Post: #1

A feminist professor learned she was developing Alzheimer's and planned to kill herself before she declined too severely. The NY Times tells the story:

The Last Day of Her Life

While no man is an island, the clichéd story of her life (as a pioneer of women's studies) provides a decidedly humorous aspect to a tragic tale of death and disease. For example, she took Prozac to treat her depression. Also, her work helped to invent gender identity and explored the once solid boundaries in the relationship between parent and child.

Quote:The prospect of mental decay was particularly painful for Sandy, whose idea of herself was intimately entwined with her ability to think deeply and originally. She was a pioneer in the field of gender studies: She created the Bem Sex Role Inventory in 1974, which assesses a person’s traits along a traditional gender continuum; led Cornell’s fledgling women’s studies program from 1978 to 1985; wrote a groundbreaking book, “The Lenses of Gender,” in 1993; published a memoir, “An Unconventional Family,” in 1998; became a licensed psychotherapist in 2000; and returned for a second term as the director of Cornell’s renamed feminist, gender and sexuality studies program in 2001. Friends and colleagues knew Sandy to be intensely observant, a person who spoke her mind with a bluntness that could be off-­putting. Her best friend, Karen Gilovich, a psychotherapist who lived around the corner, said that one of Sandy’s favorite conversational openers was: “I find myself thinking . . . .” You never knew what would follow. She once wondered aloud, for instance, where the line was between acceptable and unacceptable behavior between parents and their children. Would it automatically be wrong for a waitress who comes home exhausted to ask her young son to rub her feet? Massage her back? Cuddle her? “She was the most clear thinker I have ever seen,” Karen said, “with the ability to cut to the core of any messy issue.”

And then, there's this bit about her husband and her equal marriage:

Quote:It was a bit like the earliest days of their relationship, back in 1965, when they met at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh. She was a senior psychology major; he was a new assistant professor of psychology. Just four months after being introduced by Sandy’s roommate, they married.

They vowed at the time to share everything 50-­50: the housework, the child-rearing, the inevitable career compromises. For a while, this worked well. So well, in fact, that in 1972 they were featured in the inaugural issue of Ms. magazine, in an article titled “A Marriage of Equals.”

The Bems were both psychology professors, at Stanford and then Cornell, and they traveled around the country giving tandem talks about society’s creation of sex-­role stereotypes. They were a slightly odd couple. Sandy was petite and not the least interested in fashion. Daryl was bigger, dapper, six years older and already a bit stooped, with a scholar’s pallor, a kind face and a courtly manner cultivated over his years of performing as a magician. (He would also come to be known, later in his career, for some controversial experiments involving ESP.)

They turned their politics into a way of life, raising their two children, Emily, born in 1974, and Jeremy, born two years later, in what they described as a gender-­neutral way. “Many other feminist couples have experimented with egalitarian relationships and feminist child-rearing,” Sandy wrote in “An Unconventional Family.” But few “have shared the details of their daily lives as exuberantly as Daryl and I.” She talked about everything, in print and on the lecture circuit: letting Jeremy wear pink barrettes to kindergarten; driving Emily past the same construction site every day because a woman was on the crew; hanging a chart on a kitchen cabinet to let the children know which parent was “on duty” that week.

Despite their good intentions, though, the marriage grew strained. As their children went through adolescence, Sandy complained that she felt like a single parent, with Daryl not fully engaging with the family’s needs. They both saw the paradox in their supposedly egalitarian marriage floundering in such a gender-­stereotypical way. In 1994, when the children were 19 and 17, the Bems separated.

After the split, Daryl acted on his attraction to men, a part of his sexuality that he never hid from Sandy. He liked to joke that on their first date, he told her there were three things she should know about him — “I’m a stage magician, I’m from Colorado and I’m primarily homoerotic” — and that she calmly replied that she had never met anyone from Colorado.

About a year after the separation, Daryl began a long-­term relationship with a communications professor at Ithaca College. Yet he and Sandy never divorced, and he remained a frequent visitor to the big house in Cornell Heights where they raised their children. He ate dinner there a few times a week and stayed involved in the lives of Emily and Jeremy — even more involved, in a way, than when he lived with them. He also remained one of Sandy’s best friends and one of her few close confidants. (She had a short-­lived relationship with a woman soon after Daryl moved out and remained single after that.) Daryl wrote in the epilogue to “An Unconventional Family,” which was published four years after they separated, “Sandy and I are still kin.”

Then there's the contrast between her mothering and grandmothering styles:

Quote:Becoming a grandmother was never something Sandy had cared much about. But when Felix was born, she was thrilled. He was in the neonatal intensive-care unit when she arrived in Austin; doctors had detected a bacterial infection in his urine and were administering antibiotics. Sandy sat in a rocking chair alongside the bassinet, and Emily handed the infant to her, naked except for his diaper, the IV port in his tiny hand capped off until the next infusion. She gazed down at her grandson, placid and perfect. She cooed and babbled. For weeks afterward, she talked about those first moments holding Felix. “I don’t know what I was saying or what I was doing,” she would say. “But he just looked into my eyes.”

Emily was surprised to see her mother so at ease in the traditional role of Felix’s bubbe (Yiddish for “grandmother”). As a parent in the 1970s, Sandy turned every interaction with her children into a political act. During story time, she would go through their picture books with a bottle of Wite-­Out and a Magic Marker, changing a hero’s name from male to female, revising plot lines, adding long hair or breasts to some of the drawings. Story time was a different experience with Felix. Sandy would cuddle with the baby and turn pages. If she couldn’t remember the word for “zebra” or “lion,” she wouldn’t fuss about it. “Oh, it’s some animal,” she would say.

She told Emily that her “new brain” might actually make her better suited to being a grandmother than her focused, hyper­analytical “old brain.” She seemed to have found a way of being that she liked, content to sing silly songs and make nonsense sounds for hours on end.

Emily liked her mother this way, too. It had sometimes been difficult to be Sandy’s daughter. As a child, Emily wanted to wear her hair long and take ballet lessons; Sandy, ever vigilant about gender stereotypes, nudged her to cut her hair and play soccer instead. But now Sandy didn’t seem to care about such things. Emily thought that her mother was taking pleasure in life in a way that the old Sandy could not have anticipated — and she found herself hoping that the joy her mother took in Felix might make her reconsider her intention to end her life quite so soon.

I don't delight in this woman's death, but I will continue to laugh at the absurdities of her life.

Post: #2

Sounds like this might have been the inspiration for that "Still Alice" flick from last year. Julianne "carpet matches the drapes" Moore won an Oscar for her role in it.

Post: #3

Feminist Professor Commits Suicide

Post: #4

Quote:She once wondered aloud, for instance, where the line was between acceptable and unacceptable behavior between parents and their children. Would it automatically be wrong for a waitress who comes home exhausted to ask her young son to rub her feet? Massage her back? Cuddle her?

Oh yeah, there is this 'thing' normal humans have which these year zero Utopians don't understand.

Its called an SO, ya know, someone who cares about you and is an adult and not some mini-me slave you can boss around.

Post: #5

The son is also fucked up as you would expect. The article states that he was "going through a rough patch", out of contact, and didnt attend her suicide with the rest of the family.

Post: #6

A really sad story

Post: #7

(05-16-2015 07:42 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  A really sad story

Nope -- there is nothing "sad" about it. Let's reserve that word for where it belongs.

The only reaction this story elicited from me was a chortling and hearty LOL. It is the distillation of so many things -- this "brave" "beautiful" "pixie" midget radical feminist female academic who married a gay ghoul, raised their kids "gender neutral" and solemnly chooses "death with dignity" because of "Alzheimer's" -- it reads like a parody, it's like no one would be shameless enough to put these things together. But here they are.

It is a remarkable fact that no word -- not one -- falls with a heftier and more decided seriousness on the page and on the screen of the New York Times than the sacred word "Alzheimer's". The only word that equals it in solemnity -- but does not exceed it -- is the word "warming" when it is used with no qualifiers, in its solitary glory.

The fanatical nihilists that populate the pages of this rag have long been obsessed with "death with dignity"; they have a ghoulish and almost gleeful fear of the depredations of old age, since that is when what they know to be the "meaninglessness" of life finally gets proven out, when insult finally gets added to injury. And this worthless midget aspie coming to terms with pentobarbital and letting everyone in on her infinitely solemn decision -- even though the "troubled" son could not "attend the suicide" -- does not evoke the least pang of sympathy let alone sadness. When people live lives that are so grotesque, so deranged, that "attending the suicide" is your fun family gathering of a spring Saturday, they do not partake of pathos.

It is rank sentimentality to feel that death -- especially such a depraved and disgusting one -- confers any worth on someone whose life was an absurd parody. There is no "sadness" here, and not even a "story"; just an almost too good to be true distillation of a peculiar depravity, all the more comical for the worshipful solemnity with which it is delivered; as if the this NYT Alzheimer's lullaby were the very locus of meaning, emotion, and interest. What a world, LOL.

Post: #8

(05-16-2015 04:30 PM)Foolsgo1d Wrote:  

Quote:She once wondered aloud, for instance, where the line was between acceptable and unacceptable behavior between parents and their children. Would it automatically be wrong for a waitress who comes home exhausted to ask her young son to rub her feet? Massage her back? Cuddle her?

Oh yeah, there is this 'thing' normal humans have which these year zero Utopians don't understand.

Its called an SO, ya know, someone who cares about you and is an adult and not some mini-me slave you can boss around.

Its not 'wrong' if you are cruella deville or the orphanage owner in 'Annie' anyone else would have their moral spider sense tingling.

Post: #9

(05-16-2015 08:29 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  It is rank sentimentality to feel that death -- especially such a depraved and disgusting one -- confers any worth on someone whose life was an absurd parody. There is no "sadness" here, and not even a "story"; just an almost too good to be true distillation of a peculiar depravity, all the more comical for the worshipful solemnity with which it is delivered; as if the this NYT Alzheimer's lullaby were the very locus of meaning, emotion, and interest. What a world, LOL.

Exactly Lizard. They key point is this:

Quote:The prospect of mental decay was particularly painful for Sandy, whose idea of herself was intimately entwined with her ability to think deeply and originally.

This woman died to keep her Narcissistic Self-Construct Alive. Let that sink in.

The White Intelligentsia, of which Feminism is part, are deeply anti-life and anti-human connection. The (Ugly, Short-Haired) Female Typist here is trying to make the suicide of a privileged woman into a nobel thing, because Feminist / Progressive life trajectories guarantee Narcissistic Children who won't want to show them compassion and care in their old age.

Note the standard dead eyes:



I watched my great-grandmother-in law, then my grandfather-in-law get slowly taken by Alzheimer's. Part of dealing with it was the demystification process for the family - we had more training than they did - and coming to understand that, although they could sometimes get distressed, it was more upsetting for us than it was for them, and that with patience, compassion and empathy they could still live reduced lives as part of the family, if the family unit shared the burden of care, up until they point where they can no longer control their actions and need specialist care.

Of course, Feminism guarantees dysfunction of the Family Unit.

An older friend of mine is starting the decline, and I've told him that my grandfather had many happy days, and despite not knowing which moment he was, he was largely content because we learnt to let him wander in his mind wherever, and weren't constantly showing distress and upset at whatever time he was thrown into at that moment. Luckily, my friend has been married for 40 years to a good woman and has three children and nine grandchildren, and they're ready to care for him.

A great comment on the site:

Quote:Just so anyone reading this far knows - at least a few people reading these comments find them even more appalling than the article. There was similar laudatory commentary when the London composer and his wife flew to Switzerland to kill themselves and when E Emmanuel announced his hope that he'd die before age 75 because he figured he might not be at the top of his game after that. When the public discussion about assisted suicide and euthanasia started, many sympathizers were tightly focused on people who were in a lot of physical pain, and/or were being kept in a vegetative state by machines. Now the "new thing" is how fast one should kill oneself when mental capabilities are declining. What a horrible philosophy has taken hold of the educated elites - it is a wonder we aren't killing off the old, ill, disabled or forgetful en masse. I fear it is only a matter of time - and not much of that.

They're right: the media always wrings it hands, creates demonization and panics, and makes issues 'trendy': rape culture, roofies, global warming, vaccination scares, Alzheimer's. Rich white people will absolutely kill themselves based upon this story.

Post: #10

This cunt should have tried to stay alive as long as possible, because she ain't resting in peace, she's getting roasted on a spit in hell for eternity. Rest in piss, beeotch.

Post: #11

(05-16-2015 08:29 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

(05-16-2015 07:42 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  A really sad story

Nope -- there is nothing "sad" about it. Let's reserve that word for where it belongs.

For her kids

Post: #12

(05-17-2015 12:07 AM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

(05-16-2015 08:29 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

(05-16-2015 07:42 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  A really sad story

Nope -- there is nothing "sad" about it. Let's reserve that word for where it belongs.

For her kids

I feel sorry for the son. It sounds like the daughter pushed her chips in and went all in on the crazy. The son is the real victim in all of this. He has had a lifetime of being mindfucked and guilt tripped into social withdrawal simply based on his gender. One of the many ironies is how feminism punishes the male children of these ivory tower hags. That's the true horror.

Post: #13

(05-17-2015 12:12 AM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

(05-17-2015 12:07 AM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

(05-16-2015 08:29 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

(05-16-2015 07:42 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  A really sad story

Nope -- there is nothing "sad" about it. Let's reserve that word for where it belongs.

For her kids

I feel sorry for the son. It sounds like the daughter pushed her chips in and went all in on the crazy. The son is the real victim in all of this. He has had a lifetime of being mindfucked and guilt tripped into social withdrawal simply based on his gender. One of the many ironies is how feminism punishes the male children of these ivory tower hags. That's the true horror.

Yup.

Feminist parenting boils down to opening up new life trajectories for girls and maximizing their potential while minimizing boys potential.

Girl = Play with dolls or play football, your choice
Boy = Play with dolls or OMG, you want to play football? Are you a misogynist? Don't you know that football is a war simulation that creates and reinforces toxic masculinity with the express purpose of upholding rape culture and oppressing all things on eart?

Thankfully my feminist mom didn't go anywhere near as far as this feminist cunt, but that football analogy was told to me when I was in 3rd grade and wanted to join the flag football team.

Post: #14

Quote:Emily was surprised to see her mother so at ease in the traditional role of Felix’s bubbe (Yiddish for “grandmother”). As a parent in the 1970s, Sandy turned every interaction with her children into a political act. During story time, she would go through their picture books with a bottle of Wite-­Out and a Magic Marker, changing a hero’s name from male to female, revising plot lines, adding long hair or breasts to some of the drawings. Story time was a different experience with Felix. Sandy would cuddle with the baby and turn pages. If she couldn’t remember the word for “zebra” or “lion,” she wouldn’t fuss about it. “Oh, it’s some animal,” she would say.

She told Emily that her “new brain” might actually make her better suited to being a grandmother than her focused, hyper­analytical “old brain.” She seemed to have found a way of being that she liked, content to sing silly songs and make nonsense sounds for hours on end.

Emily liked her mother this way, too. It had sometimes been difficult to be Sandy’s daughter. As a child, Emily wanted to wear her hair long and take ballet lessons; Sandy, ever vigilant about gender stereotypes, nudged her to cut her hair and play soccer instead. But now Sandy didn’t seem to care about such things. Emily thought that her mother was taking pleasure in life in a way that the old Sandy could not have anticipated — and she found herself hoping that the joy her mother took in Felix might make her reconsider her intention to end her life quite so soon.

I find it very interesting to see how her repressed feminine nature comes to the forefront once her conscious mind starts fading away.

Post: #15

Leftism is a culture of death. With a materialistic viewpoint, she only sees herself as a machine to be terminated when it becomes defective. And she is celebrated as a hero by her sick colleague for terminating herself. A flower child of the 60s. Let them drop dead. The main challenge of men here is to develop communities which can survive a poisonous culture while the aberrant degenerates die off from their own distorted behaviors.

Post: #16

Regardless of the person, I'm not sure anyone should be celebrating a suicide, but maybe that's just me.

Post: #17

The end of life part of this was a lot more important than the political.

"A flower child of the 60s. Let them drop dead. The main challenge of men here is to develop communities which can survive a poisonous culture while the aberrant degenerates die off from their own distorted behaviors."

I don't think she died from being a feminist. You're sounding a little poisonous there yourself.

Post: #18

(05-17-2015 01:21 PM)iknowexactly Wrote:  The end of life part of this was a lot more important than the political.

"A flower child of the 60s. Let them drop dead. The main challenge of men here is to develop communities which can survive a poisonous culture while the aberrant degenerates die off from their own distorted behaviors."

I don't think she died from being a feminist. You're sounding a little poisonous there yourself.

She died from killing herself. Or did I miss something?

Post: #19

(05-16-2015 10:21 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  [quote='The Lizard of Oz' pid='1022692' dateline='1431826141']

Note the standard dead eyes:

Look at her and is anyone surprised she was a terrible mother?(she actually seemed to change some to be a decent grandmother)

Post: #20

(05-17-2015 12:50 PM)Gmac Wrote:  Regardless of the person, I'm not sure anyone should be celebrating a suicide, but maybe that's just me.

Look at her logic behind the suicide, she considered herself to be a logical/rational/well equipped mind and would rather die by her own hand than lose her faculties. Yet she spent her life poisoning young minds and trying to be an architect of changing gender roles and making women more masculine and chastising men for being men. I won't celebrate her suicide, but it is an extremely appropriate end to a broken woman.

Post: #21

(05-17-2015 02:51 PM)eradicator Wrote:  
Look at her and is anyone surprised she was a terrible mother?(she actually seemed to change some to be a decent grandmother)

That's the typist of the article, not the woman who killed herself.

Look, if Lefists want to follow their ideological beliefs into the grave due to media hysteria, it's their lives. One vote less for Hillary.

Post: #22

oh, she actually looks somewhat happy with her grandson

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/magazi....html?_r=2

Its a shame it took becoming a grandmother to finally be a decent human being. ah well

Post: #23

Quote:Bem was raised by her Jewish "working class" parents in a government-subsidized neighborhood for the first eight years of her life. During Bem's childhood, her mother would have violent outburst and fights with her father causing her family much distress.[10] Her mother was the dominant figure in her parents’ relationship, and Bem recalls having a very tumultuous childhood, during which Mrs. Lipsitz would become extremely emotional while upset and throw objects during arguments.[13] Bem also stated that she was quite unsuccessful in her attempts at flirting and dating with males, and so she internalized a belief that no man would ever want to marry her, which helped to solidify her career ambitions.

Behind every feminist, is a sad life story. It's insane that we live in a society where these people are actually given a platform, Nobel prizes, and professorships at prestigious universities.