The glorious intersectionist victimhood of the perpetually woke – masks in toy land
I’m a class leftist and find a lot of middle class identity politics to be alienating performance art by the perpetually outraged rather than legitimate solidarity.
Hashtag dogma and pure temple politics drives people away from the Left into the arms of the reactionary right, it doesn’t bring them together.
So the woke-ageddon that exploded in Massachusetts is such amazing satire, you couldn’t write it more perfectly if you tried…
The lesbian bar mask row that broke the internet could now become a Hollywood movie
A small-town lesbian bar’s extraordinary row over face masks could be heading for Hollywood.
The Boston Globe story about Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue in Greenfield, Massachusetts, became one of the newspaper’s most-read articles after chronicling how a seemingly modest change to its strict masking policy triggered a spectacular community backlash.
Now, UTA, the talent agency that represents the Globe, has been fielding inquiries about turning the story into both scripted and documentary projects, The Hollywood Reporter reported.
The article has also generated “many thousands” of new subscriptions for the newspaper, a Globe spokesperson told the publication.
And there is certainly no shortage of material.
The fight was about much more than whether people should wear masks in a bar.
Last Ditch had deliberately established itself as a highly Covid-cautious queer space, requiring patrons to wear a well-fitting KN-95 mask “or better”.
For disabled and immunocompromised customers, that made it one of relatively few nightlife spaces where they felt able to participate with that level of protection. The bar also cast itself as a community built around accessibility, mutual aid and care.
Then the money began running out.
Customers increasingly arrived unable to pay the cover charge and were let in anyway.
Staff and owners went unpaid, bills mounted, and remaining owner Jackie Matellian was ultimately responsible for a US$50,000 loan used to establish the venue.
Of the three original founders, only Matellian remained involved in the day-to-day running of the bar. One of the others had, somewhat remarkably, enrolled in clown school.
After seeking business advice, Last Ditch tried a compromise: Saturdays would become mask-optional, while its stricter policy remained at other times.
The announcement landed badly.
…oh sweet Jesus did it land badly, look at the glorious outrage olympics of it all…
Some patrons believed the change effectively forced immunocompromised people to choose between risking their health and giving up Saturday nights at a venue that had specifically promised to accommodate them.
One commenter accused the bar of being “complicit in a mass disabling event”.
Another accused its operators of killing disabled people for convenience. A third said they hoped the venue would be firebombed.
The post eventually drew 442 comments.
An apology two days later did not calm things down.
Instead, critics noticed the apology graphic lacked alt-text for visually impaired users, prompting another wave of accusations about accessibility.
About 10 people gathered, masked, on the dance floor while others joined by Zoom. There were two mediators, two-minute speaking limits and a calming breathing exercise.
Within minutes, that too had unravelled.
A mediator was accused of dismissing virtual attendees. Others questioned whether, as a licensed therapist and mandated reporter, she could have somebody involuntarily hospitalised.
Matellian eventually broke down, telling the group she had lived in her truck for six months while pouring money into the bar, was working four jobs and had never expected to run it alone.
One critic responded that she had chosen to “spill tears and centre your feelings”, calling her behaviour racist and deflecting.
…OMG, “spill tears and centre your feelings”, that’s so passive aggressive it slaps itself in the face!
I always considered the intersectionist roulette wheel of grievance as the philosophy of victimhood where wounded feelings were the central infrastructure with emotional blackmail instead of reason.
They who have the most wounded feels is the King, Queen or non-binary Regent.
Wokeness was never about redistribution of wealth (most Woke Activists are middle class).
Wokeness was never about redistribution of power.
Wokeness was always about a redistribution of status.
For the first time in their lives 4th wave feminists, mommy bloggers, non-binary activists and the woke middle class had a tiny amount of power and rather than demand structural economic change, all they had were toxic micro aggression policing.
They are great for Free the nipple protests and firebombing anyone who mis-pronounces Māori, not so good at challenging the neoliberal economic infrastructure.
The poor turned to us looking for solutions and all the got was pronoun cancel culture.
Most working people had no idea what a pronoun was!
They asked, ‘can you eat a pronoun? Can you use it to pay bills”?
Watching the way these ultra woke turned on a Bar that was trying to support them is a reminder that most puritan Woke would eat their own young if they weren’t all vegan.
The NZ Woke are now all on Bluesky and it’s vital this election that they stay there so that their alienating pure temple nonsense doesn’t continue to drive voters into the arms of the reactionary right.
You don’t want men thinking of themselves as heteronormative white cis males, you want them thinking of themselves as part of the 90% and you want them to see themselves as citizens.
Broadchurch solidarity is how you beat the Billionaire Class, Property Pimps, Big Polluters and Corporations, Pure Temple Woke Dogma does nothing but empower the Billionaire Class, Property Pimps, Big Polluters and Corporations.
If you have a woke friend on Bluesky – keep them there.
Independent Media is more important than ever, especially in the lead up to the Election. TDB is the largest Left Wing Blog in NZ and we have been operating for 13 years. We get zero funding from NZonAir and we don’t have no rich backers. If you can donate please do so here or directly into our account –12-3065-0133561-56






