The text message had read, simply, “noon”. I wait in nervous silence, as noon came and passed. Another hour trickled by and eventually a man wearing a thin smile steps through the cloud of hot white dust that billowed under the enormous canopies of Radio Café, Pristina, Kosovo. The young man’s name is Burim, and he is a professional fake news merchant.
Like a proud vineyard owner, Burim takes me on a tour of his rolling digital estates. He owns one Facebook group dedicated to exploring abandoned places, another for mobilising communities in the American South. Another seemed to be about dieting and veganism, and yet another, religious evangelism. Burim grins: “This guy in Albania built up this page by posting authentic religious information. Then I paid him 2,000 euros, and he transferred the page over to me.” The groups are bizarre, but their audiences huge: 90,000 likes; 240,000 likes; 26,000 likes… The first step in Burim’s trade is to get an audience, and between them, these pages could reach close to a million pairs of eyeballs.
“Stories about killing people – gore, basically – they perform best!” says Burim, cheerfully. “Dog Groomer Who Kicked Dog all its Ribs Broke Remains Jail- Free”, was one story. “Boy Comes out of Coma after 12 Years, Whispers Dark Secret to Parents”, was another. 1,400 shares; 11,100 shares. Burim employs seven people to keep the content flowing through his groups, stealing it from an uncountable number of other operations.
This wasn’t deliberately fake news, but the truth or lies in the kind of clickbait that Burim publishes are irrelevant. Burim blinks, his face blank, “I don’t care what the content is”, he tells me, his face lit by his phone as he scrolls through the endless posts that his operation spews out. “This is the first time I’ve actually read it”, he says, “I just care about traffic.”
I’d met Burim to understand how a new order was rising. The old world, I thought, was collapsing around us. Huge high street retailers – House of Fraser, BHS, Toys R Us – were collapsing. Political parties were being squeezed by new digital movements erupting across both the radical Left and Right. And professional journalism was being toppled too – 2016 became the first year that journalists were outnumbered by those in public relations. As UK ad revenue shrank, from $4.7 billion in 2000 to about $2.6 billion in 2014, the number of journalists also shrank, by up to one third. And 181 local newspapers in the UK had shut down. The famous global titles survived the onslaught, but underneath was a bloodbath.
Click on any of Burim’s stories, and you’re taken to the moneymaking part of his operation. He maintains around a dozen websites outside of Facebook, constantly changing to avoid detection. Each looks like a crude version of an online newspaper, with the full stories hosted under sections called ‘Home’, ‘Health’, ‘DIY’, ‘Animals’, ‘Food Art’. Burim earned anything from 400 to a few thousand euros per day – good money anywhere, and a fortune in Kosovo.
A fortune, of course, that Burim made exactly because he broke every rule of journalism going. For him, the content was irrelevant, the provenance unimportant, the story recycled, the truth not even worth thinking about. Yet, whilst Burim was the nemesis of journalism, he was also, I learned, the natural product of the world it functioned within.
Burim had realised that he could make money the same way as any newspaper: programmatic advertising. Highly automated and technologically driven, real-time ad exchanges now allow advertisers to bid for advertising space in front of an audience – not within a specific publication, but wherever they travel on the Internet. When a member of a target audience lands on a part of the internet where ads are being sold, the ad is bought and served up to them instantly.
His entire enterprise showed that online advertising revenue had little to do with building a long-term reputation for quality journalism, for listening to readers or for building trust with them. In this new online economy clicks were king; and fortunes lay in one skill alone: shepherding vast numbers of people to your websites through any means necessary.
Burim is stronger, not weaker, by being outside of professional journalism. Unbounded by its rules and standards, unbounded indeed by the truth, he could capture your attention much more easily and monetise it just as readily. In the chase for clicks, some fantastical lie will usually out-click the messy, complex, mundanity of reality. People stealing content can out-earn outlets who need to pay people to write it. The people – like Burim – who are most able to grab our attention online are exactly the people who do not ask themselves those tricky, difficult questions about why they deserve to have it.
It’s easy to get nostalgic for the journalism of the past: a rose-tinted time when high-minded editors made professional decisions in the public interest, when investigative journalists had the time and resources they needed to do their jobs properly, and industrious local newspapers comprehensively covered their local patches. Yet pre-digital journalism wasn’t necessarily a pleasant world. Press barons wielded enormous influence, and still do. We, the readers, don’t need help from an algorithm to apply our own filters and distortions to the world. Bias has always existed, as has shoddy journalism.
Yet Burim is just one example of how the incentives of the clicks economy today are starkly at odds with the kind of journalism we have always needed. At its most courageous moments, the Fourth Estate is not only a source and centre of power itself, but also a critic, opponent and investigator of it. The gritty, tedious, time-consuming expensive kind of journalism that, at its best, confronts abuses of power, spotlights wrongdoing and pursues the corrupt. From Ida Tarbell’s profiles of Carnegie and Rockefeller through Watergate to Abu Ghraib; our world is shaped by the kind of journalism that pursues important truths that without it would remain hidden.
Burim, on the other hand, had the power to capture audiences, but none of the responsibilities to tell them the truth. And as I carried out the research for my new book, The Death of the Gods, I saw the same thing happening over and over: the rules governing power didn’t work. Professional standards have become increasingly absent, the regulations don’t work anymore, and ethics disappear in the free-for-all click economies that the online world has created.
Professional journalism is just one of the many institutions that are responsible for controlling and confronting power. The police struggle to enforce the law online. Regulators struggle to control the tech giants. And whether it is targeted advertising or politicised hacking, political campaigning has moved largely outside of the rules too. It is exactly these institutions that have been made most powerless by the digital revolution.
We desperately need to build new cages for power: a Royal Society of Technologists, ethics-by-design coded into every platform, digital citizenship taught in schools, a major digital literacy programme available in libraries. The whole fabric of rules, norms and laws needs to be updated, and these are some of the things that could help us to achieve that. But the real difficulty is to know how to do it quickly enough. The way power works is changing as quickly as the technology that it flows through. Ensuring the rules, laws and norms move just as fast is one of the key challenges of our generation.
As one of Burim’s webpages came up, he started laughing hard, rocking back in his chair, his chest shaking. “Look,” he said, turning his phone around so I could see. “Look who is paying us today.” The banner on the page was advertising Facebook. Still chuckling he got up to leave, and, after a few paces, hesitated, turning back to our table. “The coffee is on me”, he said, and winked.
Carl is the co-founder and Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos and author of The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab, out on 23rd August in hardback from William Heinemann. You can read more of Carl’s work at www.carlmiller.co.
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SubscribeAs usual Kathleen Stock disarms the rubber hammer of hypocrisy around pseuds’ rituals. In the football of life King James Bible 1 : Powerpoint Nil.
But the large question is – who was pushing the ideology globally – and why?
The non-profit sector/ NGOs?
There’s some mutual dynamic between certain lobby groups with too much influence, modern HR beaurocracies and a fragmentary/ viral media culture..
Filling the gap left by the achievement of various liberal rights, post gay marriage, and fulfilling the need for a new cause to sustain the underlying faith in ongoing liberal progress
Massively wealthy family organisations with fetishist transvestite men high up in the ranks…:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers
I think Soros also has a hand in promoting this nonsense alongside billionaire Martine Rothblatt, another trans-identified man.
Rituals bring people together, physically and emotionally. They come in all shapes and sizes, some religious, others not. Take the King’s coronation, for example. Was Charles III any less a king the day before, than he was the day after? Of course not, but it brought us all together.
Still, look on the bright side. The trans remembrance ceremonies were nonsense of course, but they were a step up from public hangings, abolished only in the 1860s, not to mention the public floggings that happen in many counties around the world today.
Not sure about the Charles III comment.
Is someone who merely passed their exams any less of a graduate than someone who passed their exams and then undertook the graduation ceremony?
I would say they are.
The graduation ceremony marks the university’s acceptance of you as the bearer of the degree they confer on you. Passing the exam confers on you the right to present yourself for graduation. It does not confer upon you the degree.
Interesting point of view. But does it matter once you’re out there looking for a job? Does it make you feel more confident? However I agree with the ceremonial aspect and what it confers on you. But as an older adult it meant nothing to me.
Agreed. Because aome ceremonies (marriage, funerals,…) are important, hardly means that they all are.
I must say, I don’t see it these days, but the time mourners wore black, the solemnity, the presence of death, has always made a deep impression on me.
How about those who’re unable to attend the graduation ceremony, due to illness for instance? Is their degree nullified?
Your point doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Their degree isn’t nullified, because they still receive their graduation certificate through the post.
Yes, of course it isn’t… i was simply pointing up the fallacy in NR’s comment.
“Because of the postal strike of ’07, I never received my degree. “
That is sheer garbage. There are thousands of graduates who don’t go to the ceremonies for many different reasons. The main one is money.
I have two degrees and didn’t go to either ceremony and all of my friends refused to go to theirs’ as well. Reason: middle class dressing up and hairdos were a waste of time for working class lads. We had better things to do, like start new jobs or tour Europe by hitch-hiking. The ceremonies today are for the parents to show off.
By the way, we didn’t dress up for our wedding either and we are still married after 45 years. Reason: we wanted to spend money on living our lives, not showing off to other people. After the ceremony we went to Tesco to do the weekly shop. We tell everybody this because we (in our silly way) are proud of it.
With you 110%. Thanks.
A formal graduation ceremony has a good psychological purpose for the graduand. It is a clear dividing line between education and the rest of their life. School’s out forever.
I have only ever officiated two wedding ceremonies in my life, both at the requests of two couples related to me who are agnostic and unaffiliated with any religion but who still wanted a “ceremony” that I had the legal authority to conduct. Although they were very happy with my presentations, I was deeply saddened. The notions about love, life, and marriage they presented to me as guidance for how to construct their vows were naive at best and borderline narcissistic. There was no “for better or worse” to it; no “in sickness and health”; and certainly no “til death do us part.” It was all a bunch of crap about everyone respecting their mate’s right to fully realize their individuality unencumbered by any other duty to the other. I put on a good game face and performed to their specifications but still feel shame and disappointment to have intimately participated in something so shallow and disconnected from the collective wisdom of generations.
Do you know if the couples are still married? I’ve witnessed the same kind of behaviour in my circle of friends and acquaintances and that kind of “me-me-me” approach to marriage never works out – which is deeply unshocking.
I remember a friend of mine on her hen night (dear Lord, I hate hen nights…) being asked as part of a silly truth-or-dare game “what she expected from her marriage”.
Her serious, considered answer: “my wedding”.
Her husband left her after 4 years.
Exactly, well said. It is the approach to the marriage, not the splendour of the ceremony which leads to long-term success.
I have an ex-colleague in the USA who has a daughter. She lived with her boyfriend for a few years but Mom wanted an official send-off. The parents spent tens of thousands of dollars on the big day; there were stag nights and hen nights, the ceremony, an expensive honeymoon – and it all collapsed after a couple of years.
Wedding ceremonies today are for the parents, who are in competition with each other.
From what we’ve seen, especially amongst couples younger than us (we are in our early 40s), weddings are all about how “Instagrammable” everything is. These sorts of weddings are the most depressing to me: everything seems so superficial and overorganised. Guests don’t seem to be celebrating two people embarking on a big journey so much as being pushed and pulled around into different awkward poses that can be published for likes and shares.
I’ve been with my other half for 17 years now; I knew very quickly that we were in it for the long haul. And yet we aren’t married yet. We will tie the knot, but I’m really happy that the nature of that ceremony (which we’ll just go through very simply at the registry office without a big “do”) is now more or less bureaucracy. Just the legal cherry on the top of a relationship that truly works.
See my post below about graduation ceremonies.
And yet the divorce rates for those youngsters today are less than they were for their boomer/gen x parents whose ceremonies would have been much more religious in nature (despite none of them going to church).
Just because youngsters don’t want to listen to some vicar droning on about fables they’ve no interest in doesn’t mean they’re narcissistic
We had a simple, local, wedding 30 years ago. Short service, nice set lunch for 40 guests, friend took the photos. We’re still together.
In my daughter’s peer group (millenial), marriage ceremonies are to meet peer expectations most of all. It’s the same thing with these various “showers” and “gender reveal parties” and such. They spend more time, trouble and money throwing elaborate birthday parties for 1 year olds than anyone ever did at any point in childhood when I was experiencing it.
“gender reveal parties”??? don’t we have to wait till the child is 18 before we can do that?
“Wedding ceremonies today are for the parents, who are in competition with each other.”
All of them? Really? How do you know?
He did well to last that long
The bigger the wedding ceremony, the shorter the wedding.
Start releasing caged doves or butterflies and you’re lucky if you fly back from the honeymoon on the same plane.
In other words: me, me, me disguised as we, we, we; lack of duty disguised as respect; and lack of commitment hidden behind the right to individuality.
It seems to me that you were struck by the spiritual poverty of these ceremonies. I would feel exactly this
“When a marriage ceremony stands in need of an accompanying PowerPoint, you start to wonder what was so very wrong with the Book of Common Prayer.”
Do you, actually?
I’m atheist but if I had to choose, I’d go for the warmth & meditative rhythm of an ancient incantation over a cool & business-like box-ticking exercise.
Don’t get me wrong, I probably would, too!
My question was rather about whether KS and readers are actually curious about why someone might choose one over the other, or simply want to dismiss those they disagree with as ridiculous.
Interestingly at our church, more couples have requested the BCP marriage rite than the modern one this year. Compete with the “Wilt thou obey him, and serve him” question, I should add.
Stock! Our patron saint of sanity in an insane world…
Matron saint, surely?
Some Unherd commenters will possibly mistakenly think that KS is converting to religion. Probably more a recognition that some things from the past are worth keeping.
Yes, i was expecting that “take” too. We saw it in Comments the other day regarding Giles Fraser and Catholicism.
As well as the observations about ritual and ceremony Author first para registered. The sense ‘peak’ LGBTQ+ has passed. And whether one supports the lying narcissistic sexual creep that is Trump it would be difficult to argue his election, (and esp the margin in the popular vote) doesn’t force more reflection. The extreme woke Loons will just double down, but they were always a tiny number. One senses the kind, live and let live majority is gently just separating itself a bit more definitively from this. That of course doesn’t mean it’s jumped across to the alternative extreme but there were limits.
Returning to ritual and ceremony, we still crave it. Maybe not often and we don’t welcome compulsion. But at important moments it can be what ties us to community and belonging. Is it not the social basis for how homo sapiens came to conquer the World? One for Yuval Noah-Harari et al to elaborate.
I am not convinced that everyone seeks meaning so much as they adopt a narrative that helps them make sense of their world. And if the ‘lying narcissistic sexual creep that is Trump’ provided an alternative to the machine politics of the ‘extreme woke Loons’, then democracy has worked. For now.
they adopt a narrative that helps them make sense of their world.
I think you’re absolutely right. And that’s the case from the very beginning.
“The sense ‘peak’ LGBTQ+ has passed.”
Perhaps because the connection of T and Q+ with L G and some of B was always tenuous at best?
The sooner the disconnection happens, the better.
lying narcissistic sexual creep that is
TrumpClintonClassic luxury politics on display here.
Why would any blue collar worker vote for mass illegal immigration, carte blanche for violent criminals. defunding of police forces and all the rest of the Democrats Wall Street policies? Like Labour in the UK, the Democrats since Clinton have been hi-jacked by the freeloader class. That’s why Trump won.
Clinton was just another form of the Right wing in the US HB. A v long way from what was/is needed. Those who think Trump is know in their hearts great disappointment is coming too.
Great article, thank you. What is terrifying is the way universities and many other institutions capitulated so readily to this Maoist in all but name insanity. I’ve also noticed a ready and eager acceptance amongst younger generations to lap up stories of ancient pre Christian societies that are characterised by female domination or at least equality, a fantasy of love, peace and magic rejoicing in Mother Nature rather than the short, brutal, sacrificial and warring, enslaved reality that history shows to be the case for many. They efficiently get rid of inconvenient history of our past by declaring that it was “written by men” and white ones at that.
a fantasy of love, peace and magic rejoicing in Mother Nature
That is very much one aspect of feminism in the 70s. It was the idea the women had a connection to the earth because of giving birth and the way their bodies functioned: menstruation, the moon, etc. leading to the Wimmim only communes where they ended up hating each other. I think it was of necessity that they claimed this relationship because there was nothing else for them. How could they claim what the men had when they’d declared it destructive. Plus because of childbirth and procreation it was a place men couldn’t go. Of course they had no more of a connection than men who farmed or the hunter-gatherers of the past. So it was pure fantasy. But what developed alongside, which we see now, is an odd infantilism that requires no thought and responds to challenges with meaningless tantrums and then tears, the classic bully/victim ruse. Naturally none of this was going to lead to anything constructive. How could it? You’re correct that it’s a refusal to deal with reality.
“Plus because of childbirth and procreation it was a place men couldn’t go”
Are you sure about that?
Not any more.
I waiting for the first non-binaries to get maternity leave. I predict that the NHS will be the first to allow this.
Now why doesn’t that surprise me.
I’m dreading the day when some skank doctor figures out a way to make a fake uterus in a man and implant it with a fertilized egg.
There are surgeons who are very keen to carry out the first womb transplants in men, sorry, transwomen and help them get pregnant. I think it’s a matter of watch this space.
There are already examples of trans-identified males doing ‘chest-feeding’.
Well they do spend £40m m on diversity officers and the like. Someone has to buy all those rainbow lanyards.
When I am approached by someone wearing rainbow kit I think I am about to be served or treated by someone who has lost their ability to think.
Spot on !
Although I think that the label ‘non-binary’ is codswallop, any young woman who declares herself such & has had a baby is perfectly entitled to maternity leave…
I laughed out loud!
According to our government, not only can men give birth but we should also support top surgery for them too! Not like boobs have an important role to play in that area!
Very well said. You are obviously a bully.
I’ve been married for a long, long, long time. Every year we argue a lot about what we want to do in our vacation and we have always come to a reasonable answer. About 3 years ago we had that argument – my wife wanted A and I wanted B. After a few minutes she called me a bully because I wanted my own way. She had been reading all of the feminist c**p in the press and now she new that men couldn’t be allowed their own way in things because they were always bullying the women.
I hear you, but bear in mind that in Babylonian times, guys would probably have said the same thing! Can’t win!
Caradog is describing a form of passive bullying, isn’t he?
Should have tossed a coin..?
“But what developed alongside, which we see now, is an odd infantilism that requires no thought and responds to challenges with meaningless tantrums and then tears, the classic bully/victim ruse. Naturally none of this was going to lead to anything constructive. How could it? You’re correct that it’s a refusal to deal with reality.”
Exceedingly well said.
Exacerbated by the catastrophic lack of any meaningful historical knowledge now endemic in the Anglo-sphere.
Camille Paglia is brilliant about the relationship between men & women. Considering she’s a lesbian feminist, that’s pretty amazing.
“stories of ancient pre Christian societies that are characterised by female domination or at least equality” – Such societies have never existed.
Here’s the bit that people like to leave out of their marriage vows: ‘forsaking all others’.
I won’t be taking marriage vows (not in English anyway) but the part that always made me go “nope!” was the “love, honour and obey” bit.
Loving and honouring is quite sufficient, thanks.
The ‘obey’ part of the ceremony was always balanced with ‘cherish’ for the man, indicating that the vow to ‘obey’ would be by agreement, not oppression. It’s all ideal, of course, and not everyone caught on to the subtlety, but only eccentics might insist on enforced obedience, which was liable to lead to long term problems that were probably unresolvable. (This is ‘food for thought’, on my part, but I think it makes sense.)
If I’m right, in most Christian weddings, ‘obey’ hasn’t been there for a pretty long time (unless the couple ask for it, as a few, very few, actually do).
A terrible perspective. The essence of a vow of lifelong sacrificial commitment is: doing things you don’t want to do, in service of another person. Marriage is putting another person ahead of yourself, forever. You don’t like the word “obey” but such a covenant cannot possibly work through continuous daily negotiation – which is not only exhausting, but also simply focuses you on ‘you’ instead of ‘him.’
Just a bit sanctimonious; she doesn’t imply anything of the sort
I think ‘obey’ in the vows has been optional for a long time. And I don’t think it has ever been present in the civil ceremony. My first marriage was in 1977 at a registry office and if ‘obey’ had featured I would have refused as I was very militant! My second marriage in 1995 was Catholic – again, no ‘obey’.
How about the third time? Did you sneak it in that time just to mix it up a bit?
My God what an insightful and beautifully written analysis. The loss of connections with our past, the narcissism of our society, the diminution of structure and rhythm in our lives, the continuing need to feel part of something bigger but we don’t know what. It’s a melancholy read for sure but the Prof continues to be the best reason to buy UnHerd.
Right on the nail KS’s writings are the best reason to subscribe to Unherd.
“The loss of connections with our past”
The theft of our heritage by woke Maoists and managerial philistines.
It’s all deliberate too. If you can’t overcome through armed insurrection, and if you can’t through winning at the ballot box, then…
Totally…
Thank you for this summary! Clearly stated and without all the filler it’s actually quite a bit better than the article itself.
Amen to that. She is a treasure of wisdom and eloquence.
Blimey, Prof, you almost sound like a conservative. Bravo.
This whole quasi-religious moment has been very weird indeed and distressing to ol’ school homosexuals like me who saw our names being taken as cover for the largely straight fetishists of ‘LGBTQ+WTF??+LOL!!+++’. It’s good to see it may be receding at last.
That said, I did enjoy learning that Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ is a feature at some funerals. I was considering The Trammps ‘Disco Inferno (Burn, Baby, Burn!) for my own cremation but, as a longstanding KISS fan, am now veering towards their mid-70s hit, ‘Hotter than Hell – you know she’s gonna leave you well done. Hot, Hot, Hotter than Hell, burn ya like the midday sun – OOWW!!’.
Speaking of how the sacral bumps up against the aridity of our times, a colleague who’s begun lay preaching at his church revealed to me yesterday that he relies on ChatGPT to complete his missives to the faithful. Even as a cynical non-believer, I could only raise an eyebrow, Spock-like, at that revelation.
I’ve always found the term “lay preaching” rather amusing…
It always reminds me of that Van Gogh drawing of a rural monk going at it with a peasant woman in the weeds.
‘Speaking of how the sacral bumps up against the aridity of our times, a colleague who’s begun lay preaching at his church revealed to me yesterday that he relies on ChatGPT to complete his missives to the faithful.’
Tell him he should be ashamed of himself.
Ha! Well, if the AI fanatics are right, perhaps ChatGPT will become God-like. In which case, your colleague may have inadvertently hedged his bets!
I’m tempted to request Highway to Hell at mine. Can’t see the missus going for it (providing she outlives me of course, which is fairly likely the way I carry on)
Rituals – especially ones involving circles – sustain moral communities. So, at least, Jonathan Haidt tells me and this piece suggests the same. It is not anything to do with moralising gods, though. It predates them.
Mircea Eliade is well worth reading about how recapitulation of rituals involves something in between repeating a pattern (perhaps the common take about preserving a tradition) and embodying that pattern (perhaps akin to the literal meaning of transubstantiation rituals). The former without the latter is a superficial lip service to a barely understood origin, whereas the latter is re-instantiating the ritual anew each time.
Religions have histories that contain archetypes of all socially meaningful rituals, such that a present-day wedding is not just an homage to, e.g. biblical weddings, but it is a literal reenactment. One simply preserves in aspic, the other is a living tradition. Contrast the static ruin of Venice to the palimpsest of London.
Kathleen, this kind of writing is why I sub to UnHerd. May not agree with everything you wrote, but the ideas are insightful.
To many of us these nutty ceremonies are not comforting but evidence of the rising tide of chaos. The ceremonies perhaps devised by cynical herders of the cult.
Stock is very kind to these people and I salute her for it.
‘The rising tide of chaos’: that’s certainly true of do-it-yourself marriage and funeral ceremonies. The movie Four Weddings and a Funeral was made only thirty years ago yet it feels as if it’s of another age. Each of the weddings and the funeral are traditional ceremonies – a central core around which the (funny and chaotic) lives of the characters revolve.
“Since organised religion has been the main means of inserting ritual into our lives for centuries, it is not surprising that both are simultaneously in retreat.”
There is a genuine problem here. How to find meaningful ceremonies, to mark the significant moments in our lives now that established religion no longer suits the needs of many of us? Rituals and ceremonies bring settlement and inclusion. They can be beautiful and moving.
A couple of years ago, after living together for over 30 years, my partner and I had a civil partnership ceremony, which ends with the words ” you are now partners in law”. I strongly felt that the church ceremony was inappropriate, as it reeks of patriarchy. Why should my father hand me over to my chosen spouse? That felt demeaning to me. I wanted to acknowledge him as my partner, not to be given away by one ostensible male protector to another.
Having made our declarations to each other long before, my partner and I cut the official ceremony to the bare minimum. And yet, the whole process was poignant and powerful in unexpected ways.
Yes of course there is a lot of silliness and online advice for ceremonies. There is also the opportunity to find the ones that work for us. I welcome that.
Lovely comment, which gets to the heart of the matter.
When my daughter was married in a civil ceremony, the weather was beautiful and allowed their vows to be exchanged in a glade, within the grounds of an ancient manor house. Her husband-to-be stood with the registrar at the end of the glade lined with guests, and my daughter strode confidently towards him, unaccompanied. I was never more proud of her.
“Why should my father hand me over to my chosen spouse? That felt demeaning to me. I wanted to acknowledge him as my partner, not to be given away by one ostensible male protector to another” – If I understand you correctly, neither your father nor your husband will be able to protect you if necessary. Sad.
You’ve had a lot of bad luck with men. Or with something else.
They both have protected me at times, as I have protected them at times. I didn’t want their protection or ownership (which is implied by ‘giving away’ the bride. How can you give away something you don’t own?) to be the basis of our ongoing relationship. The concept of being ‘given away’ makes me sound like a piece of property rather than a contributing partner in a relationship of mutual love and respect.
You wrote “I wanted to acknowledge him as my partner, not to be given away by one ostensible male protector to another”.
.
You both are not the equal partners. You are fundamentally different. It’s pure biology, the whole marriage institute is based on this difference. In a test conducted in different cultures, spouses were asked the same question: “If one of you had to sacrifice his life for the other, who would it be?” and the husband answered “I” and the wife “He.”
This fact does not make you his property, is it so hard to understand? I have a feeling that you have never been in a life-threatening situation and did not see the difference between male and female behavior… This difference is purely biological, and it is completely absurd to deny it. It doesn’t makes us, men, better. We just do what we have to do. We are expendable material of evolution.
.
By the way, your word “ostensible” is a rude and stupid, sorry, insult to men.
Showing your own prejudices there, more than anything
It’s biology, stupid
But try to explain to me why it’s a prejudice to say that a woman’s life is more important than a man’s life?
.
The English came up with the motto “Women and children first” in the 19th century. Unfortunately, they didn’t bother to raise their descendants in the same spirit. As a result, we have what we have – you!
Why unfortunately, since it’s crystal clear you not only consider males superior to females but yourself as superior to other males? Except, you can’t even bear to be shown as an intellectual no-mark by a female.
I am not arrogant at all and I know that most of the readers of this site are at least as smart as I am. Many are smarter than me. I just don’t like fools, that’s the problem. I don’t like hysterical people either.
If you read his post, he doesn’t say or suggest that. I’m afraid he’s right, in so far as we can only adopt this position of equivalence in a society that has been made safe by the good sense and efforts of earlier generations. In dangerous societies and times, women definitely require the protection of good or ordinary men against evil men. This doesn’t make men superior, they are just physically stronger and capable of more physical violence.
It seems to me that you also didn’t read me carefully.
I explicitly said that men are not superior. Probably you think I’m sure men are superior. It’s wrong.
“protection of good or ordinary men against evil men” – How many evil men did you see in your life? It looks like thousands. In reality one in the worst case scenario. Women love to panic, that’s understandable. It’s disgusting when men join them, and a life-threatening situation usually is not an “evil man”, only mad feminists think that streets of our cities are full of rapists.
Last but not least, I suspect that a society that is too safe is biologically doomed. Animals are programmed to fight for survival. If there is no incentive to survive, there is no incentive to live.
I think you’ve misunderstood my comment, which was a reply to LL. For instance this is completely incorrect: ‘Probably you think I’m sure men are superior. It’s wrong’.
There are evil men around, we are nearly all capable of it in the wrong circs, you should know this by looking at murderous societies or social episodes, something like 4 percent of the pop are supposedly psychopathic and will try to get away with what they can.
I think you have overreacted to the Church tradition. Yes, it was once connected with patriarchy. But its meaning has mutated (which is what happens with traditions) into the lovely act of the first man in your life escorting you to the man who will, hopefully, be the last man in your life. (I am of course assuming you married a man – anything different is not traditional marriage.)
Church tradition is a wise tradition, see my comment above.
On reflection I realise that my excommunication from the alphabet people began when I opined that TDOR is a load of old b0ll0(k5. It comes as no surprise to me that Stonewall are quietly trying to forget it. Some people have been pointing this out for years, including the directors of the Lesbian project.
I suspect Stonewall will continue to forget most of the alphabet and refocus on the L and the G, assuming any L&G people have any faith left in them.
Much love, a tranny xx
Stonewall adopted the alphabet soup to keep raking in the cash. As all aims of the movement had been long achieved- equal rights, gay marriage etc- what else was left? What will they next make a dash for?
Surrogacy. That’s their latest “thing”.
Surrogacy. It’s already started.
Another brilliant piece of writing from the sanest woman in Britain today.
Dear Kathleen Stock, please keep these articles coming. They should be required reading in schools. This is brilliant, incisive and wickedly amusing.
David Eades
“it would be good if we noticed the surging emptiness in our culture that made nonsensical dogma look so appealing in the first place.”
Good one! Why do I always seems to go back in my mind to Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism, the great book of 40 years ago? I guess cause it’s kind of the bible here.
Thank you, Kathleen! Please, folks, let’s get a grip on ourselves.
It’s okay, we can do it.
Activist Class = Pharisees
Nothing to see here, I’m afraid, except the groupie mentality of intellectually challenged. Any wonder why so many joined Hitler Youth?
So brilliantly serious and entertaining: “atheist-identified people”, “quasi-moral fad”. Thank you. How about a collection of essays to solidify the wonderful perspective you create?
Stock references the tattoos beloved of trans activists. The one body-accessory I have noticed (in addition to the dyed hair) is the nose-ring. Apt, of course, since most of them are being led by the nose.
“Fervent LGBT+ activism does appear to perform a quasi-religious function in a mostly secular world — with its sacred texts and chants, commitment to soul-body dualism, and obsession with resurrection into a new life”.
No doubt while blithely unaware that the genuinely religious fundamentalists would have them cast into a fiery furnace of everlasting damnation.
By the way, a great article.
The fundies have done nothing of the kind. They just want kids left alone.
Left alone to what?
My parents were ‘fundies’, now ‘residing at God’s right hand in heaven’ so they believed. By the time I was five I knew I was an atheist, even though at that age I didn’t even know the word. And how? Because I was required to attend church three times on Sunday and once on Tuesday evening, when all my friends were out having great times either with their parents or each other. At first I was resentful and later so hostile that when I was too old to be dragged along to church, and my father also threatened me with that, I didn’t speak to him for another 30 years.
Mind you when he was in hospital dying of prostate cancer and Parkinson’s, and I was on a plane to the UK from China, my mother told me later that in his final few seconds of coherence he asked if I was coming and when told I was on my way, he promptly died.
Always a Royalist, it was his ‘b****r Bognor’ moment.
By the time I was five I knew I was an atheist,
I don’t believe you. Being “resentful and later so hostile” is not an understanding of the existence of God. You were an atheist by the age of five. What year did this understanding begin?
There’s probably a series of articles to be written here looking at how and why this mass delusion came to exert such a powerful grip on individuals and supine institutions. The displaced need for ritual is one fascinating aspect; another might be the modern technology on which we’re writing these comments. After all, it was the invention of the printing press that turbocharged the witch-hunting fever in Europe and America. One of the very first publishing smash hits was the Malleus Maleficarum: The Hammer of Witches, a kind of how-to guide to identifying witches, complete with handy tips on what to do with them once you’d found them. In many places (Salem?) the Hammer was the only reading matter you could get – apart from the Bible, obviously.
Could it be that the internet, which encourages and allows disembodiment, has in the same way created the conditions for the hysteria that Dr Stock so brilliantly dissects? I always think the term ‘meatspace’, so beloved of the way too online, reveals a deep distaste for the physical realm. Maybe this whole thing is a case of the unbearable lightness of being an avatar.
I usually like Kathleen Stock’s writing, even if I don’t agree with all of it. But this seemed unfocused, loaded with gratuitous stabs at those she disagrees with, and ultimately not very insightful.
> “we have a bit of room to stand back and ask ourselves what exactly was going on there.”
Great! So let’s try that, with some real depth and curiosity. This wasn’t it.
the LGBT community ——-> How do you have a community when one of the letters is inherently hostile to the others? When a group sees sex as a social construct rather than a biological reality, it cannot be in sync with same-sex attraction. The two are at odds.
The Ls and Gs are mainstream, and have been for a while. The push to add letters, and worse, meddle with kids was ill-advised. It was a classic case of activists’ inability to take ‘yes’ for an answer and to accept victory. The wreckage to follow will be fodder for discussion, starting with what the hell were people thinking on jumping aboard that train?
And they’ve missed off the Z!
But I don’t blame them.
I think there’s a big difference between remembering the victims of 7/7 in London, as opposed to remembering a transgendered prostitute who got murdered by a thug who was outraged that “she” was really a “he.” And regarding tattoos, Jimmy Buffet used to sing about “a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling.”
I upvoted you – assuming the “7/7” was a typo.
7/7 was the date of the London atrocities.
There is an inverse correlation between the length of a marriage and amount spent getting married.
I’ve wondered if this is true for sometime, but been unable to find any data to support the hypothesis.
“it would be good if we noticed the surging emptiness in our culture that made nonsensical dogma look so appealing in the first place.”
Another typically empty essay from Stock. She’s quite good at touching all the feels that UnHerd readers want touched… without actually saying much of anything. So… let’s assume for a moment she’s right that we’re experiencing “surging emptiness,” and that trans day of remembrance is “nonsensical dogma.” What is the right response to this surging emptiness? Does anyone really think Stock is endorsing the Book of Common Prayer, or anything approaching orthodoxy? Or is it possible she’s endorsing a fuzzy, ambiguous and chameleon-like spiritualism that is (in fact) the source of the “nonsensical dogma” which happens to have rubbed her own proclivities the wrong way? Stock is unwittingly guilty of creating the very conditions she now rants against.
All peoples, at all times, suffer the same existential condition: knowing full well that we aren’t good enough, but telling ourselves in rhyme and ritual and reason that surely we must be. This disconnect is the source not just of formal organized religion the world over, but all these contemporary artificial-religion substitutes. Unless Stock is willing to address the source of the problem, lambasting her contemporaries for their response to the problem will not be very compelling to most…
So there’s no way of telling whether an existential “filler” is sensible, sane, constructive? Why fret about sentience at all? Everything’s equally absurd, and neither the heart nor philosophy are of any use as guides. All are valueless. We can, after all, make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.
Homosexuals are like chess players: they are both male and female and have a category name. There is no need for special category names for those who are not homosexuals or not chess players.
Kathleen Stock is the best writer around today.
I am reminded of the phrase, “…where prayer has been valid…” that there may have been comfort in following in the footsteps, and liturgy, of previous generations in the local church.
Fashion of the week, now well past it’s expiry date.
it would be good if we noticed the surging emptiness in our culture that made nonsensical dogma look so appealing in the first place. Yes, indeed.
I hope KS can explain: is she not a woman who lives conjugally with another
woman she calls her wife who has had a child somewhat recently but there’s no mention of a father? Is that situation and it’s underlying believes not on par with TDoR and its underlying beliefs in its lack of historical or religious or biological or communitarian underpinnings?
It seems a bit unfair to bash the trans movement for being deracinated.
Dr Stock has no need to explain, still less justify.
Many people understand that those who live to one side of the mainstream, but not beyond it, have a special gift for seeing things in perspective and with clarity.
The Hall wedding story hints that these ‘entertainment industry’ people are essentially Pagans, if not Satanists, so pushing the trans agenda on minors should be right up their street.
Right on! Another wonderful, eloquent, and factual analysis of the superficial, youtube/Instagram “moments”. We have been living for the last twenty-five years in the “personal best” era where everything, community, friends, jobs, etc are sacrificed at the altar of “Me”. However, it seems that is not working out well for the great majority of young folks and even some Xers and Boomers. For it ultimately brings loneliness and despair because your best doesn’t mean shit in the long run. They end up sacrificing what is truly important, real personal connection to a community, sacrificing to help others, and a soul in peace. However, it doesn’t always have to be that way and if a person can figure that out and has the desire and will to change, it will be life-changing. There aren’t and never have been atheists or agnostics in a foxhole. Sort of like lighting that candle.
My wife and I (53 years happily) are frequently asked to run marriage preparation courses for engaged couples. Perhaps the most powerful part of the content we cover is a close examination of the 1662 wedding service. It’s so realistic about making vows that are held as sacred by the couple, because there will be tough times ahead. “All my worldly goods”, “for better, for worse”, “in sickness and in health”, “till death do us part”. If you don’t make the commitment and mean it, there is much less chance that your children will come from a united stable home.
“It was about saying, ‘This is our world, these are our people and we will define ourselves exactly how we want to’.”
well, in the context of Climate Change, it’s really not surprising the young want to wrest back control from their Elders who have so scr**ed up the planet. OK, we may recover from it in ways that may surprise us, too, but it’ll probably mainly due to the younger generations efforts.
(And when it comes to funerals, yes, they need a good sweep out, too. They’re about celebrating a unique life. But other, “beginning” rituals? Not so much.)
Dear Ms Stock: The whole world is not Christian – you have just proven it. People celebrate their traditions in ways particular to their religion, or outside of it. Gay marriage does not even exist in the Christian Bible, hence the need for gay couples to come up with individualised ceremonies. Some of them are much more moving than the traditional Christian service, which for many weddings up to the 1970s still included the idea that a wife should OBEY her husband, like a child or servant. I am glad that one has gone the way of T. rex.
Who came up with the idea that a transgender woman is automatically stronger and faster than a woman born in a female body? Transgender women are not “superman”. They are people, with differing strengths and capabilities just like people everywhere. The vast majority of transgender people, according to my observation, are those who take on the aspect of women. I don’t know of a single transgender person who was born physiologically female, in which the male gender came out as the dominant aspect of the person and changed their anatomy accordingly..
Please quote me some examples if you find them.
There is nothing left for the liberal West but to believe in the infinite extension of human rights- the proof that human liberty can never be finite. Other than that, today’s political activists yearn for the certainties of Islam. And it’s no accident that both trans rights and Islamic campaigners regard our Judaeo-Christian heritage as their biggest obstacle.
Weddings these days are the linking of rent/ mortgage payments with bedroom privileges.
The traditional Christian vows , long abandoned for some influencer’s suggestions that can be downloaded for a fee, seem to me to cover the essentials. Richer/poorer, sickness/health, death do us part. There should be a mention of domestic violence .
Perhaps deep down we crave a wedding in a church?