How ‘Fringe’ Is Radical Feminism?

Posted on | August 25, 2014 | 72 Comments

A few days ago, I happened to notice my Turner Middle School yearbook — the Signal, from 1973, when I was in eighth grade — on one of the bookshelves in my office, and started looking through it. My 11-year-old daughter Reagan became curious, and I began showing her some of the pictures, commenting on which girls I had crushes on (basically, all of them) and after a while, Reagan said, “Wow, Dad, you must have been totally annoying.” True, that. Anyway, among the girls I pointed out were (a) Alice, the first girl I ever kissed, and (b) Kathy, the second girl I ever kissed (neither of these kisses happened until ninth grade, however).

Quite coincidentally (the reason I’m telling this) a couple days later, the same Kathy commented on my Facebook page where I’d posted my article “Reading Feminist Theory,” asking about my “obsession with fringe feminist theory. . . . What is your point?”

A fair question. Since I started blogging regularly about this in January (“Mental Illness and Radical Feminism”), several regular readers have appreciated my work and encouraged me to write an ebook about it. Knowing from prior experience what grueling work it is to put together a book, I dreaded the thought, but in July, I finally surrendered. The “Sex Trouble” series, which began July 14 (“Radical Feminism and the Long Shadow of the Lavender Menace”) is basically an ongoing preview of draft chapters. The business of sorting all this stuff out, editing and compiling it, still lies several weeks or months in the future, but regular readers can watch the process as the unwieldy beast takes shape.

My “obsession,” therefore, is actually work, and my point is that “fringe feminist theory” isn’t fringe anymore. Remember this?

Ms. magazine found that over 900 programs in the women’s studies field were functioning in the US in 2009. That meant 10,000 courses teaching over 90,000 students at 700 colleges and universities across the nation . . . That included 31 Master’s programs and 13 Ph.D. programs . . .
[T]he American Association of University Women has started advocating to implement “gender studies” programs in public high schools, and the Feminist Majority Foundation is enthusiastic about the prospect of teaching 10-year-olds about “sexuality and gender identity” with a focus on “gender equity” while girls “are still malleable and relatively free of . . . gender role bias.”

If you research the faculty and curricula of Women’s Studies programs, and examine the content of their output in journals of academic feminism, you find yourself in a swamp of radicalism. Research a little more, and you find that Women’s Studies is “interdisciplinary,” which means that radical gender theory seeps into history, political science, psychology and other fields. The field of sociology, for example, appears to have been swallowed whole by radical feminists. At many schools, Women’s Studies is most commonly a minor, rather than a major, so you have students majoring in psychology, history or English with a Women’s Studies minor, and feminist doctrines thereby become part of the academic discourse far beyond the Women’s Studies classrooms, as these students go onto graduate school in their major field.

The extreme doctrines taught in Women’s Studies are not cordoned off from the rest of academia, and the fear of being accused of sexism — discrimination is a violation of civil rights, which could mean getting dragged into an ugly federal lawsuit — is so overwhelming within higher education that no member of the faculty or administration will criticize the radical feminist agenda. Unhindered by any opposition, then, the high priestesses of radical feminism have an influence on campus far greater than their numbers might suggest. The 90,000 students enrolled annually in Women’s Studies programs are less than 3% of total enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities; however, these numbers add up cumulatively year after year, so that it’s likely there are more than 500,000 American women under 30 who have taken at least one Women’s Studies class. Having scoured the Internet for online syllabi, I can assure you that even the basic “Intro to Women’s Studies” class is likely to be crammed full of radicalism.

In 1998, when Daphne Patai published Heterophobia — a book I highly recommend — this phenomenon was already clearly evident, but radicalism has steadily accumulated strength since then. Because the mainstream media prefer to ignore this subject, you’re not likely to realize how far it’s gone unless you start researching it. While looking for feminist texts on Amazon, for example, I found Interrogating Heteronormativity in Primary Schools: The ‘No Outsiders’ Project, edited by Renee DePalma and Elizabeth Atkinson:

The No Outsiders team, a collaboration of primary education practitioners and university researchers, has taken groundbreaking steps in addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in primary schools. DePalma and Atkinson and their colleagues from the ESRC-funded No Outsiders research team explore and analyze central issues which permeate the team’s challenge to gender conformity through primary education.
The need for primary teachers and other professionals working with children to address equality in relation to sexual orientation and gender expression is becoming increasingly urgent in the light of recent changes in UK legislation. . . .
This academic companion to the team’s practice-focused book drawing on the project teachers’ classroom work, Undoing Homophobia in Primary Schools, will be essential reading for all those in primary education who are concerned to challenge this last bastion of inequality, as well as for students and researchers in sociology, cultural studies, queer studies and related fields where the underlying discourses shaping heteronormativity and gender conformity require urgent analysis in the move towards a fairer society.

Notice this idea — challenging “gender conformity . . . working with children to address equality in relation to sexual orientation and gender expression” — is considered “increasingly urgent” because of changes in British law relating to homosexuality (e.g., the Equality Act of 2007). Similar arguments are being made in the United States and Canada: The legalization of same-sex marriage, we are told, means that our entire education system needs to be revamped to be “inclusive,” yadda, yadda, yadda. It is not enough, then, that your tax dollars should pay for a public school system to indoctrinate kids with atheism, global warming hysteria, multiculturalism and other such progressive dogma. No, it is now necessary that the radicals must “challenge this last bastion of inequality” — primary school — with postmodern gender theory developed by the disciples of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler.

Can you say “gender is a social construct,” boys and girls?

This bizarre experiment was funded with a grant of £575,000 ($950,000) from the British Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and sparked controversy when it made headlines in 2007:

Schools are teaching children as young as four about same-sex relationships to comply with new gay rights laws . . .
They are introducing youngsters to homosexuality using a series of story books in preparation for controversial regulations coming into force next month.
Fourteen primary schools are already taking part in a £600,000 Government-funded study aimed at familiarising children with gay and lesbian relationships.
The research team behind the project intends to post the findings on national websites to help all schools use the books in their literacy lessons. . . .
The academics working on the study say showing children that homosexuality is part of everyday life helps reduce homophobic bullying in the playground.
They claim schools need to ensure they are serving the needs of gay pupils and parents to comply with the Equality Act.
However the scheme sparked alarm among Christian groups who fear the legislation could leave schools open to lawsuits if they refuse to use books with gay characters. . . .
The use of the books in England prompted claims that repealing Section 28 — the law banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools — has increased the use of inappropriate teaching materials.
There are also claims that new gay rights laws, coming into force on April 6, will allow schools to be sued if they do not use homosexual texts. . . .
Dr Elizabeth Atkinson, reader in social and educational inquiry at Sunderland University, said: “The purpose of the project is to support schools in meeting their requirements under the Equality Act, which will require all public institutions to meet the needs of gay and lesbian users.
“There’s very little out there at the moment to enable them to meet the needs of all pupils.”
The No Outsiders project, which has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, is run by Sunderland jointly with Exeter University and London’s Institute of Education.
It has been launched in 14 schools across the North East, the South West, London and the Midlands.
Dr Atkinson added: “We are already finding that books like these are changing attitudes around homosexuality. Pupils are more willing to understand issues of discrimination.”
However Simon Calvert, spokesman for the Christian Institute, said: “The predictions of those who said the repeal of Section 28 would result in the active promotion of homosexuality in schools are coming true.”

The pro-gay British media was alarmed at the backlash:

So far, it has prompted such headlines as ‘Four-year-olds will get gay fairy tales at school’ and ‘Pro-gay kids’ books launched’. In one article, Stephen Green, director of the Christian Voice advocacy group says: “The arrogance of people like Elizabeth Atkinson, using children as guinea pigs is outrageous and thoroughly wicked.”
Sitting in a cafe in Newcastle, Dr Atkinson says she doesn’t mind that the project has attracted such vehement opposition — it’s all part of the wider debate. “To be attacked is a sign of recognition that you are doing something to change the world and the job of education is to change something for the better,” she says. “Fair enough if I’m attacked for changing the world for the better — so be it.
“We knew when we started this that the Christian groups wouldn’t like it because they don’t like homosexuals. It wasn’t surprising.” . . .
“Section 28 led to the continued marginalisation for children and adults who did not fit into specific norms,” says Dr Atkinson. “What repealing Section 28 has done is make it possible for that group of people to have their human rights recognised. It’s no good saying we’re going to have equality but there’s going to be an exception. There should be no exceptions.”
The No Outsiders project has the backing of the Department for Education and Skills and the National Union of Teachers. Dr Atkinson was recently awarded the scholar activist award by the American Educational Research Association.
But she feels a mark of success will be the day that raising awareness of homophobic bullying will be as prominent and normal as education about sexism and racism.
“If you look back 20 or 30 years ago people used to justify racism,” she says.
“We aren’t in any way teaching them about sexuality or teaching them to be gay. We’re teaching them about diversity and the right to be respected. But it will take time.”

Using children as guinea pigs in this taxpayer-funded experiment is about “human rights” and “changing the world for the better,” see?

And if you disapprove, you’re just a homophobic bully.

This totalitarian attitude — compulsory approval — has been fomented on campus within the Women’s Studies/Gender Studies faculty for the past two decades. Genuinely strange ideas about sexuality and gender have flourished within academia because no one was allowed to question feminism’s radical egalitarian dogma. Lawrence Summers, a liberal in good standing, who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, was chased out of his job as president of Harvard University merely for suggesting that there may be “innate” differences between men and women:

Several women who participated in the conference said . . . they had been surprised or outraged by Dr. Summers’s comments, and Denice D. Denton, the chancellor designate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, questioned Dr. Summers sharply during the conference, saying she needed to “speak truth to power.”

Denice Denton? Say, whatever happened to Denice Denton?

Denton, who was openly lesbian, resided part-time in downtown San Francisco with her partner of more than ten years, Gretchen Kalonji, a professor of materials science. On June 24, 2006, one day following Denton’s discharge from the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute where she had been treated for depression, she leapt 33 stories to her death from The Paramount, a high-rise in which she shared an apartment with Kalonji.

Probably just a coincidence.

At any rate, the trends are all pointing in the same direction:

A female PE teacher who groomed a girl pupil and then filmed them having sex in hotel rooms escaped jail yesterday.
Hayley Southwell, 27, started a relationship with the girl when she was 15 but waited until her 16th birthday to have sex with her.
Yesterday Southwell was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to engaging in sexual activity with a child under 18 in a position of trust.
The court heard how Southwell had started the nine-month relationship with the pupil at The Nelson Thomlinson school, in Wigton, Cumbria, in May last year.
At the time the pupil, who cannot be named, was 15 but Southwell groomed her and planned to have sex with her as soon as she turned 16.
Prosecutor Greg Hoare said: ‘Police investigations did not show there was anything of a sexual nature that occurred before she turned 16.
‘It was plain they were counting down the time till this girl was 16 and thereafter a sexual relationship did occur.’ . . .
There were both videos and photographs they had shared with each other, which were ‘intimately explicit’ and of a ‘sexual nature’, it was said.

“Changing the world for the better,” Dr. Atkinson would probably call it.

So that’s my point, Kathy. I’m a journalist. I’m also a Dad.

<br />

Category: Education, Feminism

Comments

72 Responses to “How ‘Fringe’ Is Radical Feminism?”

William_Teach
August 25th, 2014 @ 9:19 pm

I’m not sure how fringe they are, but they sure tend to be ugly….oops, that’s #bodyshaming. My Bad!
concern00
August 25th, 2014 @ 9:30 pm

And when you find the occasionally (subjective) attractive one, you can bet that they’re ugly on the inside.
RS
August 25th, 2014 @ 9:31 pm

I’m glad you posted this. In the comments to your previous post to which Glenn Reynolds linked, someone asked essentially, “why bother?” This post answers that question.

As for the substance of this post, any parent who willfully inflicts public school on his/her children are gambling with their children’s souls.
How ‘Fringe’ Is Radical Feminism? | That Mr. G Guy's Blog
August 25th, 2014 @ 9:53 pm

[…] How ‘Fringe’ Is Radical Feminism?. […]
Cactus Ed
August 25th, 2014 @ 9:57 pm

[…]arguments are being made in the United States and Canada: The legalization of same-sex marriage, we are told, means that our entire education system needs to be revamped to be “inclusive,” yadda, yadda, yadda.

Yes. For instance, in GLSEN‘s paradigm of “safe schools”, the science teachers must “acknowledge the gay identity of Francis Bacon (creator of the scientific method),” while art teachers identify the artist Frida Kahlo as bisexual. In math class, students analyze “LGBT demographic trends”—for instance, creating charts illustrating the “number of same-sex couples raising children” or the “number of adopted or foster children in LGBT-headed households.”

And in these same “safe schools”, students can “participate on sports teams according to their gender identity.” Presumably, that applies to locker rooms and gym class, as well.
Reading Feminist Theory | Batshit Crazy News
August 25th, 2014 @ 10:14 pm

[…] TOM: How Fringe is Radical Feminism? […]
NeoWayland
August 25th, 2014 @ 10:21 pm

I have defended rights for homosexuals in comment threads on this site.

I want to make a distinction here. What the radical feminists are “fighting” for are not rights, but exclusive and irrevocable privileges backed by the force of law.

Rights do not emanate from a state, nor do they require state sanction or approval.

Most importantly, it’s not a right unless the other guy has it too.

I tell people that I am not for Native American rights, homosexual rights, “black” rights, or women’s rights.

I’m for human rights.

And you should be too.
NeoWayland
August 25th, 2014 @ 10:26 pm

Stars above, that did come off a little egotistical, didn’t it?

The important bit is that what the RadFems want is perpetual advantage and veto power over all ideas.

Not all lesbians are radical feminists, but some RadFems do use sex to manipulate. They’ve never learned that “power with” accomplishes more than “power over.”
WarEagle82
August 25th, 2014 @ 10:29 pm

When did it become MANDATORY for leftists to FLAUNT their INSANITY?

Seriously, the crazier they are, the higher they rise in the circus that is the left wing in America.
robertstacymccain
August 25th, 2014 @ 11:04 pm

Yeah, people who don’t see the relevance of feminism should be reminded (a) that Obama beat Romney on the basis of a “gender gap” exacerbated by the Democrats’ “War on Women” rhetoric; and (b) Hillary Clinton is likely to be the Democrat nominee in 2016.
TiminAL
August 25th, 2014 @ 11:11 pm

“The No Outsiders project has the backing of the Department for Education and Skills and the National Union of Teachers.”

National Union of Teachers.

N.U.T.s

Yep
Dianna Deeley
August 25th, 2014 @ 11:13 pm

Things I don’t understand:

1) Why are we tying ourselves into pretzels over (at most) 5% of the population?

2) Why are we harassing children under 12 with material of absolutely no relevance to what they need to learn?

3) Why are we adding yet more to the grade-school curriculum, when, so far as I can determine, we aren’t even managing to teach people to compose a reasonable English sentence? Never mind basic numeracy. Don’t get me started on what I see in proposals, no one needs that who doesn’t get paid to read and interpret the nonsense.
Dianna Deeley
August 25th, 2014 @ 11:18 pm

How the heck are we supposed to know that Bacon had a “gay identity”? He was a monk. In addition, so far as I’m aware, he was not identified as disorderly.

Or, are they arguing that a smart guy who was a monk had to be gay?
Dianna Deeley
August 25th, 2014 @ 11:20 pm

It’s always a good idea to say “civil rights”, as, frankly, I’ve not yet seen a declaration of “human” rights that was enforceable – in other words, that didn’t say, “Hey, the government can’t do this to you”. Most things defined as “human rights” have an affirmative basis, and (sadly) that never works out well.
Zohydro
August 25th, 2014 @ 11:40 pm

Because “Cultural Marxism”… It’s the new State Religion! Ideological purity is compulsory and heresy will not be tolerated! Turning our children into submissive, servile, needy little bitches is key!
Zohydro
August 25th, 2014 @ 11:43 pm

Everything must fit “the narrative”…
K-Bob
August 26th, 2014 @ 12:16 am

Boy did I get in a long argument over that, once. You got it in one.

I keep running into cases where someone wants to discuss a topic upon which hundreds of philosophers in many languages have made a life’s work. Usually in several volumes. Things like ethics or the origins of rights.

So what do they throw at the debate? Dictionary definitions and quotes from “recognized sources,” like some UN panel. End of story, they say.

If dictionaries were that illuminating, we shouldn’t need books.

But “human” rights is one of those muddy concepts that does not resolve. It reminds me of the hopeless clot of spastic dissertations on “social” justice.
K-Bob
August 26th, 2014 @ 12:18 am

But at least they’ll be fit for use by the patriarchy.
DeadMessenger
August 26th, 2014 @ 12:51 am

Thanks, K-Bob, for making water come out my nose. You freakin’ heteronormative patriarch!
DeadMessenger
August 26th, 2014 @ 12:53 am

We do live in prophetic times, so we’re going to have to live with the fact that Lots of Unfortunate Stuff is going to happen soon.
DeadMessenger
August 26th, 2014 @ 1:03 am

I’d ask rhetorically how kids are supposed to deal with this garbage? In my day – *cough*60s*cough*70s – I asked my teachers (and the administrators, when they were forced to deal with me) lots of questions about the non-educational-fantasy-fairyland-wishful-thinking douchebaggery of the day. But I got away with it, because (a) I was seen as simply a smart kid who asked a bunch of unfortunate questions and (b) my mom was a beyotch who would come down to the school to raise holy heck when she felt it was needed, which was often.

A kid tries that today, and at best case, he or she is out of school. Or prosecuted. Or worse.

All I can say is “home” and “school”. While it lasts.
DeadMessenger
August 26th, 2014 @ 1:08 am

Never thought I’d see the day when literal blithering idiots would be called “intellectual”.
DeadMessenger
August 26th, 2014 @ 1:09 am

BWAHAHAHAHA! Good call!
DeadMessenger
August 26th, 2014 @ 1:11 am

That last sentence is one of the most brilliantly incisive things I’ve read all year. Pretty good for someone with an avatar like yours, Z.
DeadMessenger
August 26th, 2014 @ 1:19 am

And BTW, this piece PO’d me to the point that I thought my skull was cracking open allowing brain fragments to come flying out.

Meaning this is totally GREAT ebook material! Good work! TIP JAR HIT!
Doug
August 26th, 2014 @ 1:20 am

According to a recent NIH study, 1.6% of the population is gay and .6% is lesbian. Another tiny segment is confused.
DeadMessenger
August 26th, 2014 @ 1:20 am

Holy smokes, this could be an historic occasion. I can mostly agree with you here, for a change.
Zeb Quinn
August 26th, 2014 @ 1:52 am

Imagine there were now 5 justices on the Supreme Court, a clear majority, who were Obamabots, same world view, etc. What would their construction of the 1st Amendment be?
Jason Lee
August 26th, 2014 @ 3:54 am

“It’s no good saying we’re going to have equality but there’s going to be an exception. There should be no exceptions.”

Really? How are the Muslims taking this?
RS
August 26th, 2014 @ 7:03 am

A kid tries that today, and at best case, he or she is out of school. Or prosecuted. Or worse.

More likely, his/her parents are investigated and marginalized. Certainly home school is an option; parochial schools served my three children very well. They supplemented the spiritual nurturing we gave them at home and provided a top-flight education, as well.
robertstacymccain
August 26th, 2014 @ 7:52 am

Y’know, some of this might be tolerable if it involved teaching anything that actually helped kids. Maybe Heather’s Two Mommies Succeed in STEM Careers, or Jason’s Very Special Binomial Theorem. But no, schools don’t care about teaching facts and skills anymore. It’s all about teaching politically desired attitudes. And because the government education system is operated by progressive zombies, the desired attitudes are whatever the Democrat Party finds most amenable to their political ambitions.
Jeanette Victoria
August 26th, 2014 @ 7:59 am

A group of topless women marched to Asheville’s police department where they wore toy handcuffs for the city’s fourth annual Go Topless rally on Sunday.

http://www.wlos.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/asheville-topless-rally-returns-17501.shtml
robertstacymccain
August 26th, 2014 @ 8:00 am

“Human rights” and “social justice” are what students of rhetoric and logic are taught to recognize as glittering generalities — phrases that have a positive connotation and elicit an emotional response. The vagueness of such phrases makes them useless in terms of actual debate about the merits of policy, but their effect is such that when they are employed — “democracy!” “progress!” “equality!” — many people stop thinking and and start feeling

There are some people who would swallow a porcupine if you told them it was “social justice.”
Dana
August 26th, 2014 @ 8:28 am

That’s cisheteronormative patriarch!
theBuckWheat
August 26th, 2014 @ 8:31 am

I am sure that advocates and supporters of radical feminism view the field as the acme of intellectual and social progress for humanity.

Secular people are slavish to the idea that species evolves according to random mutation and natural selection. The primary criteria being “reproductive advantage”. It seems to me that radFem as a trait would be a distinct hinderance to reproduction, and thus be selected out of the gene pool. Does this disprove evolution, prove that radFem is a mutation that will naturally die out, or that radFem is a meme virus that may infect so many young women that the rate of reproduction falls so far below replacement that the population of the civilized, highly educated west collapses?

And if the latter, does radFem lay the groundwork for our great-granddaughters suffering as sex slaves in an Islamic patriarchy?
Dana
August 26th, 2014 @ 8:32 am

But, but, but, Mrs Clinton is (supposedly) a heterosexual woman, one who actually allowed herself to get impregnated (once) by a man!

Huma Abedin was unavailable for comment.
theBuckWheat
August 26th, 2014 @ 8:33 am

I am sure that advocates and supporters of radical feminism view the field as the acme of intellectual and social progress for humanity.

Secular people are slavish to the idea that species evolves according to random mutation and natural selection. The primary criteria being “reproductive advantage”. It appears that radFem as a trait would be a distinct hinderance to reproduction, and thus be selected out of the gene pool. Does this disprove evolution, prove that radFem is a mutation that will naturally die out, or that radFem is a meme virus that may infect so many young women that the rate of reproduction falls so far below replacement so that the population of the civilized, highly educated west collapses?

And if the latter, does radFem lay the groundwork for our great-granddaughters suffering as sex slaves in an Islamic patriarchy?
Zohydro
August 26th, 2014 @ 8:36 am

You might have been amused with the “Gay Zombie Clown” avatar I used in a previous incarnation when I first started following TOM over a year ago…
Dana
August 26th, 2014 @ 8:48 am

What part of studying Francis Bacon’s work requires that we ask about or know about his sexuality.

Sir Francis was, in fact, married, though the marriage produced no children. There were rumors that he was a pederast and homosexual, but the notion is the subject of dispute; starting stories about sodomy were a fairly common way of dealing with political enemies in the 17th century.

John Gillingham wrote two biographies of Richard the Lionheart. In the first, he pretty much accepted the common notion that King Richard was queer, but in the second, he stated that, after reviewing all of the evidence, he could not say, with any sense of certainty, that Richard was abnormal. I’d point out here the vested interest in the homosexual lobby to label famous figures from the past as being homosexual; not only does such make themselves appear to be more normal, but stating that men from the eleventh and seventeenth centuries were homosexual is something that can never be disproved.
Dana
August 26th, 2014 @ 8:49 am

Francis Bacon was not a monk; he wasn’t even Catholic. Sir Francis was married.
texlovera
August 26th, 2014 @ 8:51 am

ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS: THANK YOU, STACY.
texlovera
August 26th, 2014 @ 8:54 am

“Jason’s Very Special Binomial Theorem”.

Heh, I say!!!
Daniel O'Brien
August 26th, 2014 @ 9:22 am

All of this promotion of acceptance of a superminority, 2%, of the population.
Quartermaster
August 26th, 2014 @ 9:36 am

Regulars here learned from harsh experience that you don’t drink anything while reading the comments. Fluids exit in abnormal locations and keyboards and monitors are irreparably harmed.
Quartermaster
August 26th, 2014 @ 9:37 am

Well, Abedin is married to someone that is anatomically male. Prolly at the highest an Omega male.
Quartermaster
August 26th, 2014 @ 9:39 am

You can’t even depend on parochial schools anymore.
Quartermaster
August 26th, 2014 @ 9:43 am

Fortunately, there is no “Jason’s Very Special Binomial Expansion Theorem.”
Quartermaster
August 26th, 2014 @ 9:44 am

The latest effort to keep Asheville weird. George Vanderbilt did call Asheville the “Paris of the South.”
Durasim
August 26th, 2014 @ 9:51 am

“the same Kathy commented on my Facebook page where I’d posted my article “Reading Feminist Theory,” asking about my “obsession with fringe feminist theory. . . . What is your point?”

Kathy is engaging in a well worn progressive (but especially feminist) rhetorical tactic called the “Why Do You Care?” method:

But anyone who has been to even the first day of (Feminist Academy) a major university knows that whenever one is confronted with negative outcomes from feminism there is only one logical argument:

Why do you care?

When overwhelmed by facts or logic, challenge why the other person even has a right to care about the negative outcomes of feminism. Ideally, do this in such a way as to suggest they are somehow defective as a person for caring about anything but what women want. And by women, they of course mean feminists.

http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/why-do-you-care/
Dianna Deeley
August 26th, 2014 @ 10:00 am

Er, Dana? You’re crossing up your Francis Bacons. The inventor of the scientific method was, indeed, a monk. Sir Francis Bacon was an Elizabethan politician who has periodically been accused of being Shakespeare.