don't want their sensitivities to be offended. The girls who take classes that celebrate 'subversion' and 'irreverence' want their feelings to be revered.



2/6/14, 4:24 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Did Israel hire Richard Serra by any chance along the borders in the Occupied territories? Well, Jews seem to appreciate it.

I think Serra would be great too along the US-Mexican border. I'm all for more state funding for the arts for such a project.

2/6/14, 4:26 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"triggering," "trigger," etc.

MMMM, this seems to be something of a new buzzword in multiculti circles. I wonder how long before it hits the MSM?

For that matter, how is cis-gendered going? Has it grabbed any mainstream traction?

2/6/14, 4:29 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow, right now Google has a skier, a hockey player, a figure skater, etc. superimposed on the segments of the rainbow flag.

I know that in Russia everyone is looking forward to a Russia-Canada hockey showdown, preferably in the final. I wonder how the Canadian players' morale will be affected by the suspicion that in the eyes of the worldwide media and of their opponents they will be essentially fighting for the rainbow flag. It's fun to imagine the trash talk on the ice.

2/6/14, 4:32 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting, Tony Serra (of TRUE BELIEVER fame) is Richard Serra's brother.

2/6/14, 4:35 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

instead of linking to the olypimcs google's graphic is linking to the charter and news that it will include sexual orientation...

When I saw google 'celebrating' the olypmics that we're not supposed to like, i knew something was up

2/6/14, 4:38 PM

Anonymous countenance said...

You mean "Wellseley lesbians."

It’s not surprising to me that this would generate outrage at an all-lesbo school. Women at a coed school are used to this — After all, guys wearing this much in the dorms during certain hours are overdressed.

2/6/14, 4:40 PM

Anonymous fish said...

New season of "The Walking Dead" starts in a few weeks....are we sure that this isn't just guerrilla advertising?

2/6/14, 4:43 PM

Anonymous TheLRC said...

A culture that produces an 'intellectual' who says 'It sort of feels like the big point here is that . . .' is doomed anyway.

2/6/14, 4:54 PM

Anonymous Space Ghost said...

The whole "trigger" concept is fascinating. For some reason, some people now think it's appropriate that all discourse be dumbed down to a level that does not offend the most emotionally disturbed / unbalanced / immature people in the audience.

2/6/14, 4:58 PM

Anonymous peterike said...

Ahhh it's a pity that people didn't rebel back in the day when those homicidal Serra sculptures were going up everywhere (contra his name, Serra's mother was a Russian Jew; shocking, I know).

That sort of hostile, deadening art was actually promoted heavily by active KGB measures at the time. Hence, while normal people were repulsed by those grotesque monuments to statist repression, the "intellectuals" pronounced them oh the very thing you know! And of course the hoi polloi were shouted down and the sculptures raised (and never razed).

In fact, Serra is very possibly the most dreadful artist ever to achieve his level of fame. If there's a hell, then there's a sheet metal cell in it waiting for his arrival.

So as twee as the little dykes at Wellesley may be, I'm actually on their side in this. That sculpture is horrendous. It is not art of any kind. It should be removed because it's an offense to taste. You go grrrrrllllllsss!

2/6/14, 5:09 PM

Anonymous Svigor said...

What if it were a sculpture of a black man?

Then it would flatter the subject and Wellesley students would only be able to object to it being male. Leftoids are nothing if not well-trained. Sit, roll over, beg, play dead...

Contrariwise, there's always the Chi-com MLK statue in DC.

2/6/14, 5:14 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

“It sort of feels like the big point here is that students’ emotions to [sic] the statue are being pushed aside in favor of having a discussion about art,”

Bring back the chaperones. Poor poor babies need to have their feelings looked out for them.

2/6/14, 5:15 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Speaking of homos and olympics, when will they have guy-and-guy pair figure skating? When will they allow trans-guy-as-girl figure-skating? Maybe Brian Boitano can declare himself trans and return in short skirts?

I mean where is the call for such 'progressive' measures?

Btw, notice how most homos were cowards. Most of them did NOT 'come out' when they felt they had something to lose. They are coming out NOW when there's something to be gained from doing so.

If the likes of Boitano were really courageous, they would have come out long ago.

2/6/14, 5:18 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is Serra post-modern or the last of the moderns? His humorless commitment to such stuff seems more in the spirit of late modernism than pomo-ism that tended to be lighter and more playful.

2/6/14, 5:18 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"That sort of hostile, deadening art was actually promoted heavily by active KGB measures at the time. "

Stalin and Khruschov ranted against modernist, abstract art. From the Wikipedia:

"That renewed thaw ended on December 1, 1962, when Khrushchev was taken to the Manezh Gallery to view an exhibit which included a number of avant-garde works. On seeing them, Khrushchev exploded with anger, describing the artwork as "dog shit",[146] and proclaiming that "a donkey could smear better art with its tail".[147] A week later, Pravda issued a call for artistic purity. When writers and filmmakers defended the painters, Khrushchev extended his anger to them."

The Wikipedia doesn't mention the fact that during his tirade at the Manezh Khruschov asked one of the avant-gaede "painters" if he had served in the war and if he was a homosexual, implying by his tone that he knew the answers already.

The Soviet state only promoted abstract art when it really was Communist, i.e. before the war. It promoted realism after the war.

2/6/14, 5:27 PM

Anonymous slumber_j said...

Well, I'm really glad none of these students were around back in the Eighties when certain friends of mine and I used to swim naked in Wellesley's Lake Waban...

2/6/14, 5:27 PM

Anonymous Svigor said...

So many BS all around. She's for free expression but thought it would be inappropriate to have an 'exposed' female sculpture--and may well be one of the protesters if another artist had put up a female figure. (Otoh, I'll bet she was on Lena Dunham's side on the issue of Dunham flashing her flabby body all over the idiot panel.)

Seems like Wellesley students are for free expression, too; they're freely expressing that they hate the statue and want it gone.

The girls who take classes that celebrate 'subversion' and 'irreverence' want their feelings to be revered.

The bit about how leftoids consider themselves iconoclastic, independent, irreverent, rebellious, etc., juxtaposed with the fact that the leftoid regime has now erected all the icons, crushed independence, demands reverence, extirpated rebellion, and ossified into a caricature of the Puritanical just never stops being delicious. It's "who-whom?" in a sentence. It's also fun to consider that, lacking a set of principles (and having only a Narrative; a giant playbook), leftism is even less free-thinking than most other ideologies. Real political ideologies impart principles and let adherents apply them to different sets of circumstances that arise, but not leftism.

2/6/14, 5:27 PM

Anonymous Samson J. said...

I wonder how the Canadian players' morale will be affected by the suspicion that in the eyes of the worldwide media and of their opponents they will be essentially fighting for the rainbow flag.

You may or may not know that Canadian culture has made a fair amount of hay out of the 1972 hockey series where we beat the Soviet Union. Truly that was a great victory, but I weep for what my country has become, and have been in earnest prayer about Scott Lively's "rainbow belongs to God" strategy.

2/6/14, 5:34 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

God do I hate modern sculpture. Hate.

Unlike the Caltech guys, they put up some twisted metal garbage in some of our beautiful lawns. They were perfect. Just grass, paths to walk across. Students playing frisbee (as you noted), reading, enjoying the sun. You could enjoy the fresh air, watch the sun go down over the hills to the West...

Nope! Like some wacko hoarder we've got giant rusty crankshafts and hub caps on our lawn. Open space is wasteful. What's it good for?

(I'm not going to say where I went to college. I am ashamed.)

2/6/14, 5:44 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Peterike:"(contra his name, Serra's mother was a Russian Jew; shocking, I know)."

Since Serra is his father's name, how is it contra anything?

For a fuller ethnic breakdown:

"His father, Tony, was a Spanish native of Mallorca. His mother, Gladys, was a Russian Jewish immigrant from Odessa" (WIKIPEDIA)


MMMMM, wonder if he has managed to leverage the fact that his Dad is a Spaniard from Mallorca? Sure, everyone on this blog knows that Spain is a European country full of White people, but I'm sure that he could grab some of that "Hispanic" affirmative action mojo if he really tried.

2/6/14, 5:56 PM

Anonymous kaganovitch said...

Really high IQ (as at Caltech)may get in the way of dealing with university admins., The optimum is probably 125-140 as is common in good political operatives. Betting on the feminists is definitly the way to go in Wellesley.

2/6/14, 5:59 PM

Anonymous Hunsdon said...

"Afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted."

2/6/14, 6:01 PM

Anonymous Auntie Analogue said...


Wellesley Twits: A Simple Peremptory Fillip Ick.

2/6/14, 6:06 PM

Anonymous CMB said...

The way the artist prevails is by saying that the sculpture is of a female-to-male transsexual and that anyone who complains about it is a transphobic bigot.

2/6/14, 6:09 PM

Anonymous Reg Cæsar said...

Matelli's primary influence is clearly George Romero.

My advice to the girls is to counter with a dose of Jackson Pollock. Ladies, to your cans!

2/6/14, 6:20 PM

Anonymous Hunsdon said...

What’s lost in the Wellsely kerfluffle is the thrill obscenity can create. It’s the sharp dangerous edge of anarchy and when used effectively, it can BLEEP up the most carefully planned cocktail party, smashing all propriety to BLEEP.

2/6/14, 6:22 PM

Anonymous a woman said...

Rich girls with nothing else to so but claim their psyches have been put in danger.

Why not just declare, "The damn thing is plain ugly" instead of pretending it gives them anxious dreams? (Oh, yeah, then they wouldn't be able to garner attention).

Having once visited the campus on a summer's day, I can say that it IS a most beautiful campus which doesn't deserve that crap placed on it.

Of course, it doesn't deserve some of the idiots that attend it either.

2/6/14, 6:37 PM

Anonymous as said...

Eventually, the nerds got themselves organized enough to defend their main frisbee-tossing site and the administration backed off.

MIT has the Stata Center. Nerds are not good at organizing I guess.

2/6/14, 6:44 PM

Anonymous Oswald Spengler said...

Anonymous said...

"Poogle."

2/6/14, 4:20 PM

------------------------------------

"Gaygle"

2/6/14, 6:46 PM

Anonymous majneb said...

Awesome!

2/6/14, 7:06 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The way the artist prevails is by saying that the sculpture is of a female-to-male transsexual and that anyone who complains about it is a transphobic bigot.

A brilliant ploy. Someone should tell the artist.

2/6/14, 7:27 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

At the campus I was at years ago, some big rock, fresh from the quarry, was plopped down and referenced as "art". The price was 250,000 dollars, but apparently it was donated. Since it was unobtrusive, I didn't care, but the whole thing stank of a complicated scam. Money laundering? Tax evasion?

As Tom Wolfe noted (in The Painted Word), top schools attract kids who can sculpt and paint, in a technical sense, much like Michelangelo, but are forced into making pointless rubbish. The simplest explanation: Real art can be dangerous.

2/6/14, 7:45 PM

Anonymous Rex Little said...

In certain circles, this is seen as a statue of John Scalzi.

2/6/14, 7:45 PM

Anonymous Big Bill said...

I don't see why the artist didn't say the sculpture was of a homosexual man, oppressed by homophobia and therefore the women have nothing to be afraid of. Indeed there very complains (now they know the sculpture is homo and not hetero) showing their "fear" is really "anger" at homo men.

Or, alternatively, some of the wags at MIT could dress the sculpture in a pink tutu, lipstick and and a wig and say that "he" is actually a "she"--a transexual--"dream walking through a transphobic world". Then they could hold encounter groups to discuss the heterosexist Wellesleyans and their hatred and intolerance of transexuals.

They could have so much fun with "The Painted Word" if they just wished to.

Where is Hunter Thompson or PJ O'Rourke when you need them?

2/6/14, 8:09 PM

Anonymous Big Bill said...

"Why not just declare, "The damn thing is plain ugly" instead of pretending it gives them anxious dreams? (Oh, yeah, then they wouldn't be able to garner attention)."

Ahh. That is precisely the problem.

Modern art is not "ugly" or "pretty" it just "is". To say it is ugly is to say you are a Philistine. Unsophisticated. They cannot be upset at its ugliness.

Ugliness is the heart and soul of modern art. In fact, the uglier and more pointless the better.

Consider DuChamp's famous Pissoire (aka "Fountain").

Do read Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word". Short, sweet and to the point.

2/6/14, 8:19 PM

Anonymous Rifleman said...

countenance said...

You mean "Wellseley lesbians."

It’s not surprising to me that this would generate outrage at an all-lesbo school.


It's not an all lesbo or all female or all White school.

I'm pretty sure Wellesley is where Rupert Murdock's blond daughter met her African boyfriend, future husband and now father of some of Rupert Murdock's grandchildren.

They are now divorced, surprisingly. Mission accomplished.

2/6/14, 8:23 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

In my day triggering was a reaction drawn out of a sexist male and it was definitely a bad thing. As in, her short skirt and halter top triggered an erection in Joe.

2/6/14, 8:35 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

They hate the mannequin, sorry sculpture, because it is ugly but hating post-modern art on the grounds of ugliness (or stupidity or pointlessness) is not acceptable. Only primitives and Tea Party Republicans hate post modern art on the grounds of ugliness. Or stupidity. Or pointlessness. Hence the nimble fall back to feminism. Anti-Feminism equals upsetting women for any reason, including bad art now. But the most interesting part of this is that they brought out the "teachable moment" defense so early. That does indicate a certain weakness in the Wellesley position. That is a last ditch defense.

2/6/14, 8:36 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Man, feminists regard Michelangelo's sculpture of David as "threatening."

At least the Cal Tech nerds had a legitimate beef.

2/6/14, 8:43 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm female and that statue gives me the creeps. If you want some perspective, imagine that statue on the grounds of your kid's grade school.

Any normal women upon seeing a live man outdoors looking like that would call the cops.

2/6/14, 8:51 PM

Anonymous Harry Baldwin said...

I think Serra would be great too along the US-Mexican border. I'm all for more state funding for the arts for such a project.

Okay, but he would have to charge $5 million per 100 feet.

And of course the hoi polloi were shouted down and the sculptures raised (and never razed).

Richard Serra's execrable "Tilted Arc" was in fact removed from the Foley Federal Plaza due to popular outrage and a law suit. Serra remains smug and defiant.

BTW, at a Southern university students would know what to do with Matelli's "Sleepwalker." After a few days it would be peppered with buckshot and within a week someone would hook chains to it and drag it off behind his pickup.

2/6/14, 8:57 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

slumber_j said...
"Well, I'm really glad none of these students were around back in the Eighties when certain friends of mine and I used to swim naked in Wellesley's Lake Waban…"

Swimming in Lake Waban, naked or not, is now forbidden, allegedly because of the metal sediments from a paint shop a century ago. But probably because the sensitive dyke souls didn't want males swimming in "their" lake (though fat cats, such as the Red Sox owner Henry, live on a posh lakeside road on the opposite side). People still swim and fish there, though.

Btw, not everyone at Wellesley College is a dyke - they have a shuttle bus that runs between MIT and Wellesley, colloquially known as "the fuck truck".



2/6/14, 9:22 PM

Blogger Luke Lea said...

transphobic bigot

nice phrase, CMB

2/6/14, 9:29 PM

Anonymous Rifleman said...

Oh, that's convenient of Google. They've taken to putting up a rainbow symbol to instantly tell you who's gay or not. So, Mr. Matelli's got that going for him in his war with the Wellesley feminists, which is nice.

Switch to -

http://www.bing.com/

2/6/14, 9:55 PM

Anonymous notsaying said...

"I'm female and that statue gives me the creeps. If you want some perspective, imagine that statue on the grounds of your kid's grade school.

Any normal women upon seeing a live man outdoors looking like that would call the cops.

2/6/14, 8:51 PM"


I am with her.

This "man" looks like a real man.

College campuses are full of newcomers and short-term visitors -- including high school students and their parents.

How would any of you like to walking on a sidewalk at a place you've never been to before and suddenly see, in the distance, what looks like a guy in his underwear stagging down the sidewalk? The nighttime reaction for most people would be the daytime shock, times 10.

Plus remember how often college kids are dead tired, drunk, high, etc. and not processing information as well as they should be.

Even if you realized was a sculpture and not a person, it is still not something I'd want to see around my campus.

I sure wouldn't want it in front of where I live.


2/6/14, 11:00 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Rapey
A guy who's creepy, and hugs or kisses inappropriately. He has a rapist lure. You don't think he would do it but definitely gives off that vibe. i.e. creepy hugger at the office.

"Rapey" This, "Rapey" That. Enough.

All of a sudden, everything is “rapey.” I blame Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” which conjured the adjective so many times that even the Wall Street Journal deployed it (surely a sign of the apocalypse). Gawker thinks YouTube pranksters who give unsolicited hugs are rapey. Monday, New York attached the term to a frat bro’s how-to guide for bedding drunk girls, and last month, Jezebel used it to describe graffiti that denigrated victims of sexual assault on college campuses. The list goes on.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115070/we-need-replace-rapey

Can this Matelli guy do a giant cat? I bet the Welleseley girls like cats.

2/6/14, 11:15 PM

Anonymous CJ said...

The snow really does improve it! That's unlikely to have been intended by the artist, as there's been an unusual amount of snow in the northeast. To me it makes the statue less real and lessens the desired sleepwalking effect, but rather gives the effect of a moment in time before the vulnerable subject dies of exposure.

2/7/14, 1:03 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

"Is Serra post-modern or the last of the moderns?"

Yes, modernism.

It's odd how post-modernist academics are so self-serious while post-modernist artists (e.g., Warhol, Koons), whatever their other failings, do tend at least To Get the Joke.

2/7/14, 2:46 AM

Anonymous 5371 said...

Can both sides lose?

2/7/14, 2:47 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm with the students. Whatever language they have to use to get rid of this piece of crap art is fine with me.

2/7/14, 4:08 AM

Anonymous Sequester Grundleplith said...

"Emotions toward"? College students today can barely speak; nobody should be surprised that they can't think.

Does anybody else imagine that the emotions triggered might have been a bit different in quality if the man depicted had been a physical specimen rather than a homely, balding, pudgy and shortish fellow with flabby limbs and terrible taste in underwear? Ironically from their point of view, the young ladies of Wellesley have lent support to one of the critiques of feminist sex regulation: it's not harassment if he's hot.

2/7/14, 9:33 AM

Anonymous Jeff W. said...

Artist Tony Matelli defends his work here:

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/02/06/artist-defends-wellesley-college-statue/

Excerpt: "This is a person who is an outsider, he’s displaced So I thought the reaction would be empathy.”

Maybe we can get Whiskey to weigh in on how much empathy women are likely to feel toward a statue of a beta male.

The girls might have liked a big statue of Rasputin.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2553577/The-sexual-obsession-drove-Rasputin-death-Countless-myths-woven-But-dazzling-book-using-private-diaries-reveals-new-details-self-styled-Christ-miniature.html

2/7/14, 10:09 AM

Anonymous Silver said...

I'm female and that statue gives me the creeps. If you want some perspective, imagine that statue on the grounds of your kid's grade school.

Any normal women upon seeing a live man outdoors looking like that would call the cops.


But would you still say that if the sculpture was of a black man?

2/7/14, 9:33 PM

Anonymous Silver said...

Can both sides lose?

Yes, pomos and fems and the rest of the lunatic brigades all deserve each other, just as members of the hate-whitey coalition do. In a sense they're already 'both losing' simply by duking this thing out. Their side has so many weak spots to attack it's almost criminal that there are only a handful of rightist critics like Sailer who play these losers off against one another. This might be because rightists value harmony so they want to avoid a society where everyone is at each other's throats, but since the left has made it abundantly clear that they're not interested in playing fair it's time for the gloves to come off.

2/7/14, 9:39 PM

Anonymous Jon said...

It's part of a conspiracy. To tear us from our spiritual moorings. To gaslamp us. To have us turn to consumer goods for what we once got from art (as much advertising art is beautiful by comparison).

2/8/14, 1:27 AM

Blogger Whiskey said...

If the figure had been alpha, no probs.

2/8/14, 2:30 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm a woman, I've been raped before, yes, the sculpture is scary.

Men are stronger than women; that's the simple biological reality. A man my same size is still stronger than me. A man with a weight and reach advantage only more so. I'm not even 5'3. A guy who looks pitiful or nonthreatening to a man, is still a physical threat to a woman.

No, I'm not liberal. Yes, I'd object if the statue were black.

2/8/14, 11:37 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

BTW, I've been lurking here for awhile and the "alpha male" complaint comments are starting to sound a little sour-grapey, guys. Using alpha males as breeding studs may make bizarro-world sense in the matriarchal/willy-nilly ghetto cultures of the world, but it doesn't in the culture that I'm assuming most of you belong to.

After awhile you start to sound like the guys I knew in college who were strictly average-to-endearingly-funny-looking, who refused to consider dating any girl who was larger than a size 4 and less than an 8 on the 1-10 scale.

Newsflash: 8 girls date lvl 6-8 guys, or 4 guys with lvl 10 money. If you don't have that, then cope.

If what you're interested in is solid family formation, then have a look at the lvl 5 girls around you.

Speaking of, despite what they preach, the SWPL types who often dominate colleges like this one are interested in solid family formation. That means going for nice, steady beta types.

Which this statue happens to depict. So perhaps now you see why he looks like more of a threat to college women; he's more their type.

Honestly, the way some of you guys go one about alpha males, I'd think you're all whining at a bar in the Tenderloin district...

2/8/14, 11:54 AM

Comments are moderated, at whim.
You can use some HTML tags, such as <b>, <i>, <a>

Comment moderation has been enabled. All comments must be approved by the blog author.

You will be asked to sign in after submitting your comment.
OpenID LiveJournal WordPress TypePad AOL