The Other McCain

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

Sex Trouble: Yes, Feminists DO ‘Practice Witchcraft … and Become Lesbians’

Posted on | February 26, 2015 | 161 Comments

“[Feminism is] a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”
Pat Robertson, 1992

Today the first edition of my book Sex Trouble: Essays on Radical Feminism and the War Against Human Nature is available for purchase from Amazon — just in time for CPAC — and by happy coincidence, another journalist has recently confirmed what I have been telling you guys for months: Every single word of that quote is true.

All any researcher has to do is to Google “Dianic Wicca” or “Goddess Movement” to learn all they need to know about this, but I went beyond that; I’ve already read five books about neopagan witchcraft and especially about the feminist witch cult known as “Reclaiming.”

The link between feminism, lesbianism and — yes, believe it or not — witchcraft is familiar territory for those who have been reading the “Sex Trouble” series here for the past seven months, but it was news to Guardian columnist Sady Doyle:

Season of the witch: why young women
are flocking to the ancient craft

Rapper Azealia Banks brought witchcraft back into the mainstream by tweeting ‘I’m really a witch’. But women in the US have been harnessing its power for decades as a ‘spiritual but not religious’ way to express feminist ambitions

. . .Witchcraft — and the embrace of “magical” practices, like reading tarot cards — has recently experienced a resurgence of sorts among young, creative, politically engaged women.
This is largely reflected in niche corners of US pop culture: 2013’s American Horror Story: Coven, in which witchcraft stood in for girl power, was the most popular American Horror Story season ever. A popular Tumblr blog, Charmcore, purports to be run by three witch sisters; it gives sarcastic “magical” advice and praise of the female celebrities it deems to be “obvious witches”. On the more serious side, teen sensation Rookie magazine has published tarot tutorials along with more standard-issue feminist and fashion advice, and Autostraddle, a popular left-leaning blog for young queer women, has an in-house tarot columnist. Speaking of which, those tarot cards are available in trendy Brooklyn knickknack shops and Urban Outfitters, as well as new age stores. And these days, no one thinks there’s anything weird about herbal medicine and other potions. . . .
“To reclaim the word witch is to reclaim our right, as women, to be powerful,” wrote Starhawk, in her seminal 1979 book The Spiral Dance. “To be a witch is to identify with 9 million victims of bigotry and hatred and to take responsibility for shaping a world in which prejudice claims no more victims.”
Today, The Spiral Dance is in its third edition, and has sold over 300,000 copies. It is many people’s first introduction to Wicca, the earth-based spiritual movement that was created in the 1950s and has come to be a recognized religion around the world. It is also one of the most well known and comprehensive texts from a very particular moment in feminist history which until recently was largely unfashionable: the “women’s spirituality” movement, in which women radically rewrote existing religions, or simply made their own to be in line with the goals of women’s liberation.

Doyle quotes Autostraddle’s lesbian tarot columnist talking about “women who were persecuted in the past — wise women, witches, women who practiced that kind of ‘kitchen table’ healing that wasn’t part of the patriarchal progression of medicine.” This feminist myth of medieval witches as pagan proto-feminists persecuted by religious patriarchy was promoted in the 1970s by radical lesbians Mary Daly and Andrea Dworkin. As I explain in Sex Trouble, “These claims have since been debunked by legitimate historians, including the British professor Ronald Hutton, whose 1999 book The Triumph of the Moon is arguably the definitive history of modern witchcraft.”

Let me make two points about my methods as a journalist:

  1. I never underestimate the intelligence of my readers. It is a common mistake of journalists to think they are endowed with special wisdom, so that they must explain everything to readers who are presumed to be too stupid to figure things out on their own. Such an arrogant attitude insults the reader. Besides, who wants a readership of dimwit ignoramuses? Daily Kos?
  2. In the Internet age, every reader is their own fact-checker. You can use Google the same as me. If I were to start just making stuff up like a Rolling Stone reporter, my readers would bust me in a heartbeat. There’s no point trying to deceive or mislead readers. Even if I wanted to lie to you, I couldn’t get away with it. My job is to find the truth and write the truth, and if it weren’t for the relationship of trust that has been developed with regular readers here in the past seven years, I wouldn’t be doing this.

Nobody has a monopoly on the facts, so I encourage readers to do their own research. So many of the stories I tell here begin with somebody in the comments throwing in a link, or a Twitter follower tipping me off to a story. And this whole crazy radical feminist trip really began when one of my friendly readers called my attention to this crazy sentence:

“No woman is heterosexual.”

As I explain in the concluding chapter of Sex Trouble:

That four-word sentence sent me off on an investigation of her sources, especially including Professor Dee Graham, whose 1994 book Loving to Survive theorized female heterosexuality as a response to male-inflicted “sexual terror,” akin to post-traumatic stress syndrome. Understanding this claim in turn required me to examine the sources cited in Graham’s bibliography, including lesbian feminists like Marilyn Frye, Adrienne Rich, Mary Daly, Audre Lorde and Charlotte Bunch. Graham even managed to work in a citation to “Starhawk” (neé Miriam Simos), the lesbian feminist who was the founding high priestess of a California-based pagan witchcraft cult known as Reclaiming. From such dubious sources Graham had propounded her theory of sexuality, based in a view of men as violent oppressors and women as victims suffering under tyrannical male supremacy.

Still more, from the same concluding chapter:

In 1980, Australian feminist Denise Thompson described how “countless numbers of lesbians” joined the feminist movement because it offered them “the possibility of a cultural community of women whose primary commitment was to other women rather than to men.” Furthermore, Thompson added, the rise of the feminist movement produced a “mass exodus of feminist women from the confining structures of heterosexuality” in such numbers as to raise questions about “the institution of heterosexuality in the consciousness of those feminists who, for whatever reason, chose not to change their sexual orientation.” And why shouldn’t this have been the expected result?
Women “changed their sexual/social orientation from men to women,” Thompson explained, “in response to the feminist political critique of their personal situations of social subordination.” If the personal is political (as feminists say) and if women’s relationships with men are “confining structures” of “social subordination,” why would any feminist be heterosexual?

You can buy Sex Trouble now at Amazon and read the whole thing, which brings the whole thing full circle back around to Starhawk, Dianic Wicca and the “Goddess Movement.” All of this may seem like kooky fringe stuff to some readers, but you’re not stupid. Do you really think an experienced political reporter would have spent so many months on this subject just for the fun of it? Oh, sure, it’s a lot of fun to point and laugh at these kooks and weirdos, but perhaps you’ve forgotten how this began with “The Long Shadow of the Lavender Menace.” Perhaps you didn’t recognize the significance of all those names of radical lesbians who joined the Women’s Liberation movement in the 1970s. I did.

This story isn’t going to go away, my friends. Republican strategists never had a motive to go that deep in their opposition research files in 2008, because Obama destroyed Hillary in the Democrat primaries. Yet the smart money now says Hillary is a near-certainty for the 2016 nomination; she seems to have no serious Democrat opponent. The connections between Hillary Clinton and Charlotte Bunch (who has never recanted her 1972 lesbian manifesto) and the 1995 Beijing women’s conference? Yeah, that subject is likely to become very interesting to a lot of people if and when Hillary gets the Democrat presidential nomination. Trust me on this. The prophetic omens are clear.

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools . . . For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature . . .”
Romans 1:22, 26 (KJV)

This special 120-page first edition of Sex Trouble is, of course, really a preview of the larger work that I now expect to finish by this fall. My original plan was to have the whole thing wrapped up months ago, but then I got swept up in the whirlpool of this radical madness and realized there was so much to synthesize and explain that there was no way I could do it in a hurry. Rather than force readers to wait another six months, however, I decided to put together this first edition for the loyal readers who have done so much already support this project.

Keep me in your prayers as I continue toiling away at this. Please buy my book, help promote it to others and don’t forget the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

 

 

Comments

161 Responses to “Sex Trouble: Yes, Feminists DO ‘Practice Witchcraft … and Become Lesbians’”

  1. Rob Crawford
    February 26th, 2015 @ 1:54 pm

    Two things disturb me about that picture: the blonde looks like she’s about to chomp the head off a toddler, and John Cleese in drag standing behind her.

  2. Toastrider
    February 26th, 2015 @ 1:57 pm

    Phn’glui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgal’nagl fhtagn.

  3. David, infamous sockpuppet
    February 26th, 2015 @ 1:59 pm

    Any way we can get an ebook version, Stacy? I have given up on dead tree editions since long ago ran out of shelf space to hold them.

  4. robertstacymccain
    February 26th, 2015 @ 2:07 pm

    The ebook version will be available in due course. But it’s kind of hard to get an autograph on an ebook.

  5. kilo6
    February 26th, 2015 @ 2:09 pm

    There is a Kindle version (which I just bought)

  6. Explaining Academia: Shameless Merchandise Plug | Rotten Chestnuts
    February 26th, 2015 @ 2:10 pm

    […] Stacy McCain of The Other McCain has his Sex Trouble series out as a paperback.  You’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than a […]

  7. kilo6
    February 26th, 2015 @ 2:23 pm

    I might take you up on that autograph offer at the next Smittypalooza. There’s a decent chance I’ll be moving to northern VA in the near future so I’ll actually be able to attend one.

  8. Daniel O'Brien
    February 26th, 2015 @ 2:42 pm

    Not that I can see. Got a link?

  9. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    February 26th, 2015 @ 2:43 pm

    We are mixing metaphors (I mean on RSM’s book cover)! Those are fat classical muses (painted in the Renaissance) not witches.

    And there are scientific ways to test for witches:

    https://twitter.com/MsEBL/status/571026967534837762

  10. Adjoran
    February 26th, 2015 @ 2:53 pm

    Talk to Zombie about some new pictures. She covers all the lefty demonstrations in Frisco, there are bound to be enough so you don’t have to keep using the same ones.

  11. Dianna Deeley
    February 26th, 2015 @ 2:54 pm

    Stacy, congratulations, and of course I’m buying the preview!

  12. Dianna Deeley
    February 26th, 2015 @ 3:04 pm

    *Ears pricked up*

    Does this indicate there will be a book tour?!

  13. Dana
    February 26th, 2015 @ 3:16 pm

    I noted, with some disappointment, that this fabulous tome is not available in a Kindle edition. 🙁

  14. Tumblebug
    February 26th, 2015 @ 3:25 pm

    I also would prefer the Kindle edition. If not, I will buy it anyway. Hope this becomes a big seller.

  15. kilo6
    February 26th, 2015 @ 3:33 pm

    Actually it is
    Don’t know why it doesn’t show up on the same page as the paper edition but searching “McCain, Sex Trouble” on Amazon will bring up both versions. Or use this link:
    http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Trouble-Radical-Feminism-Against-ebook/dp/B00U1I0YBG/ref=sr_1_2/177-5532091-1503331?ie=UTF8&qid=1424982580&sr=8-2&keywords=mccain%2C+sex+trouble

  16. kilo6
    February 26th, 2015 @ 3:35 pm

    searching “McCain, Sex Trouble” on Amazon will bring up both versions. Or use this link:
    http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Trou

  17. Obama: Loving Us Softly with His Bans | Regular Right Guy
    February 26th, 2015 @ 3:49 pm

    […] Sex Trouble: Yes, Feminists DO ‘Practice Witchcraft … and Become Lesbians’ […]

  18. RS
    February 26th, 2015 @ 3:59 pm

    . . . the patriarchal progression of medicine.

    So, I take it then you won’t be availing yourself of the the Heimlich Maneuver, if needed.

    For that, we thank you.

    P.S. The book’s in the shopping cart to be purchased in due course.

  19. concern00
    February 26th, 2015 @ 4:46 pm

    Are you allowed to say that here?

  20. concern00
    February 26th, 2015 @ 4:47 pm

    You could scan your signature and send it to us!

  21. arcadius
    February 26th, 2015 @ 5:06 pm

    How many of these “witches” do you really think would say “take me to the spirit healer” if they get in a car accident?

    This is actually a serious question, I am curious how much of this is theatrics and how much is sincere belief.

  22. DeadMessenger
    February 26th, 2015 @ 5:12 pm

    Can’t get much more scientific than that…it’s certainly much better science than that supporting global warming.

  23. DeadMessenger
    February 26th, 2015 @ 5:14 pm

    That’s messed up.

  24. DeadMessenger
    February 26th, 2015 @ 5:18 pm

    On the other hand, I’m a (mostly) nice Christian lady, and would prefer not getting caught reading a book with “Sex Trouble” and some nudie muses on the cover. Otherwise, I’ll be the main topic in my pastor’s next sermon.

    I guess I’ll have to put a cover made from a brown paper grocery bag on it.

  25. DeadMessenger
    February 26th, 2015 @ 5:24 pm

    I’d guess 1, and in her case, it’ll be the Thorazine talking.

  26. kilo6
    February 26th, 2015 @ 5:34 pm
  27. Daniel O'Brien
    February 26th, 2015 @ 5:43 pm

    Link broken, but search was fruitful. Thanks.

  28. Dana
    February 26th, 2015 @ 5:51 pm

    Hmmm: the paperback edition is $12.99, plus shipping and handling, while the Kindle version is $1.99. As nearly as I can figger out, that’s $11.00, plus whatever shipping and handling costs, just for the paper and binding, and only 199¢ for our host’s wisdom and research!

    So, OK, I just had it wirelessly delivered to my Android Tablet.

  29. The original Mr. X
    February 26th, 2015 @ 5:54 pm

    Or pretty much anything feminism claims.

  30. M. Thompson
    February 26th, 2015 @ 6:06 pm

    Will the Deep Ones get him?

  31. Dana
    February 26th, 2015 @ 6:32 pm

    Am I allowed to say that the blonde holding the sign looks like she’d be an awesome fellatrix?

    OK, OK, I denounce myself!

  32. Dana
    February 26th, 2015 @ 6:34 pm

    I suppose that means that I have cost some poor soul at the Amazon warehouse his job handling and shipping the book, but, alas! that’s the price of going green.

  33. kilo6
    February 26th, 2015 @ 7:08 pm

    I denounce myself also, especially since I’m pretty sure I’m indirectly responsible for that pic being on TOM: (see comments from last June)
    http://theothermccain.com/2014/06/28/socialism2014-marxist-gender-theory-sexual-minorities-of-the-world-unite/

    I found it at The Eponymous Flower blog

    http://eponymousflower.blogspot.de/2014/06/what-feminism-is-all-about.html

    Ironically that picture was from a counter-protest against the “March for Family”, Vienna, Stepensdomplatz, Saturday, June 14th, 2014.

  34. Zohydro
    February 26th, 2015 @ 7:23 pm

    And that could be a young Sally Kohn behind the Lesbian of Colour…

  35. M. Thompson
    February 26th, 2015 @ 9:46 pm

    He’s only saying “In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

  36. Quartermaster
    February 26th, 2015 @ 9:57 pm

    The proverbial “plain brown wrapper.”

  37. Finrod Felagund
    February 26th, 2015 @ 10:09 pm

    Wicca?

    Did Charmed: The Next Generation get greenlit when I wasn’t paying attention?

  38. DavidD
    February 26th, 2015 @ 10:12 pm

    Yes, but do you really think Hillary voters are going to care that she has her own Bill Ayers when they didn’t care that Obama had Bill Ayers as his Bill Ayers?

    Also, Elizabeth Warren.

  39. DeadMessenger
    February 26th, 2015 @ 10:55 pm

    I know. Lovecraft was a pretty strange guy, like, really strange, although what with his parents and all, I guess that stands to reason.

  40. DeadMessenger
    February 26th, 2015 @ 10:55 pm

    Indeed. And this is what it’s come to.

  41. DeadMessenger
    February 26th, 2015 @ 10:58 pm

    Not sure where he’d keep his phone and pen, though.

  42. M. Thompson
    February 26th, 2015 @ 11:11 pm

    Strange,/i> does not begin to describe the mind of Mr. H. P. Lovecraft, late of Providence, RI.

  43. Zohydro
    February 26th, 2015 @ 11:50 pm

    It’s about time…

  44. Zohydro
    February 27th, 2015 @ 12:06 am

    This “Android Tablet” of yours wouldn’t happen to have red bezel with a pair of white knobs on it, would it?

    I denounce myself…

  45. Zohydro
    February 27th, 2015 @ 12:28 am

    If “going green” means that some day, some four-year-old in southern Asia will be forced to scavenge our “recycled” electronics for his supper to save one bleeding larch in British Columbia, I’ll have none of it!

  46. Jeanette Victoria
    February 27th, 2015 @ 12:55 am

    Ever heard of Margot Adler, she wrote a book on Wicca Drawing Down the Moon but she simply refused to put any group in her book that wasn’t liberal and feminist. And there really are conservative Pagans

  47. M. Thompson
    February 27th, 2015 @ 1:03 am

    Why would he need those? Dread Cthulhu can warp reality as required.

  48. Finrod Felagund
    February 27th, 2015 @ 1:21 am

    Why not buy more shelves?

  49. concern00
    February 27th, 2015 @ 2:20 am

    @robertstacymccain:disqus – are you interested in corrections to your revered manuscript, or is it too late for that now?

  50. Guest
    February 27th, 2015 @ 2:32 am

    That is more or less exactly what I clicked on comments to post, lol.