In higher education, there is a virtual cottage industry of academics declaring everything from math to meritocracy to be forms of white supremacy and racism. Now, it appears romance will be added to the list. University of California Santa Barbara Black Studies Professor Sabrina Strings has written how romance promotes white supremacy and “global pigmentocracy.” In The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance, Strings recounts having “endured” her own bad relationships and maintains that “Romance is an old white cultural institution that began in the Middle Ages.” In an interview with The Current, Strings explains that “I am only one of the millions of Gen X-to-Gen Z women who have endured a seemingly endless array of miserable relationships with men.”
In viewing romance through her own lens, Strings comes up with distinctly different views of literature and famous relationships. For example, many people have read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, a story of forbidden love that introduced disharmony and disaster to King Arthur’s Round Table. It is a story of love and eventual betrayal. It is both irresistible and irrational. Many accounts show Lancelot rescuing Guinevere and, torn by their mutual loyalty to King Arthur, the couple finally succumbs to the inexorable pull of love to each other. It is a tragedy of love and loyalty that leaves everyone in ruin. Arthur would die of wounds in the later battles, Guinevere would die in a convent, and Lancelot would, according to some accounts, die as a hermit. It is a powerful tale of how love can overwhelm all other considerations and shatter every other bond.
That is not exactly how Professor Strings sees it. She says that the tale is really about how a man of lower status is trying to secure greater power and prestige by seducing a higher class European Christian woman: “Love is very much about generosity but romance is very much about what you can get from somebody, especially if you’re a man who is social climbing.”
Professor Strings zeros in on the beauty and whiteness of Guinevere. She notes that the queen was viewed as irresistibly attractive and pale in complexion:
“We can easily recognize these features today as those representing the apex of whiteness, even though race did not exist at the time of Troyes’s writing. Nevertheless, to the extent that some of these representations occurred before the seventeenth century dawn of race science, they have what historians have called a ‘proto-racist’ bent. Indeed, scholars have shown that the preference for light skin, hair, and eyes existed prior to the advent of racism, and that these characteristics were co-opted by it and enlisted for the purpose of installing a global pigmentocracy.”
The “whitenesss” could also simply reflect the racial makeup of the historical characters as opposed to any “global pigmentocracy.” Yet, according to Professor Strings, romance is about “women who are not peak white or are ‘insufficiently white’ are subject deservedly to deceit, manipulation, assault and rape.”
Professor Strings previously wrote a 2019 book about how “fatphobia” is rooted in racism.
In today’s academic environment, there often seems a rush to racialize common practices, customs, or terminology. Publications clamor for such articles and discovering another hidden racist element in society can bring academic accolades. However, others have already staked out many areas such as mathematics, astrophysics, statistics, meritocracy, climate change, dieting, tipping, skiing, chess, and organized pantries. Most recently, the American Psychological Association declared that merit-based hiring may be racist. Even robots are now declared to be part of the supremacist menace because they are often made of white plastic.
And you don’t think the race for tenure has anything to do with the cottage industry of rationalizing irrational thought? Think again.
For instance, Strings states: “I am only one of the millions of Gen X-to-Gen Z women who have endured a seemingly endless array of miserable relationships with men.” She then goes on to suggest that her personal failures are related to the ‘old white cultural institution’ of Romance.
Really? While proposing a theory of any sort is commendable, such a proposal must be backed with facts and testing so as to distinguish theory from fantasy. And the fact that Strings uses her theory to rationalize her personal failures (and those of ‘millions of women’) is not enough. If her theory is correct (she needs to prove it, not just offer it) why does she not use that information to improve/avoid her own personal “endless array of miserable relationships”? Those circumstances suggest either her theory is incorrect or she exhibits a remarkable lack of insight. And which feature would you expect from a “Professor”, unfounded theories (fantasies) or lack of insight?
To get life long job security and pay (tenure) many will appropriately compete with proposed theories and seemingly substantiated conclusions. We rely on universities and faculties to sift through a mountain of would-be scholars to find the proven rational thinkers that have accomplished theory and tested results. If those universities and faculties fail and give tenure to those that provide appealing but unproven theories combined with a lack of insight, what does that say about the university tenure system and those faculties?
She has done to King Arthur what Sarah Silverman did to Santa Claus:
In families raised under the Welfare system, men of working age, who can not find work, are driven out of the family so the woman can get more welfare money. So the family unit becomes a matriarchal unit and boys raised my women, do not know how to treat women and girls do not know how men should treat them. So you have a dysfunctional, multi-generation matriarchal system.
This ends up in violence within the family and alcohol and drug abuse. Where is God when you need Him?
Professor Strings in an incel. Who would have thought that the term could be applied to women as well as men? Perhaps SHE is the reason for the disastrous outcomes of the relationships she has been in with men. She sounds like a gripe who hasn’t been able to overcome her borderline tendencies and who projects on the majority culture the reasons for her involuntary celibacy. Unless you have taken religious vows of chastity and celibacy or are asexual (both of which are valid), romance is a way of sharing emotional intimacy that strengthens the marriage bond and permanences intact families. Even in Africa, romantic love was a popular theme for poetry, especially in the New Kingdom (1570-1069 BC) when works appear praising the virtues of one’s lover or wife (the Chester Beatty Papyrus I) is among these. (See also: https://www.thecollector.com/ancient-egypt-greatest-couples/). Ancient Egyptians believed in passionate and enduring love and associated it with the afterlife which greatly precedes the concept of romantic love in Europe by millennia.
jajuan62 said: “Professor Strings in an incel.”
“incel” = “involuntary celibate” To me, this harpy’s lack of a romantic relationship seems to be 100% voluntary. Just as well, I don’t think I’d care to see what kind of monstrous offspring she would bear and raise.
An incel is a male who is incapable of attracting a female for a date. In the case of this instructor, she is incapable of getting beyond a hookup. Her life is a series of extended tricks. Maybe she is a gay male? The similarity of personality traits between Gigi and this instructor are strikingly similar except the idea of Gigi succeeding in a casual hookup is terrifying
🥵
Does she want to burn my collection of Harlequin romance novels in a big bonfire?
“Strings explains that ‘I am only one of the millions of Gen X-to-Gen Z women who have endured a seemingly endless array of miserable relationships with men.’ ”
That couldn’t be because Strings (along with the “sisters” she cites) is nothing more than a moronic, monomaniacal, fvck1ng 81tch, could it?
It sounds to me like Professor Strings is an anti-white racist that is wacko.
Why have these wackos been allowed to gain a prominent voice in our society and not shoved into the gutters of lunacy where they belong?
People like this Professor Strings are nucking futs.
Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus
Pretty clearly, racism is racist.
I’d love to write, just what I think, but, I’ll just ask, does anyone think Idiocracy is not a documentary? SMDH
Folks, don’t send your kids to these universities, you’ll just ruin their lives, and yours! Unless you like misery?
My wife is a natural blonde with hazel eyes.
From my navel up I have a brownish tint (mostly due to the effects of the sun but that’s beside the point), and from my navel down I’m whiter than her.
We are both victims of half-whitetism…
Btw, how do I change my moniker from “Anonymous” to something else?
Anonymous said: “how do I change my moniker from “Anonymous” to something else?”
I don;t think you can do that after the fact. To create a post with a “real” name, either sign up for a WordPress account and use it, or just consistently fill in the “Email” and “Name” blanks on the posting form each time (as I do).
You can start by creating a Gravatar account and/or a WordPress account.
“Love is very much about generosity but romance is very much about what you can get from somebody, especially if you’re a man who is social climbing.”
What I find interesting about her thesis, is the total lack of any scholarly research. When I read something vapid like this, I go to the core.
Humans, were around for a few years prior to King Arthur. Across innumerable cultures over 1000’s generations, mating pairs were transactual. BEFORE that, it was survival of fittest. The Strongest male, fought and killed other males to breed the prettiest females.
I dont think Whites invented romance. But if Rap is a window into the soul, Blacks are still killing in order to mate with with the pretty ones.
It’s an old idea that romantic love was a product of the age of chivalry (see Wikipedia on “Courtly Love”) but courtly love is far different from “romance”.
What are these degreed dweebs going to do when ALL of this crashes? They did not learn anything in college, and by example they seem too stupid to learn.
The sameness of the efforts to tie almost anything to an “ism” is diabolical. I find something to read, which turns out not to be to my liking… I stop reading. It appears that social justice warrior aspirants feel almost divinely compelled to justify their dislike by tying it to one of the currently fashionable “isms”. This idiocy needs to stop. We need to focus our energies into feasible endeavors in concordance with, for example, GANT charts. The EV fad can’t (GANT) be achieved so is the Quixotic effort to define world problems as the outcome of white supremacy.
Geez what a missed opportunity! Instead of “Strings Attached: The death of romance in the post modern cesspool,” the book Ms. Strings should have and could have and have written, no, she had to churn out more nonsensical garbage to add fuel to the fire of the bonfire of inanities burning high and hot in academia.
It’s funny because although she’s technically right about romance having been invented in the middle ages-ish, she sees it as a bad thing. Whereas I’m pretty sure that the people themselves, particularly women, who had been accustomed to being given in marriage at the age of 12 to some old guy with bad teeth because marriage was seen in strictly economic/ political terms, might have had a different take.
On the other hand, if your main attributes are whining and blaming everybody else for your problems with men and chopping down trees to make paper with which to fill with unmitigated tripe, I can see how actual romance might not work in your favor. Actual romance requires that you have some qualities which other human beings might find attractive.
Should we return to the literal dark ages where women were used as chattel to form political bonds? I’m not sure what Ms. Strings’ proposed solution might be but I’m pretty sure I’d hate it.
Professor Turley cites the Arthurian tragedy as one example of romance and it’s one that still breaks the heart all these centuries later. What would have happened to the world if Guinevere had managed to keep her panties on? Would the Arthurian virtues rule the day instead of the “Might makes Right” credo that has sadly achieved dominance in today’s world and in the American so- called “justice” system?
Is the dark side of romance really whiteness, as Ms. Strings attests? Or is it the inability of humans to make intelligent decisions?
As Albert Einstein, to whom history may attribute even greater intellectual standing than to Ms. Strings, put it: “Only two things are infinite: the universe, and human stupidity. And I’m not sure about the universe.”
… and stupidity has only one cure: death. There are no pills or treatments for it. The only choice is to hope for death to arrive sooner rather than later.
This is what happens when love is missing from a race.
This is a perfect example of the low bar for academic employment created by DEI policies. This genuinely stupid woman has the opportunity to poison the minds of untold children with this completely un-nuanced drivel. Respect for academia is rapidly eroding due to this policy, and it will take just as long to recover as these policies required time to implement.
Jack Lifton said: “Respect for academia is rapidly eroding”
There have been some notable exceptions, but, in general, “academia” has not been worthy of respect for several decades, at minimum. The seeds for this kind of absurdity were sown long, long, ago.
Now we know why Professor Strings has “endured a seemingly endless array of miserable relationships with men”.
Any academic discipline with studies in the title is a joke. Why do you treat these clowns seriously?
Strings represents the final death throes of “feminism.” When you violate natural law in your personal life you become a miserable, unprincipled, self-centered whiner. I would wager that most of these people are frustrated women.