2019-09-28

I like this article: Why Greta Thunberg triggers the troglodytes among us

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by Neil Godfrey

Photo: The teardowns and tirades against Greta Thunberg aren’t everywhere, but sometimes it can seem like it. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)

It’s by Lauren Rosewarne and it’s worth reading in full and seriously thinking about:

Why Greta Thunberg triggers the troglodytes among us

. . . .

But there’s an underbelly. A cruel and creepy world where it’s apparently perfectly fine — nay, encouraged — for adults, generally but not exclusively male adults, to shred a 16-year-old to pieces.

Greta ticks all the boxes — triggers the troglodytes amongst us — in some wholly predictable ways.

She’s a girl. To say our culture hates girls is, of course, an overstatement. Afterall, we enjoy looking at girls and having them sing and shimmy for us.

If a book, a band, a film, a foodstuff has a disproportionate teen-girl following — think Twilight, think Taylor Swift, think Billie Eilish — it’s rendered culturally unimportant at best and as vacuous crap at worst.

The moment girls scream and cry over something is the moment our culture has decided it’s wholly unimportant.

She’s not just a girl — she’s a girl with Asperger’s

She’s not just a girl though.

We like certain 16-year-olds. Ideally, ones that look like they’re on the cusp of blossoming womanhood. Barely legal in porn parlance.

…..

If we’re going to pay her any attention, the least she can do is offer us something enticing to look at. To smile for us. To not be too strident. To play nice.

Greta Thunberg isn’t a 16-year-old doing sexiness for us. She’s not performing femininity, she’s not exchanging eroticism for a platform to talk about the environment.

She’s a soft-spoken girl with bare skin and pigtails. And because this packaging is so unfamiliar on the world stage — because we have no real track record of paying attention to girls who look like this — it’s acceptable to ignore her.

….

They’re naive, and their words — their wants, their hopes — get discounted.

But she’s not just a girl. She’s a girl with Asperger’s. And Asperger’s is commonly perceived as a disability.

I found a lot to think about in the full article. It’s worth a read, I believe.

(I’m reminded a little bit of Joan of Arc, for some or several reasons.)