The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Rule 5 Sunday: Nighthawks

Posted on | January 31, 2016 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Devoid of inspiration this week, so we’re just going to segue into the standard disclaimer and stick in Edward Hopper’s classic painting, because we can.

An old favorite.

Ninety Miles from Tyranny leads off this week with Hot Pick of the Late Night, Morning Mistress, and Girls with Guns, followed by Goodstuff with Laura Prepon and other red-headed space chicks, The Last Tradition with Chloe Grace Moretz and Selita Ebanks, and First Street Journal with American women in uniform. Also, Postaldog returns with Rita Ora, Hilary Duff, Kate Hudson, and Micaela Shafer.

EBL tells the Arizona Cardinals to cheer up,  and also presents Rose Leslie, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, Megyn Kelly, Grace Slick, rape hoaxer Jackie Coakley, and Basic Instinct.

After a long absence, the Daley Gator returns to brighten our Sunday with Michellen Cristina, Erica Tonooka,  Who says Black and White photos are not sexy?, Analicia Chaves, Akira Riyu Mitsuki, Caity Lotz, Ami Tokito, and Karen Vi.

At Soylent Siberia, it’s two for tea, Monday Motivationer Rise & Shine, Tuesday Titillation Seeing DDouble, Humpday Red Hawt Jenny, Falconsword Fursday Fantasy, and Weekender Backslide Lakeside.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Camille Neviere (who also has Sex in Advertising covered), his Vintage Babe is Mary Healy, there’s The Return of Women Of PETA XLVI, the obligatory NFL cheerleaders, and their sisters! At Dustbury, it’s Carol Burnett, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Zooey looking good; Angelina Jolie, not so much.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery, here and at the FMJRA, where Rule 5 Sunday is again the most-linked post of the past week. Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox for next week’s Rule 5 roundup is midnight on Saturday, February 6.


Nighthawks
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Category: Rule 5

Is This Donald Trump’s Testimony?

Posted on | January 31, 2016 | 39 Comments

by Smitty

Byron York talks to The Hair and The Donald beneath it, asking the following:

Let’s go to Ted Cruz. He is apparently testing ways to attack you in Iowa. His campaign is calling people, testing, saying you have never asked God for forgiveness, saying you’re a “New York liberal pretending to have conservative values.” What do you think about that?

Well, first of all, I’m a believer in a very big way. I went through my Sunday school, I’ve done everything that you’re supposed to do and that I love doing, and I feel really great about it. I think that the evangelicals have really taken to me, and I taken to them, and I’ve always taken to them. I’m doing very well with the evangelicals. In fact, nationwide, I’m leading by a substantial margin.

Stipulate that there is not a precise, cookie-cutter approach to offering a testimony, and York did not ask: “What is your Testimony?” So, one must take whatever the answer is at face value.
This bit from Inquisitr.com is of note:

According to the progressive publication Thinkprogress, Donald Trump’s consistent claims to be a member of the Queens Presbytery has been a source of considerable embarrassment and discomfort to the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. It is well known that the denomination has publicly come out in support of gay marriage and other liberal policies. Additionally, the church as a whole has publicly committed to assisting the proposed intake of Syrian refugees. Both of these positions are directly opposed to Donald Trump’s positions and statements.

The church issued a statement Wednesday denouncing Trump’s comments as un-Christian and inconsistent with the teachings and example of Jesus Christ. They also announced their intention to attempt to expel Donald Trump from the Presbyterian faith. Presbyterians have a mechanism for expulsion that is similar to the Catholic practice of excommunication. An entity or individual within the church can make a complaint against a member which leads to judicial proceedings. Depending on the outcome of these proceedings, the member may then be expelled from the church. This would effectively mean that Trump would no longer have access to church services and sacraments, and would also put paid to any connection Donald Trump’s campaign might seek to establish with the Presbyterian denomination.

It’s hard to tell what to make of all that, on a variety of levels. In the case of, for example, Carson, Rubio, Cruz, Santorum, Huckabee, and Paul, it’s less hard to tell. I’ve heard Christie allude to his Catholicism. Don’t know about Fiorina too much.
Faith, while a personal matter, is an important check on megalomania. It would be instructive to hear, in an offline, off the record setting, Donald Trump’s actual testimony.

Category: Religion, Republicans

FMJRA 2.0: Pallas Athena

Posted on | January 30, 2016 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Rule Five Sunday: The Two Faces Of India
Regular Right Guy
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles from Tyranny
A View from the Beach
Proof Positive
Batshit Crazy News

FMJRA 2.0: Jetpack Blues
Regular Right Guy
The Pirate’s Cove
A View from the Beach
Batshit Crazy News

Truth Wins, Feminists Lose
Batshit Crazy News

#OccupyResoluteDesk, #OccupySCOTUS?
A View from the Beach
Batshit Crazy News

Democrats, Feminists and Other Liars
Instapundit
A View from the Beach
Batshit Crazy News

In The Mailbox, 01.28.16
A View from the Beach
Proof Positive

When Marxists Aren’t Enough: Are We Really Considering A Used Car Salesman?
The Daley Gator
A View from the Beach

Because Boys and Girls Are Different
Batshit Crazy News

The Colonel Walter E. Kurtz Memorial Book Post
Batshit Crazy News

HELP CYNTHIA YOCKEY!
Regular Right Guy
Batshit Crazy News

‘Rape Culture’ Feminists Won’t Mention
First Street Journal
Batshit Crazy News

Top linkers this week:

  1.  Batshit Crazy News (9)
  2.  A View from the Beach (6)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!


Black Tie White Noise

Category: FMJRA Award

Police: Louisiana Teacher and Teen Girl Had Year-Long Lesbian Relationship

Posted on | January 30, 2016 | 70 Comments

 

Kimberly Naquin, 26, was arrested Jan. 15 after it was learned that the high school geography teacher had sexually molested a teenage student, according to police in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. Naquin had sex with the girl on at least 10 occasions over the course of nearly a year beginning in September 2014 when the girl was 16, police said.

Naquin, who is the daughter of the local school board president, is the third teacher at Destrehan High School to be charged with molesting students recently. Shelley Dufresne, 33, and Rachel Respess, 25, were accused in October 2014 of having group sex with a 16-year-old male student. In fact, when reports of that investigation first became public, police say Naquin temporarily broke up with her underage girlfriend:

About a month into an illicit sexual relationship between Destrehan High School geography teacher Kimberly Naquin and a 16-year-old female student, the pair thought they’d been caught, authorities said Tuesday (Jan. 19).
Naquin, 26, and the teen panicked in Fall 2014 when they heard about media reports that a then-unidentified teacher at the same school was the target of a criminal investigation after having sex with a student, according to Lt. Brian McGregor, spokesman for the Kenner Police Department.
“From my understanding, they panicked and they separated for a short time when they heard about that case,” McGregor said. . . .
Though rattled, Naquin, the daughter of St. Charles Parish School Board President Dennis Naquin, continued having sex with the female student on at least 10 occasions at her former Kenner apartment, an arrest report said.
Naquin was booked with 10 counts of carnal knowledge of a juvenile by Kenner police Friday (Jan. 15) after her release from St. Charles Parish where the Sheriff’s Office booked her with carnal knowledge of a juvenile and prohibited sexual conduct between a teacher and student.
The girl’s relatives contacted the St. Charles Sheriff’s Office on last week after they discovered her sexual relationship with Naquin, authorities said. The teen told investigators the relationship began in September 2014 when she was 16.
While St. Charles investigators learned of sexual encounters in a classroom at the school and an unidentified residence in Destrehan, Kenner detectives confirmed several incidents at Naquin’s old apartment, located at 3752 Loyola Dr., Kenner, starting on Oct. 30, 2014, the arrest affidavit said.
The student returned to Naquin’s apartment on Black Friday, Nov. 28, 2014, and the two again had sex. A third incident occurred sometime between Jan. 11 and Jan. 18, 2015, the arrest report said. Naquin continued a sexual relationship with the teen until August 2015.
“There were at least 10 incidents that we were able to document with her,” McGregor said of Naquin. “She was pretty detailed with what she provided us.”
In interviews with detectives, the student gave details about Naquin’s apartment and scars the teacher had that would have only been visible while she was undressed, the report said.

According to the arrest affidavit, Naquin confessed her crimes:

During the courts of the interview [with a Kenner police detective Jan. 14], Kimberly Naquin admitted to the previously mentioned sexual acts with the student who she knew was only 16 years old. Kimberly Naquin also admitted to a sexual encounter with the student at the apartment in Kenner in April 2015. After the relationship with her live-in girlfriend ended in June 2015, Kimberly Naquin admitted to six more sexual encounters with the student at her apartment in Kenner before the relationship with the student ended . . . around August 2015.

The felony charges against Naquin are the latest in a series of cases that have recently made headlines nationwide involving female teachers charged with sexually molesting teenage girls.

Johnna Feazell, 48, had sex with girl.

In December, former Missouri teacher Johnna Feazell, 48, was sentenced to seven years in prison for sexually molesting a 16-year-old girl she had known since the student was in seventh grade. Feazell, who had coached sports at a Webster County junior high school, was also convicted of tampering with evidence:

Court documents showed Feazell reportedly developed a “mother/daughter” type relationship with the girl, starting when the girl was in seventh grade, and frequently took her to sporting events and other activities.
At some point, the district developed concerns about Feazell’s relationship with the student. She was disciplined for “inappropriate conduct” and repeatedly told, in writing, to no longer have contact with the student.
In late 2013, the girl’s parents went to the principal of the Marshfield High School and said they thought Feazell was having a sexual relationship with their daughter.
They became alarmed after finding that their daughter had a cell phone they didn’t provide. The only contact in the phone was Feazell’s number.
Around that time, Feazell had “deviate sexual intercourse” with the victim and enticed the teen, according to court documents. The teacher later told another teen to destroy a cell phone the teacher used and “all evidence,” court documents say.
Feazell, who was the girls’ track coach at the junior high when the allegations surfaced, previously coached basketball and softball.

 

Police say Tiffany Howard, 41, had sex with girl.

Also in December, police in Austin, Texas, arrested former Bowie High School teacher Tiffany Howard, 41, on charges that she sexually molested a girl during a three-year period that began when the victim was 13. Howard had coached the girl in seventh grade, and police began an investigation in October 2013 after letters were found in which Howard wrote to the victim:

I find myself at a loss for words sometimes, when I see you upset it breaks me inside then I just want to take you home and hold you on the couch to make it all go away. I really don’t think you have any idea of how I feel for you. I can’t wait to hold you at night; its going to be amazing. It’s going to be so special and it may be the last time in a long time that we will be able to hold each other all night . . .

During the 2013 investigation, the girl denied any sexual activity with Howard. No charges was filed at that time, although the teacher resigned. The case was re-opened in 2015, after the girl admitted her earlier denials were false:

However, the student came forward in October, confiding first in another coach and then the police, to report the inappropriate relationship, according to police records. Police records detail the relationship was sexual in nature and that Howard, 41, would provide her with alcohol, and with money “whenever she asked for it.” The girl told officers sometimes Howard would pick her up as she walked home from school.
The girl also told police that their relationship continued after Howard had resigned from her teaching job.
The girl’s father also recently provided police 52 pages of text messages from the student’s phone sent between the two during a seven to 10 day period.

 

Leah Eames, 33, pleaded guilty to sex with girl.

In June 2015, former high school teacher and swim coach Leah Eames, 33, was sentenced to 30 months probation in Illinois after she pleaded guilty to having sex with a 16-year-old girl she coached. The investigation of Eames began in August 2014, when a police officer checking on the YMCA “after hours found Eames working out with a student.” The circumstances were suspicious; when police checked surveillance video at the YMCA, it showed Eames and the teenage girl holding hands. Upon further investigation “police said detectives were able to identify the student and later interview her, and later discovered that Eames and the student had an ongoing sexual relationship.” Eames originally faced up to 30 years in prison; the plea deal in the case requires her to register as a sex offender for 10 years.

Erin MacDonald, 26, was sentenced to jail for sex with girl.

In May 2015, a Michigan judge sentenced Erin Katharine MacDonald to a year in jail after the former Grant High School science teacher pleaded guilty to having sex with a teenage student:

She was hired as a science teacher in Aug. 2013. MacDonald resigned on Nov. 26 [2014], the same day she was interviewed by the Newaygo County Sheriff’s Department.
Grant Public Schools Superintendent Jonathan Whan contacted the sheriff’s department after the victim’s father visited the high school principal with concerns about an inappropriate relationship between his daughter and the teacher. . . .
According to court documents, the girl told her parents she was going to the movies with a friend the week before Thanksgiving. That evening, the girl’s parents unexpectedly came across their daughter’s car at a park and ride lot near the junction of M-37 and M-46. The father waited for his daughter to return to the car and watched as MacDonald dropped the girl off, according to a search warrant affidavit in 78th District Court in White Cloud.
Once home, the father took his daughter’s cell phone and car keys. He then gave the cell phone to Grant High School Principal Dan Simon, signing a release that allowed the district to examine the cell phone.
“It was discovered there were approximately 14,000 texts between Erin MacDonald and (the victim) from Oct. 25 until Nov. 21,” Newaygo County Sheriff’s Deputy Phillip Green wrote in a search warrant affidavit. “Through briefly reviewing some of the texts, it would lead . . . to believe there was an inappropriate relationship.”
On Nov. 26, Green interviewed the girl about the relationship. She disclosed there was “an emotional and intimate relationship between the two which included sexual conduct in nature,” the search warrant affidavit states.

 

Police say Heather Packwood, 25, had sex with girl.

In April 2015, Texas officials arrested Heather Lynn Packwood, 25, on charges that she sexually molested a girl who was a student at New Braunfels Christian Academy. Packwood was a math teacher at the school and moved in with the girl’s family in 2012. “The victim’s family tasked the teacher with taking care of their children while they were away and taking them to school,” police told the San Antonio News-Express. Packwood’s arrest followed an investigation that began in February 2015 after the girl told her parents about the alleged sexual abuse.

Meghan Colleen Dougherty

  • Meghan Colleen Daugherty, 36, was charged in February 2015 with criminal sexual conduct with a minor in South Carolina. The arrest warrant said the Hillcrest Middle School physical education teacher committed sexual battery on a 14-year-old girl.

Geraldine Alcorn

  • Geraldine Alcorn, 28, was arrested in March 2015 in Pittsburgh after police say she became obsessed with an 11-year-old student at Beechwood Elementary School, where Alcorn was a pre-kindergarten teacher. Alcorn took the student ice skating and later lured the 11-year-old girl to her house. Police say Alcorn and the girl exchanged more than 2,000 text messages and had discussed running away together.

Shakyla Wilson

  • Shakyla Wilson, 22, was charged with one count of aggravated criminal sexual abuse after police in Naperville, Illinois, say she had sexual contact in February 2015 with a 14-year-old girl from Hill Middle School, where Wilson was volunteering as a girls basketball coach.

Michelle Smith White

  • High school dance teacher Michelle Smith White, 37, of Durham, N.C., was charged in October 2014 with having sex with a 16-year-old female student. Police said White had the student’s name and initials tattooed on her body.

Sabrina Epps.

  • Dance teacher Sabrina Epps, 19, was arrested in October after police say she admitted having lesbian sex with a 14-year-old girl who was a student at the Tennessee studio where Epps taught.

Gaile Christine Supp

  • Gaile Supp, 25, pleaded guilty in September 2014 to sexual battery, a third-degree felony. A former teacher at Clearfield High School in Utah, Supp had originally been charged with object rape, a first-degree felony, in April 2013 for allegedly committing a sexual act on an unwilling 17-year-old female student at her West Haven home.

Rebecca Diebolt

  • California teacher Rebecca Eileen Diebolt, 35, was arrested in June 2014 after a woman told police that she and Diebolt had a four-year sexual relationship that began in 2004, when the victim was 15 and Diebolt was her language arts teacher and swim/water polo coach.

Nichol Marie Phelps

  • Dance teacher Nichol Marie Phelps, 30, was sentenced to prison in June 2014 after she pleaded guilty to having lesbian sex with a 15-year-old student at the Florida academy where Phelps taught.
  • Andrea Michelle Cardosa, 40, was charged with 16 felony counts in February 2014 after two former female students accused her of sexually molesting them. One accuser said Cardosa started having sex with her when she was only 12.
  • Tonya Drueppel was arrested in January 2014 on charges that she had sex with a middle-school girl beginning in October 2012, when the victim was 13.
  • Amanda Michelle Feenstra, 32, pleaded guilty in October 2013 to having sex with a 17-year-old girl who was a student at the Texas high school where Feenstra was a dance teacher.
  • Kelly O’Rourke, 42, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in October 2013 for having sex with a 16-year-old girl.
  • Linda Wallace was sentenced to prison in September 2013 after pleading guilty to having had a four-year sexual affair with a female student that began when the girl was 13.
  • Nicole Wooten was arrested in February 2013 on charges that she had sex with a girl in 2005 and 2006, when the victim was a 12-year-old eighth-grader.

But it’s not like there’s a trend here or anything . . .




 

Category: Uncategorized

‘Rape Culture’ Feminists Won’t Mention

Posted on | January 29, 2016 | 18 Comments

 

Darian Lee Winfield was arrested Jan. 8 as a suspect in “a series of sexual assaults and home invasions” in Detroit:

Darian Winfield, 19, was charged with first-degree home invasion, assault with intent to murder and assault with intent to commit criminal sexual conduct, according to a news release from the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office. He was arraigned in 34th District Court and bond was set at $1-million cash, according to Maria Miller, spokeswoman for Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy.
Winfield is charged with breaking into a house in the 5800 block of Radnor on Dec. 30 and stabbing a 39-year-old Detroit woman with a knife in the chest with the intent of sexually assaulting her, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.

The suspect’s family denies his guilt:

Darian Lee Winfield’s relatives vehemently deny the accusations, saying the teen was apprehended while en route to a police precinct to clear his name after media reports that police were looking for him.
“He’s a model student, he works, he goes to school,” his mother, Anita Pace, told The Detroit News on Friday night. “It’s not him. They have the wrong person.” . . .
Winfield, considered armed and dangerous, was growing increasingly violent, Police Chief James Craig said at a news conference Friday. . . .
The teen, who turns 19 this month, attends East English Village Preparatory Academy and works as a packer in Macomb County, Pace said. He also volunteers at a soup kitchen, goes to church and has a girlfriend, leaving little time for much else, she said. “He was doing what he needed to do for himself. He’s not a bad guy at all.”
Police said Winfield has a history of violence. He was given probation for a previous conviction of assault with intent to do great bodily harm in an incident last year involving a 17-year-old girl, Craig said.

So, is Winfield an angel — a “model student” who “volunteers at a soup kitchen” — or a serial predator? We don’t know, but he is presumed innocent unless he is convicted in a court of law. However, we know that someone is terrorizing women in Detroit. Someone stabbed that woman in the chest, and there are other victims in Detroit:

GeNaye Washington was asleep when a man climbed through her bedroom window, beat her and sexually assaulted her while her mother and siblings were just a few steps away in the home.
Washington, 17, died of her injuries [Jan. 12], according to her family, who identified her Wednesday to the Free Press as one of four victims who were raped in a string of sexual assaults and home invasions on Detroit’s east side that began last December.
“We hope that justice is served, but it still won’t bring her back,” said Shaquetta Washington, GeNaye’s older sister. . . .
According to Washington’s family, she was struck in the head multiple times and raped. A Detroit man, Darian Winfield, has been named a person of interest in the homicide, according to Detroit Police. Winfield was charged Sunday in another sexual assault and home invasion case and more charges could be forthcoming in a separate December Grosse Pointe Park attack.
Shaquetta Washington said she doesn’t know Winfield, but said her brother played basketball with him during the summer at a nearby basketball court.
Washington was attacked about 7:30 a.m. Jan. 7 near the 5500 block of Radnor. Her home was broken into and the assailant used some kind of blunt weapon, police said.

What I want to know is, where are the feminists? For the past couple of years, feminists have been claiming that American colleges and universities are in the grip of a “rape epidemic.” More than 100 lawsuits have been filed by male students who say they were falsely accused and denied due process in the campus kangaroo courts imposed in response to this hysterical fear-mongering. Yet the feminists who whipped up this irrational frenzy — Jaclyn Friedman, Jessica Valenti, Jill Filipovic, Alexandra Brodsky, et al. — can never be bothered to pay any attention to victims like GeNaye Washington or suspects like Darian Winfield in places like Detroit. There is a certain narrative — rich college girls on elite campuses allegedly being raped by “privileged” male students — which serves the political agenda of feminists, and they ignore any crime that doesn’t fit the narrative. If GeNaye Washington had been a student at Oberlin College or if Darian Winfield were a fraternity member at the University of Virginia, maybe Amanda Marcotte would care.

But ordinary women raped and murdered by an ordinary criminal? The story of those crimes doesn’t advance the feminist narrative, and so feminists never notice the victims of these crimes.

What do I hate most about feminism? The self-serving dishonesty of professional activists who expect us to take them seriously.




 

Category: Crime, Sex Trouble

HELP CYNTHIA YOCKEY!

Posted on | January 29, 2016 | 8 Comments

An emergency bleg at A Conservative Lesbian:

Right now I am sitting next to the bed of my 99-year-old dad, Hubert P. Yockey, and for the next few hours or days, he is still one of the last living nuclear physicists of the Manhattan Project. He shortened the war with Japan by improving the design of the Calutron, the machine used at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to separate uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. After over 20 happy years caring for my late life partner, who died of complications of multiple sclerosis in 2004, I came back home in October 2006 to live with my dad and provide his care. But I need help from my friends to do my last service for him. I need to ask for donations to cover the cost of a budget cremation for him. My goal is $2,050. . . .

Please go read the whole thing and hit Cynthia’s tip jar. I did.

 

Category: Cynthia Yockey

The Colonel Walter E. Kurtz Memorial Book Post

Posted on | January 29, 2016 | 2 Comments

— by Wombat-socho

It is impossible to describe what is necessary, to those who do not know what horror means. You must make a friend of horror.

Short book post this week since I didn’t actually get to do much reading; for some weird reason, two of the three books I read this week had significant horror elements in them. The first of these is Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies, the latest short fiction anthology dealing with the once (and possibly future) renegades of Delta Green, an organization tasked with making sure the horrific future does not become our present. Most of the stories are set in the period when Delta Green was still an official part of the government, but are no less strange for all that; Dennis Detwiller has become a master of spinning a tale where all seems normal, until the strangeness erupts into the narrative like an exploding bomb. If you’re of the opinion that Charles Stross’ Laundry novels are entirely too sunny and optimistic, or that The X-Files wasn’t nearly horrific and violent enough, then the Delta Green fiction anthologies are for you.

Then we have Spacelore, the second collection of J.B. Zimmerman’s stories and the first of his science fiction. Unlike Detwiller’s collection, these are not all tales of horror from beyond space and time; many of them, in fact, would not have been out of place in the pages of Analog back when John W. Campbell Jr. and Ben Bova were at the helm. A couple of the stories, though, are stark reminders that in addition to hope and freedom, there is also horror in space. Spacelore is an unusual anthology in that the quality is very consistent. There isn’t a clunker in the lot, though obviously you’re going to like some of the stories more than others. Free on Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime, but $3.49 is a very reasonable price.

George MacDonald Fraser is of course best known for his Flashman novels, about a public-school cad and bully who keeps falling into one manure pile after another on the frontiers of Empire and emerging covered with roses and honours, but he also penned a brief memoir of his time with the Border Regiment in the Burma campaign during WWII, Quartered Safe Out Here. It is less comedic than the British history parody 1066 and All That, but as Fraser himself admits, he is recounting what he can remember with a little help from the official history. It is by turns serious and amusing, with occasional reflections on the state of England as it’s changed since 1945, and well worth reading.


Category: Books

Because Boys and Girls Are Different

Posted on | January 28, 2016 | 27 Comments

Just a quick rant here, to fill the void while I’m working on something else: Why do feminists, on the one hand, claim that there are no natural differences between male and female and yet, on the other hand, constantly criticize men for typical masculine behavior? The answer seems obvious to me, after months of reading radical feminist gender theory — and scrolling through the endless madness of Feminist Tumblr — and what bothers me is that the fundamental problem is seldom stated directly, either by feminists or their critics.

Begin with the status quo, the existing social order. Whether the year is 1966 or 1986 or 2016, society at any given time has certain standards, customs, expectations and incentives that influence how men and women behave. The vast majority of people accept the status quo as the way things are, and do their best to fit into the existing social system, to succeed and be happy in life. This requires a process of maturation on the part of young people who, in order to become responsible and productive adults, must find their place within the existing system and psychologically adjust to their adult roles. The unrealistic dreams of childhood must be set aside, and the unruly passions of adolescence must be reined in, in order to attain responsible adulthood.

Thirty years ago, there was a lot of talk among psychologists about the problem of Peter Pan Syndrome, describing the attitudes and behaviors of young men who were unwilling to commit to (or emotionally unable to sustain) romantic relationships because commitment logically led to marriage and fatherhood. Being a husband and father required becoming a grown-up, and Peter Pan didn’t want to be a grown-up.

Yet this problem of perpetual adolescence (which Diana West analyzed as a cultural phenomenon in her 2007 book The Death of the Grown-Up) was not limited to childish males. Contemporary feminism is, to a great extent, an elaborate rationalization of female emotional immaturity. There is a symbiotic relationship between the irresponsible behavior of young men and the limitless rage of young women in response.

Let us ask: Is the social status quo, in terms of male-female relations, better or worse in 2016 than it was in 1966?

Your answer to that question will vary, according to what you expect adult life to be. If a girl was a high-school senior in 1966 and her ambition was to become a corporate executive, a politician, or a college professor, the status quo was decidedly disadvantageous to her. However, in terms of her romantic life, the average girl in 1966 had better opportunities than the girl in 2016. Fifty years ago, the median age at first marriage for American women was about 21, so that the high-school senior who graduated in 1966 could expect to be taken seriously — as a prospective wife in the near future — by any young fellow who showed a romantic interest in her. Insofar as marriage and motherhood are among a young woman’s ambitions, the teenage girl in 2016 has very dismal prospects in comparison to her grandmother who came of age in the 1960s.

Is it not obvious that five decades of feminism, in attempting to solve the problems of career-minded young women of the 1960s, has in many ways created a new problem for the romantic-minded young woman of the 21st century? The force of law, in terms of legislation and policy forbidding workplace discrimination against women, now guarantees that the teenage girl in 2016 has far greater opportunities to pursue professional employment than did her grandmother. However, legislation and policy can do nothing to improve her romantic life. There is no law that can force her boyfriend to take her seriously, to treat her the way a man treats the woman he hopes to marry.

Furthermore, feminism has encouraged divorce and unwed motherhood, and thus to a great extent destroyed marriage and family life in America. The young man in 2016 is far more likely to have grown up in an environment where his parents were divorced (or never married) and thus has little direct knowledge of what a stable, happy marriage looks like. He may have been shuttled back and forth between his parents’ separate homes — here for a while with his mother and her boyfriend, then there for a while with his father and stepmother, and perhaps for a while staying with one of his grandmothers — and what sort of attitudes is he likely to have developed as a result?

Of course, the destruction of traditional family life has also had an adverse impact on the childhood homes in which young women are raised, and yet no feminist will ever admit this. Feminism celebrates as “progress” anything — divorce, unwed motherhood, abortion, homosexuality — that is destructive to the family and hostile to traditional morality. Because of this, the unhappy young woman can never expect feminists to offer her an honest explanation for the causes of her unhappiness. When she is confronted by the rude and selfish behavior of teenage boys, no feminist will encourage her to ask what sort of home environment the young man was raised in. Were his parents married? Was he dumped off in a daycare center as an infant? Why didn’t his parents teach him courtesy and kindness?

Even worse, however, feminism teaches young women never to critically examine their own behavior and attitudes, nor to consider whether they are responsible for their own problems. Everything that is wrong with her life, according to feminism, is to be blamed on her oppression by the patriarchy. Because this explanation is feminism’s only answer to every question, the young feminist is constantly on the lookout for bad behavior by men, and is obliged never to say a word in praise of any man’s good deeds. The feminist’s pervasively negative portrayal of male behavior prevents her from ever having to admit that (a) there are good men in the world, but (b) none of these good men desire her romantic companionship, and (c) feminism can’t solve this problem.

We return, then, to the problem of the status quo and the standards, customs, expectations and incentives that influence how men and women behave. All feminists agree that the status quo in 1966 was entirely wrong. Yet at no point since 1966 has the feminist movement found the status quo acceptable, because if feminists ever were to announce that their movement had succeeded — our society had reached “equality,” however that might be defined — then there would be no more need for their perpetual agitation. Therefore, to justify their ongoing grievance-mongering, either “equality” must be constantly redefined, so that the ideal status quo can never be achieved, or else feminists must admit “equality” was never really what their movement was about.

Feminism is simply a political rationalization of the complaints of unhappy women. If all their demands were granted today, feminists would return tomorrow with a new list of demands.

Pointing out the obvious contradictions of feminism’s ideology and rhetoric — their claim that men and women are exactly alike, except that all men are oppressors — does nothing to persuade the feminist to re-examine the premises of her argument. Feminism is a cult, organized around the grievances of unhappy women, and once she has fully internalized the movement’s worldview, the feminist can never explain any problem except in terms of the evils of male supremacy. The failure of the movement to actually improve women’s lives guarantees its continued “success,” because the more women are unhappy, the more support for the feminist movement will increase.

Feminism is to women’s happiness what the Democrat Party is to responsible government. We look at municipal disasters like Detroit or Baltimore — Democrat-controlled fiefdoms — and see nothing but corruption, poverty and crime, yet the people who live there keep electing Democrats by landslide majorities and blaming all their problems on scapegoats. The campaign rhetoric of the Democrat Party is usually just the elaborate demonization of scapegoats like white racism or “corporate greed,” and guess what? It works.

The three keys to Democrat Party electoral success are:

1. Ignorance;
2. Hate;
and
3. Fear.

With a few minor adjustments, feminism succeeds by the same formula. And after beginning this as a “quick rant,” I’ve written 1,400 words, concluding where I began: Boys and girls are different.

All grown-ups know this. Feminists are women who refuse to grow up.




 

Category: Feminism, Sex Trouble
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