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_refugee_  ·  2339 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: November 22, 2017

I agree, but would like to also add I feel these characteristics are those you see in zealots of any stripe, conservative or ultra-lib -- living in a college town with lots of varyingly "woke"-stage friends, there are definite collectives of young ultra-liberals around who also thrive on the anger and the attention and the falsely-derived meaning of their life they pull from loud protesting and agonizing about such Incomprehensibly Life Important Issues as the fact that the university doesn't offer gender neutral bathrooms in most (if not all) buildings.

These are the same people who opt to go guerilla with their equality warfare and "fix" problems by, say, painting up graffiti in the form of gender-enlightened quotes all over every wall and stall of the men's and women's bathrooms in a single art building and cover up the "Men" and "Female" signs by the doors with "Gender Neutral" advocating/pontificating/polemicizing 3-paragraph posters. Congratulations, you "fixed" the University's gender-neutral bathroom problem. In one building. In two bathrooms which total can service 5 people at once. Wow. What an impact.

When instead they could've tried, I don't know, sitting down with some tenured professors or deans, making their arguments, and seeing if there's a symbiotic way that their needs can be met, their perceived inequality issues mitigated or resolved. Never communicate if you can shout instead, right? At least if you're 19, 20, 21, 22 and lost and scared and confused about the meaning of life - your life, that is.

Hell, it was the goddamn Art department - I am pretty sure if this group of malcontents had run their restorative idea through proper-enough channels, gathered support from TAs and a few LGBT profs, they could have gotten permission to do the same exact thing (at least as a temporary semester-long living/performance art installation, I mean, c'mon sell it right and liberal art professors would absolutely eat that shit up). But instead they basically vandalized a university building. Because that was the right choice. And then were quoted in the student newspaper 2 weeks later as being utterly shocked and astounded that their guerrilla group had been identified and now punished with the responsibility of cleaning both of the two 2/3-stall bathrooms up, or at least back to prior condition.

Sorry, people piss me off in real life and I bring it here.

As a venting addendum, to finish my portrait: the ring-leader of this group is the type of person who posted an anti-Memorial Day meme on Veteran's Day. Because finding something to be angry about is more important than insignificant facts.