Godfrey Elfwick (aka Titania McGrath) apparently now has a regular column in The Spectator USA, and, frankly, I’m surprised that even a semi-conservative magazine would present Elfwick’s musings without saying that they’re satirical. After all, Elfwick, McGrath and their/hir/zir schticks are so close to the fulminations of exteme Control-Leftism that they sometimes gets mistaken for being serious Woke Leftism. In other words, Elfwick and McGrath present an ongoing “hoax” along the lines of Boghossian, Pluckrose, and Lindsay’s more arduous efforts.
The latest Elfwick production takes off from a recent cover of Esquire, which made the mistake of profiling a white boy during Black History Month in the USA. Here’s the Esquire cover. You can tell just from the words underneath “AN AMERICAN BOY” that it would rile up the Outrage Brigade.
And, after all, well-off white males are the most demonized of all groups of Americans, and it’s not out of the question to ask how this demonization has affected them. But not during Black History Month! The expected pushback arose quickly, as documented by, among other venues, the Guardian, the Independent, and, of course, PuffHo. Here are just a few examples:
Ya’ll – this Cover Story in @esquire is thee WHITEST SHIT I’ve come across all… well all week at least. I’m so fucking tired of press stories about poor white boys while marginalized people are actually dying because the current “era”. pic.twitter.com/j78OUwH8Dv
— Leslie Mac (@LeslieMac) February 12, 2019
It is extremely telling that, while the esquire editor’s note mentions that non-white, non-male children will be profiled eventually, it’s the white boy who gets the cover and the first story https://t.co/7SXxpZFGUa pic.twitter.com/It5WH9jd43
— Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson) February 12, 2019
Because you know what we don’t discuss nearly enough? The white male experience. 🤦🏾♀️ pic.twitter.com/HTbq4wK1TJ
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) February 12, 2019
Now I haven’t read the story, which may well be dire and cloying, and were I an editor I probably wouldn’t have run it during Black History Month. Nevertheless, it still demonstrates how quick the Callout Culture is to react, and how strongly white males are being demonized—as if they represent some sort of monolithic, toxic and repressive cult.
But Elfwick comes to the rescue, in a funny article claiming that it should have been him—a “transblack genderqueer Muslim atheist”—who was profiled by Esquire. He makes a compelling case!
He rewrites the article in a way that even PuffHo would be proud of! A few excerpts (the captions are Elfwick’s):
Rather than waste my valuable time talking about this Trump-adoring pale manchild, I have decided to rewrite the article, this time featuring a true warrior. Someone who deserves the limelight. A role-model for the marginalized. A social justice icon who more accurately represents the youth of today.
Godfrey Elfwick is 27 and happy to be a genderqueer Muslim atheist, born white in the wrong skin. From an early age, xe knew xe was special. At the tender age of 14 months, xe was already making protest banners in support of marginalized people while xir’s older brother Moneer, played with his toys, oblivious to his sibling’s struggles.
Being an activist is hard and requires a lot of emotional strength, Godfrey tells me (ximself). A lot of people think it’s just posting stuff online and getting offended about meaningless things…but it’s so much more than that. There are important protests to attend.
. . . Only last year, I stormed into a home for the elderly close to where I live and no-platformed an ignorant racist who was giving the residents a talk called ‘World War II Memories’. There’s no place for that colonialist rhetoric in the current year.
After walking through the front entrance, I came face-to-face with a bunch of old white people (probably Nazis), openly enjoying a lecture on what life was like during the war. It made me feel sick to my stomach when I heard one of them make a positive comment on Winston Churchill. That was when I understandably lost my shit and demanded they shut down this endorsement of fascism ASAP.
Well, maybe it’s a bit heavy-handed, and less likely to be mistaken for real Social Justice Outrage than are the lucubrations of Ms. McGrath, but still. . .
Here’s Elfwick’s self-portrayal as a woke person:
Straight from Brooklyn!
And, for good measure, Titania’s latest:
The fact that Native Americans feel compelled to apologise for who they are tells us all we need to know about Trump’s America. https://t.co/x2nyfLmrYx
— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) February 17, 2019
An important thread. Males should respect women enough not to talk to them.
A man approached me yesterday on the street and asked me if I had the time.
I pepper-sprayed him in the face. Just to be sure. https://t.co/0ScOWdcQnW
— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) February 15, 2019
JAC – I think that you should have added “older” to the “well-off white males”, and as such I am outraged!!!! 🙂
While finding the whole flap rather silly (I think the best response was ‘read the room, Esquire’) – I’m genuinely curious whether this is the majority opinion of people around these parts:
I mean, sure, among certain, niche segments of the left… but for society at large? I just don’t get that vibe.
Yes, that’s ridiculous. Well-off white males generally live in a bubble protected from most unpleasantness.
I first read your second sentence as “well off-white males generally live in a bubble…”
I also found that statement curious. On certain campuses maybe, not even close to a main-stream attitude imo.
Just about to raise the same point. Gotta wonder if the Intellectual Dark Web has some kind of Drosophila attractant.
Christ almighty, white men been bitchin’ about how tough they’ve got it since before the ink was dry on the Civil Rights Act of 1965, about how “everything’s in favor of the coloreds” now. I heard that crap all the way back when I was a teenager working on school breaks in the factories and shops of northeastern Ohio. My father spent a lifetime working in those joints and heard it too. On some of those school breaks I worked alongside him in the tool & die shop where he plied his trade. I remember the old man shaking his head in bemusement and disgust at the sorry sonsabitches doin’ all the complaining.
And that doesn’t even take into consideration the “well-off” part. Do some white boys catch a ration of shit on college campuses today just for being white? Sure. And can some geek at Google get shit-canned from a cushy job now just for talkin’ the kind of crap guys used to talk about with impunity? Roger that, too. Is it fair? I suppose not.
But if you could come back as anything you wanted to from any time in history, and if your goal was to maximize your chances of having a relatively easy ride of it, only a goddamn fool would choose to come back as anything other than a well-off white man in 21st century America.
At the very least, white males are the one group that can be demonized with impunity.
@Matt
You’re absolutely right.
As someone who has lurked here for quite some time, I was quite taken aback by the statement. I kept re-reading it to make sure it was a direct statement and not a quotation.
It sounds knee-jerk, even alt.right in sentiment, and certainly not evidence-based.
I am not even well-off (even though I’m white/male) and I have never, ever experienced discrimination or “demonization.”
The more I think about it, the more ticked-off I am to read such a statement on one of my favorite sites.
Actually, this topic is such a nothingburger, fluff. I regret emitting CO2 to post the comment. Please delete if you wish.
I took it as sarcasm, but I will admit I’m confused.
-Ryan
“Now I haven’t read the story, which may well be dire and cloying, and were I an editor I probably wouldn’t have run it during Black History Month. Nevertheless, it still demonstrates how quick the Callout Culture is to react, and how strongly white males are being demonized—as if they represent some sort of monolithic, toxic and repressive cult.”
Don’t you think it’s ironic that you are calling out other people, for quickly complaining about a story you haven’t bothered reading? The articles you link to don’t try to demonize white males at all, or call them monolithic, toxic or repressive – they just point out they get written about endlessly already, and don’t have particular problems, so it’s pointless pushing yet another article just about them.
If you now regard The Spectator as only ‘semi-conservative’, you should think where that puts you on the conservative spectrum.
I suspect the average Conservative in the UK would be a small ‘l’ liberal in the US.
Sorry, Barney, but your comment is both rude and ignorant. You know, the people who criticized the cover in all likelihood didn’t read the story, either. What’s relevant here is that they’re criticizing the SUBJECT of the cover and the fact that it appeared during Black History Month, not the article’s contents.
And the articles I linked to, AS YOU WOULD KNOW IF YOU READ MY POST, weren’t meant to be examples of the demonization of white males. As I said, “The expected pushback arose quickly, as documented by, among other venues, the Guardian, the Independent, and, of course, PuffHo.”
Get that, Barney, “PUSHBACK AS DOCUMENTED BY THESE SITES.”
I haven’t enough spoons to deal with a comment as uncivil as this. Nor do I want to deal with people who kvetch without reading my post. And, by the way, your IP record shows at least a dozen different IP numbers (I stopped counting).
a paragraph duplicated:
Only last year, I stormed …
A conversation between Clueless Magazine and Woke Left:
CM: Which group is the source of all the problems?
WL: White boys.
CM: Here is a story about the source of all the problems.
WL: Why are you talking about white boys?
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but that whole “Ha, ha! It should be a Trans-Muslim-NeuroAtypical-Differently-Abled-POC [etc, etc]” joke was funny the first time I heard it but after getting trotted out for the thousandth time, it’s pretty toothless as pointed satire.
Where has Jarvis gone?
Are you sure the Esquire cover was not a satire? That was my first response. Titania is unsinkable. We are all living in Absurdistan. Its neighbors are Tyrannia,
Schizmania and Fanatistan. You can’t tell them apart. (Confession: these names were invented by a Village Voice comic strip artist decades ago but they are still valid).
Does anyone have any analysis — if we take all Esquire covers over the last 2 years, how do the proportions of races, ages and sexes portrayed compare to those of the US population?
Go for it.
Without even doing the exercise, I guarantee the result will show blatant speciesism. I’d be willing to bet good money there is not one cover featuring rats or cockroaches.
😉
cr
Richard Nixon graced the cover of Esquire‘s annual “Dubious Achievement” award issue numerous times. Does that count?
Merely wanted to point out that it’s the Esquire issue for MARCH 2019.
Is being a wakker leftist contageous?