The Other McCain

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

Bad Habits: Cocaine and Feminism

Posted on | November 5, 2016 | 2 Comments

 

If you have never tried cocaine, congratulate yourself on your wisdom. Maybe heroin is more addictive and dangerous than cocaine, but if you’ve ever known anyone who got hooked on the Bolivian Marching Powder, you know what a wicked drug it is. Here’s the really evil thing about it — cocaine makes you feel smart. Unlike so many other drugs, which make you feel loopy and out-of-control, cocaine has the opposite effect — it makes you feel like you’ve got it all together, like you have near-omniscient wisdom. This euphoria is a drug-induced illusion, of course, but when you’re on coke, this illusion of total competence feels real. You are completely in control, cocaine tells you, and this arrogance is what makes cokeheads go so completely out of control.

What happened to Charlie Sheen (“Winning!”) is a perfect example of what a cocaine habit does to people. The only thing that prevents more people from spiraling downward into coke-addled self-destruction is that cocaine is very expensive. And this makes you wonder how a recent college graduate working her first “real world” job at a non-profit organization could develop such an addiction.

 

Of all the shocking revelations in Jessica Valenti’s new memoir Sex Object, nothing is quite so shocking as her confession that from 2004 to 2006 — immediately after launching the Feministing blog, while working a day job at the National Organization for Women — she was deep into a cocaine habit that she didn’t kick until she landed a contract for her first book.

Having spent a 16-hour day writing a 7,000-word review of Ms. Valenti’s book, I could share many lessons, but this one may be best:

Robin Williams once observed that cocaine is God’s way of telling you you’ve got too much money. Or maybe, if you’re a girl, cocaine is God’s way of telling you your boyfriend’s got too much money. One of the amazing things about the patriarchal oppression of women is how guys with too much money so easily locate women with an appetite for free cocaine.

You can read the whole thing at The Patriarch Tree.

UPDATE: Most people don’t care enough about Jessica Valenti to read a 7,000-word review, and I understand that. So to boil it down a bit, here is my short review of Sex Object at Amazon.com:

The smart way to read ‘Sex Object’ is to begin with the conviction that everything Jessica Valenti believes is wrong, and therefore everything she does is also wrong. Reading her story from this perspective, you begin by taking notice of how her childhood insecurity about her looks and her envy of prettier girls (pp. 31-34) is the locomotive engine that carries her forward into a series of bad decisions and bad relationships. On page 87, she introduces us to “Jay,” the 16-year-old boy from Park Slope she lost her virginity to at age 14, as a freshman at Stuyvesant High School. On page 99, we meet “Kyle,” the boy she dated at Tulane University. Kyle was a jerk, of course, and Valenti flunked out of Tulane in a year. Somehow these stories are meant by Valenti to tell us about “sexism” and how she is a victim of male oppression, but what the astute reader notices is that this feminist victimhood narrative functions as an excuse, exempting Valenti from responsibility for her own bad decisions, her own bad behavior, and her own bad attitude. Unfortunately, this is not the interpretation of ‘Sex Object’ that will likely be made by most of the young women who read Valenti’s book, which is clearly intended by her to reinforce the irrational resentments and paranoid sense of helpless victimhood — “blame patriarchy!” — that define 21st-century feminism.

Remember to shop our Amazon links for all your holiday gifts. Purchasing via Amazon links on our site pays us a small commission, at no extra charge to you. You can buy everything at Amazon, even books you hate.

UPDATE II: Vox Day: “This isn’t a book review, it’s a literary rape scene.” The man has a way with words. Better than I could say myself.



 

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

2 Responses to “Bad Habits: Cocaine and Feminism”

  1. My Favorite Trump Ads | Regular Right Guy
    November 5th, 2016 @ 10:53 am

    […] Bad Habits: Cocaine and Feminism […]

  2. News of the Week (November 7th, 2016) | The Political Hat
    November 7th, 2016 @ 1:11 pm

    […] Bad Habits: Cocaine and Feminism If you have never tried cocaine, congratulate yourself on your wisdom. Maybe heroin is more addictive and dangerous than cocaine, but if you’ve ever known anyone who got hooked on the Bolivian Marching Powder, you know what a wicked drug it is. Here’s the really evil thing about it — cocaine makes you feel smart. Unlike so many other drugs, which make you feel loopy and out-of-control, cocaine has the opposite effect — it makes you feel like you’ve got it all together, like you have near-omniscient wisdom. This euphoria is a drug-induced illusion, of course, but when you’re on coke, this illusion of total competence feels real. You are completely in control, cocaine tells you, and this arrogance is what makes cokeheads go so completely out of control. […]