Roosh Asks a Question I Can Address With Some Authority

Roosh ‏@rooshv 4h

How many people do you know who became fluent in a language they started learning in their 30's?

I have been a language teacher for over thirty years, and I have to say that based on my experience, the answer to that question is, unfortunately, none.  Even young adults (early twenties) are at a marked disadvantage compared to adolescents in acquiring second language fluency.  Of course, there is individual variance.  Some people are innately gifted at languages.  I knew an Afghan guy whose oral proficiency in English was astounding considering he did not learn the language until he came to the U.S. in his mid-twenties.  Of course, he was raised bilingually (Dari and Pashto), which may be why a third language came relatively easily.  And we can look with awe at linguistic virtuosi like Conrad (who learned English in his early twenties by reading newspapers) and Nabokov (who in fact grew up with a melange of French and English governesses).  But these are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Roosh has been trying to learn Russian for a couple of years.  He has indicated he plans to stay in the FSU forever, so naturally he wants to become fluent in the lingua franca.  I for one fully support his ambition to never return to the U.S.  Unfortunately, he is probably about twenty years too late.  He needed to have moved to Ukraine when he was fourteen or fifteen years old to have had a real shot at achieving true, "native-like" fluency.

I'm surprised that Roosh, the child of Iranian parents who immigrated to the U.S. in their twenties, doesn't already know this.  He has only to look at their limited English ability after 35 years in America.

Right now I have a Korean gentleman of 80-odd years in one of my classes, and I'm happy to have him there because he is a quite pleasant person, but in terms of becoming more fluent in English?  He is a lost cause.  That doesn't mean he is wasting his time or money, necessarily:  continuing to study is probably helping him maintain his skills and providing him with all kinds of cognitive and social stimulation that is beneficial.  And he seems to be enjoying the camaraderie and companionship of being in class.

That doesn't mean that adults cannot learn a new language, simply they can never realistically hope to learn it with fluency.  The older a student is, the less successful he or she will be in being fully proficient in a second language.  This has to do with the decreasing plasticity of the areas of the brain responsible for acquiring new language and that first language acquisition does not seem possible after a critical stage (pre-puberty).  There are some interesting studies out there that I'm not in the mood to review right now -- and I'm surprised Roosh hasn't googled the research himself -- but maybe he already suspects what they're going to confirm.  

Poor Roosh!  How frustrating it must be to realize that the Russian speaking ladies he fancies will never be able to fully appreciate the depth and breadth of his intellectual prowess -- since, no matter how hard he studies those flash cards, he will be pretty much confined to eighth grade discourse with them.

And it will be hard for him to maintain the facade of being a dominant "alpha" male when he must rely on his girlfriend to navigate doctor's visits, commercial transactions, or complex social situations of any kind.  Sure, he'll be able to go out and buy a kilo of potatoes for supper, but with whom will he discuss politics and philosophy or the great issues of our day?

(Curiously, first language development can continue to improve into late middle age.)

Wrung Out

"It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind."  (unattributed quote, 17th c.?)

I Learn Something New Every Damn Day

Heather N., "evil feminist from space," has clued me in to Do Not Link, a service that allows bloggers to reference "objectionable" or "dubious" sites without rewarding those sites with countable page views.  It looks very easy to use.  Now that's a tool that anyone monitoring the manosphere can use!  (For a little more information on how to use, I refer you to skeptical blogger Tim Farley's post.)

Vienna Teng

I can't think of the last time I heard and watched something as lovely as this video by Vienna Teng.  She was in Seattle last month and I'm kicking myself cuz I missed the show.

Quack Quack Quack

If there is one thing that jacks the jaws of Angry White Guys more than feminists, it's the gays.  Which can make libertines like Roosh rather strange bedfellows with the Christian Taliban.  Or loveable rednecks like the "Duck Dynasty" clan:

The last defenders of "freeze peach?"  

Roosh ‏@rooshv 4h
Daily reminder: you are not allowed to criticize homosexuals if you want to retain your employment.

That's not exactly true.  You are probably safe in criticizing an individual homosexual on any number of grounds.  What you are not safe in doing (anymore) is criticizing homosexuality itself (unless your place of employment is, say, the Westboro Baptist Church). 

Of course Roosh is referring to the scandal du jour around Phil Robertson's "suspension" by A & E from the "Duck Dynasty" reality show.

My Facebook page was peppered today with posts from Tea Party "friends" outraged at this infringement of free speech.  So I forced myself to read what it was that Daddy Duck actually said.  The message was remarkably incoherent given its brevity:

It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.
 
So essentially he states his preference for vaginas versus anuses as receptacles for his manly part, which is fair enough... and also because of "sin" and "logic," which is... oh, never mind.

The point is, as me old departed mom was wont to say, "A chacun a son gout," said the old lady as she kissed the cow. And really, who watches "Duck Dynasty" but the folks who are apt to share Mr. Robertson's point of view?  But apparently A & E decided blatant homophobia no longer flies on what passes for "mainstream entertainment" these days, even on a vehicle as shamelessly low-brow as "Duck Dynasty."  Here in America, we love our white trash freaks, but we like 'em cute and affable, like the ineffable Honey Boo-Boo herself.

Kudos to Roosh for doing the right thing and reminding his impressionable readers that homophobic, sexist, transphobic, and racist remarks are likely to cause them to lose their jobs, and that the "manosphere" is, purtroppo, not "the real world" in which the vast majority of us working stiffs must function.

Hey Fat Chick!

My only concessions to vanity these days are (1) having my hair professionally colored on a strict monthly regime, and (2) biweekly manicures to maintain my "perfect" acrylic nails.  I blame the cross dressing circle I sometimes hang out with for the latter indulgence.  Their nails always look fabulous:  I know one cross dressing engineer who sprays his press-ons with model enamel and an air gun.  (Their wigs, sadly, are another story.)  For all I poke fun at the cross-dressers, who sometimes represent to me "the worst of both worlds", they have taught me a lot about how to perform my gender.  (And I knew that I had overdone my makeup when I was identified as a cross dresser in a gay bar once.)

It's not that I've become indifferent to fashion.  I love pretty clothes.  It's simply that I enjoy seeing them on other people as much as wearing them myself.  Maybe that's a function of my age.  As we get older, and our youthful beauty inevitably wanes, we turn outward, away from the mirror.  So we take up gardening, painting, photography, and other hobbies that invite us to look beyond ourselves for visual pleasure.

Unless we're Iris Apfel, that is.

When I was younger, it was an ongoing challenge for me to find fashionable clothing that fit, even though I was only a size 16-18 in college.  In high school, it wasn't being fat that held me back socially so much as not having the proper clothes to wear for dances and sports.  As a result, I learned to configure "uniforms" that basically consisted of jerseys and jeans, or black knit pants and blazers that could have doubled as kevlar armor.  I managed to look presentable (albeit a bit matronly), but dressing remained a chore, never a pleasurable means of self-expression.

That's why I find the young "fatshionistas" (of widely varying degrees of girth) on blogs like Hey Fat Chick fun to follow.  Most of their get-ups would not be "age appropriate" for me (i.e., too too short), but sometimes I get ideas about what I could wear, and where I could obtain such items. And I'm always inspired by their gumption, their joyful defiance, their refusal to be repressed, ignored, or "shamed."

A young fat woman nowadays has an array of choices that would have boggled my mind thirty years ago.  (Unfortunately it is also true that unless she lives in a large city, she still must shop primarily online, which requires its own skill set.) And although I am not a "fat apologist" by any means, I celebrate that young women of all sizes can enjoy dressing in ways that exercise their creativity and make them feel good in their own skins. 

Giving Matt Forney a Break

I'm feeling remorseful about my treatment of Matt Forney after an exchange with a gal on "Jezebel" who knew him in high school.

She wrote:

This guy went to my high school. It actually makes me laugh when I read this stuff because the image he creates for himself is SO HILARIOUSLY FAR from reality. I remember him as an overweight, pants up to his boobs, trombone player who ran to class like a duck and couldn't look any attractive girl in the eye. 

and also this:

It is pretty sad when I think about it. I'm not sure he was ever categorically bullied but he was certainly socially excluded in school. I'd be surprised to learn he had any friends. If he actually believes any of what he writes, it will be because for years he recognized what other people saw him as, a band geek that looked 12 when he was 17. A weirdo who could never get a girl's attention, an outsider. Even calling himself "the most hated man on the internet" is telling, everything he writes is a cry for acknowledgment. He doesn't care if you hate him as long as you see him! It's a way for him to collect some personal power that he hasn't owned his whole life. I'd be curious to know what his family life was like...

My heart cracks a little to know that at seventeen, he looked twelve.  And now at 25, he looks forty.  Has this guy ever caught a break in the looks department?  The only compensation for premature balding is that when he actually is forty, he probably won't look much different.

Of course, I wouldn't have seen her comments if he hadn't linked to them on his own twitter feed.  But that's the perverse rationale of these would-be provocateurs:  there's no such thing as "bad" attention.  Indeed, they seem to find it highly stimulating.

Her words threw into sharp relief the pain that drives guys like Matt Forney.  Not for the first time, I feel remorse for mocking him.  You see, I can empathize with the high school reject he was.  I hated high school too.  I wasn't bullied, or a social pariah, but I was a perennial outsider who attended four schools in three years.  Somehow, despite skipping as much class as I attended, I managed to graduate, most likely because I had made myself so "invisible" that my teachers never noticed I was missing.  I would be amazed if any of my graduating class could even recall my name or face.  What sustained me, as I drifted through late adolescence in a kind of fugue state, was the conviction that everything would change once I got to college and my "real" life began.  (Yes, I had my own "It Gets Better" campaign running through my head long before Dan Savage dreamed that mantra up.)

Do any of us completely recover from the trauma of early social rejection?  It certainly shapes our personalities, for better or worse (and, unfortunately, as Forney demonstrates, usually worse).  Forney himself once described me as someone suffering from "narcissistic injury" and I thought, Yeah, well, right back at ya, kid!  I'm honestly not sure what that bit of psychoanalytical jargon even means, but maybe he was right.  I don't know; I don't care.  I am older than guys like Matt, and I ought to be wiser.  And more compassionate.

I think again of the epiphany Lindy West experienced when she saw Forney's former "vlog" on Youtube (now removed).  Although she doesn't refer to him by name, it is obvious she is referring to this particular "troll" when she explains how she realized, while watching it, that there was nothing he could say that could hurt her worse than the hurt he himself lives every day.  And of course she is absolutely right.

Matthew Forney ‏@realmattforney 2h

Only losers obsess over the past. Fuck what you were like as a teenager; what are you doing NOW? THAT is what defines who you are.

True enough, but when what you are doing now is widely viewed as destructive, people are apt to scrutinize your formative years in an effort to identify the source of your pathology.  And what Matt seems to be doing now is playing out a script that was written in his own troubled and not-so-distant adolescence.

Damn, life is sad, isn't it?  And complicated too.