Real Syntactic

Literary and media historian. Not my employer’s account. She/they/punk rock tomboy. Settler on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh land. Setter of types, maker of typos. A person whose first object in life is a joke. Avatar: window display in now-defunct local wig shop offering “real/syntactic [sic]” long platinum blond wigs. Header: a woman (Emily Grisenthwaite?) yells at VPD and RCMP on Heatley Street during the Battle of Ballantyne Pier, June 18, 1935, East End Vancouver/K’emk’emelay.

Last Notes

2025-09-21 16:12:55 UTC

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This is a major reason for the insecurity and easy losses of/in the liberal status quo with specific respect to gender relations and gendered rights. The liberal status quo in this area is not worth defending. As the current regime is contested, and if some kind of restoration is to take place, it must radically rethink the intellectual basis, confirmation, and organization of authority at the heart and foundation of the American polity. 10/x.

2025-09-21 16:10:45 UTC

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and depends on it for legitimacy. The political scientist Carol Pateman called this “the sexual contract” and argued that patriarchy is therefore not unique to absolutist/strongman/divine right politics but has a submerged and lasting presence in liberalism as well. 9/x

2025-09-21 15:56:19 UTC

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This gender politics is not new in the US and not unique to the far right. Historians of “the Enlightenment” know that the “patriarchy debates” of the period surrounding the English Civil War and 1688-9 “Glorious” revolution feature the domestic roles of men and women as sources of political authority. Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, of 1680, argued that the God-given right of kings is bound up with, derived from and confirmed by, each king’s status as a husband and father going back to Eden. 3/x

2025-09-21 15:53:14 UTC

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Absolutely true that strongmen rely on the paterfamilias to be a mini-strongman: the strongman’s authority is a compendium of his supporters’ donations of strength. The current trifecta of white reproductivity, suppression of non-white populations, and “the family vote”/ removed of women from workplaces/the public sphere indeed performs and confirms the rightful strength and authority of the white father-husband, thereby confirming big daddy’s power as well. But—and it is a big but— 2/x

2025-09-21 15:49:17 UTC

Adrienne Matei’s Guardian article on why far right regimes need “tradwives” misses a key point. She quotes historian Claudia Koonz’s 1980 interview with Nazi lady’s-mag propagandist Gertrude Scholz-Klink: “Scholz-Klink made domestic and reproductive duty feel prestigious, rather than peremptory, helping ‘the Nazi party make ordinary women feel valued in a way that other women in more liberal parties didn’t, Koonz says.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/sep/21/fascism-women-homemaker-trad-wife 1/x longish thread. #gender #history #liberalism

2024-12-04 20:17:59 UTC

Incoming administration attacks on Social Security in the US will disproportionately affect older single women and partnered older gay women—the poorest demographics in the country. This is not separate from attacks on reproductive freedom or the 19th Amendment. (As a single woman, I’m also nervous about a different kind of attack on Old Age Security in Canada: on the “unfair burden” aging pop places on younger demos who struggle to afford housing. As an Xer, I’m well aware—and will need OAP!)

2024-07-02 19:20:29 UTC

Brooks’s NYT Bannon interview is notable for its frankness: the goals outlined have already been accomplished. For me the most notable points: (1) the US far right as a female, over-40 movement (white, ofc): a Karen movement. How did this nexus of Stephanie Jones-Rogers’s They Were Her Property (on female enslavers), the PTA, and the rejection of Friedan & Steinem’s visions of white women’s freedom come to pass? (2) the comments on the safety of (N) American Jews are a threat. Not a veiled one.

2024-06-18 07:14:49 UTC

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I have only met that guy in Shanghai. No trench coat unfortunately. New York litter is incomparable, it’s true.

2024-06-18 06:52:21 UTC

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I will just add that one consequence of the street reselling of dental stuff is that the alleys in my neighborhood are full of discarded flossers.

2024-06-18 06:46:48 UTC

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oh, wow. So this is really a thing. I’m so sorry you couldn’t easily find what your friend needed. Around here dental product aisles are often empty, but it’s because people take them to resell on the street. They are only in stock if locked down, and I don’t tend to frequent the locked down kinds of places.

2024-06-18 06:35:58 UTC

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thank you for this! Seems like North American Pacific markets are serviced by LG—in pharmacies and groceries in California; via Amazon’s sulphurous drop shipper gang in BC?

2024-06-18 06:18:22 UTC

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also, Amazon claims Johnson and Johnson makes it but the website on the package sends you to the Korean head office of LG, which I associate with washing machines that break down a lot.

2024-06-18 06:15:01 UTC

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I don’t know? I’m sorry it shrunk. My suspicion of Reach as it now exists is that it has only the word “Reach” on it—no larger corporate info or product info—and, at least here, exists only on Amazon, where most things I buy seem to be either fake or strange one-offs with names like RoIFedz or SuseeSweetEar.

2024-06-18 06:09:46 UTC

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PS Reach now exists only on Amazon as a strange own-branded or counterfeit product. And! You have to “subscribe” or buy packs of 6, 8 or 10 at around $9 each. #no

2024-06-18 06:06:37 UTC

people in Canada, please help: all dental floss except “flossers” (lengths of floss attached to “disposable” plastic brackets, i.e. plastic waste) and Glide floss (Teflon coated and therefore a source of forever chemicals) appears to have disappeared from the shelves and websites of London Drugs, Shoppers Drugmart, Pharmasave, all Loblaws brands, Safeway, and Save-On Foods. What’s going on? And what’s a sensible human who just wants their Johnson & Johnson/ Reach regular old waxed floss to do?