I don’t understand the ballerina backlash—it’s like the internet feminists are outraged she won’t identify as a victim of patriarchy. What if she DID choose this? What then?
The Times story was so overwritten that it's really impossible to know what to think! Some of these details might be concerning but at the same time, the piece was so heavily editorialised that there's really no way of knowing what their day-to-day lives are like. It would have been interesting to give the couple more rope. She's no Emma Green or Isaac Chotiner!
I think one of my favorite takes was that since her and her husband have many kids and promote pronatalism they are fascist adjacent and promoting white supremacy.
I’ll caveat this by saying I’ve never seen any of this woman’s “content”, but my view—which is worth what you paid for it, at most—is that it’s ridiculous to say she’s promoting fascism and/or white supremacy because she’s into pro-natalism (or, in less jargony terms, having a shit-ton of children). Seems like a case of someone not liking something, but not having the vocabulary to express it—and I can relate to that!
There are some deeply weird people associated with that movement/tendency/whatever-it-is, and some of them really creep me out. (Those people who live in PA and were recently on Meghan Daum & Sarah Haider’s podcast would be a good example of this.) I would have to re-listen to give exact quotes or anything, but there’s a lot of stuff from them and other “pro-natalists” that goes like “eh I’m not so sure about all this ‘liberal democracy’ stuff; after all, it’s only led to more and more childlessness”, or “public schools are evil and pump your kids’ minds full of poison, so you must homeschool”, and so on. Basically, absenting oneself from society to have lots of children and make money off of internet fame on the back of all your outrageous/out-there ideas, which seems relatively benign, if kinda odd—but it certainly won’t ever scale! You can’t have large numbers of people doing that lifestyle and still have a functioning liberal society. We’re not the agrarian society of Thomas Jefferson’s time anymore, and we aren’t ever going back to that either.
Fascism and white supremacy are words that have been largely robbed of meaning at this point, but I feel like we do need some new vocabulary to describe some of this weird new stuff that seems to sprout up like weeds all over the internet. I’m all for people having kids, especially since I’m not able to have them myself and feel some guilt over it, but like everything in the internet/social-media age, some people seem to want to “make it their whole identity”, as the kids say. (Do the kids say that? I think they do.)
Anyway I’m way over the reasonable length of a reply here, but yeah, I think I get why people say that about some of the “pro-natalists”—but I also think they’re off-base and need to think hard and come up with a better, clearer way of saying what they’re trying to say. Not sure if any of this rambling gibberish makes any sense, but oh well. I hope it does, anyway!
it was pretty funny to see her current life of posting wealthily compared unfavorably to the famously pro-woman, non-abusive, empowering job she might have had: dancing ballet at the highest levels
I don’t understand the ballerina backlash—it’s like the internet feminists are outraged she won’t identify as a victim of patriarchy. What if she DID choose this? What then?
Yes. They also seem to miss that 'influencer wife of billionaire' has more longevity than 'ballerina.'
The Times story was so overwritten that it's really impossible to know what to think! Some of these details might be concerning but at the same time, the piece was so heavily editorialised that there's really no way of knowing what their day-to-day lives are like. It would have been interesting to give the couple more rope. She's no Emma Green or Isaac Chotiner!
I think one of my favorite takes was that since her and her husband have many kids and promote pronatalism they are fascist adjacent and promoting white supremacy.
I’ll caveat this by saying I’ve never seen any of this woman’s “content”, but my view—which is worth what you paid for it, at most—is that it’s ridiculous to say she’s promoting fascism and/or white supremacy because she’s into pro-natalism (or, in less jargony terms, having a shit-ton of children). Seems like a case of someone not liking something, but not having the vocabulary to express it—and I can relate to that!
There are some deeply weird people associated with that movement/tendency/whatever-it-is, and some of them really creep me out. (Those people who live in PA and were recently on Meghan Daum & Sarah Haider’s podcast would be a good example of this.) I would have to re-listen to give exact quotes or anything, but there’s a lot of stuff from them and other “pro-natalists” that goes like “eh I’m not so sure about all this ‘liberal democracy’ stuff; after all, it’s only led to more and more childlessness”, or “public schools are evil and pump your kids’ minds full of poison, so you must homeschool”, and so on. Basically, absenting oneself from society to have lots of children and make money off of internet fame on the back of all your outrageous/out-there ideas, which seems relatively benign, if kinda odd—but it certainly won’t ever scale! You can’t have large numbers of people doing that lifestyle and still have a functioning liberal society. We’re not the agrarian society of Thomas Jefferson’s time anymore, and we aren’t ever going back to that either.
Fascism and white supremacy are words that have been largely robbed of meaning at this point, but I feel like we do need some new vocabulary to describe some of this weird new stuff that seems to sprout up like weeds all over the internet. I’m all for people having kids, especially since I’m not able to have them myself and feel some guilt over it, but like everything in the internet/social-media age, some people seem to want to “make it their whole identity”, as the kids say. (Do the kids say that? I think they do.)
Anyway I’m way over the reasonable length of a reply here, but yeah, I think I get why people say that about some of the “pro-natalists”—but I also think they’re off-base and need to think hard and come up with a better, clearer way of saying what they’re trying to say. Not sure if any of this rambling gibberish makes any sense, but oh well. I hope it does, anyway!
it was pretty funny to see her current life of posting wealthily compared unfavorably to the famously pro-woman, non-abusive, empowering job she might have had: dancing ballet at the highest levels