The Left’s cycle of victimhood appears to be in freefall and accelerating towards the abyss rapidly these days, doesn’t it? Let’s review: The Rolling Stone campus rape case that wasn’t. Oppressed Mattress Girl who doubles down by releasing a sex tape. Rachel Dolezal reliving James Whitmore’s Black Like Me B-movie.
Finally, it’s come to this: Far Left Socialist Justice Warrior at Jezebel demands a neck tattoo for one of her first tats and throws a fit screaming — but of course! — sexism and oppression when the tattoo artist very sensibly refuses. Or as Ace writes today, linking to this post at InstaPundit, “Jezebel Blogger: Don’t Tell Me What Tattoos I Can and Cannot Get, Dad. I’m an Adult Now, Dad. And I’ve Got Ideas, Dad. Good Ideas! You’ll See When I Run Off to Rome to Become a Gritty Fashion Photog, Dad!”
Anyway, so, this Jezebel blogger is, get this, unreasonably angry owing to a sense of infuriated entitlement, in this particular circumstance, over the fact that a tattoo artist refused to give her a neck tattoo.
Why? Tattooist ethics, and no, I’m not making that up. It turns out tattoo artists have a code: they will not give highly visible “game changer” tattoos to persons who are not already well-marked with ink. They actually look out for their customers, and have much more experience with tattoos than their customers, and know what the customer does not: A neck tattoo is a tribal marker of potency that the occasional tattoo-wearer (the cute little barbed wire around the ankle, how darling!) doesn’t understand.
That it can keep you from getting jobs. Or something even more valuable: marriage proposals. (I went there, I really did! You been #Mansplained!)
Like sex-reassignment surgeons who demand you “live as a woman” for a year before they surgically maim you, they want to make sure you know what it really is to be Marked By Tattoos before getting one on your neck.
Apparently this is very common — and this particular unreasonably-angry Jezebel diatribist had been warned by multiple people and several tattoo artists that most artists would simply refuse to give a relatively-unmarked person a neck tattoo.
And we’re off to the races:
Dan: “And then you want your daughter’s name… on your neck?” Shakes head left to right.Me: “What.”
Dan: “Not gonna happen.”
Me: “Wait, what? Why?’
Dan: “It’ll look tacky. It’s just tacky.”
Me: “Wait, you’re telling me what will look tacky on me? Don’t I get to decide that?”
Dan: “A neck tattoo on someone without a lot of tattoos is like lighting a birthday candle on an unbaked cake.”
Stunning analogy, right? I wonder: Does Dan know what an analogy even is?
As Ace responds, “Actually, it’s the perfect analogy:”
Bake me a cake, bigot. You’re a lower-class hand-worker. I make the rules, because I am paying you, and therefore you surrender all rights to self-expression to me, your Noble Lady ruler.
And then suddenly I’m fighting back tears because, as Dan has already correctly assessed, I’m just a feeble-minded, hysterical girl.
Not just Dan. We all assessed it.
I understand perfectly well that the identity politics obsessive must always be on the prowl for something new to be offended about. (Insert Alvy Singer’s “Dead Shark” allusion here.) But just as the racial grievance industry never stops to ponder the incredible strides that minorities have made destroying what were once institutionalized forms of racial oppression when they’re down to screaming that the words “niggardly,” “chink in the armor” and “black holes” are racist (let alone “golf” and “Chicago”), when the PC police are now going on search and destroy missions in tattoo parlors, they might want to take a moment to assess just how much ground they’ve captured in the culture war before throwing their next hissy fit.
Other than possibly invitations to Lawrence Welk revival concerts, I doubt there are many things a tattooist will say no to. When he comes across as the calm, reasoned grownup in your story, it just might be time reevaluate your worldview. It’s a bit like the person in Chris Rock’s brilliant little “How to avoid getting your ass kicked by the police” sketch telling someone “I wouldn’t do that sh** if I were you,” before they get an ass kicking, except that unlike a tattoo, bruises from a policeman’s truncheon eventually go away:
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