The #StreetHarassment Meme and #Feminism’s Kafkatrapping Tactics

Posted on | November 3, 2014 | 85 Comments

The Left’s tactics aren’t hard to understand, really. The “catcall” video that went viral last week — see “Racism, Classism and Catcalling (or, #Feminism Is for Rich White Lesbians)” — was an Alinksy Rule 12 classic: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

Heterosexual men are the target, obviously. Feminists want women to identify themselves as feminists — to join a movement that is defined by its anti-male/anti-heterosexual ideology — and the basic problem is the same as it has been for more than 40 years: Most women are heterosexual (97.7% according to the latest federal data) and, believe it or not, these normal women genuinely like men.

Normal women have not succumbed to feminism’s politicized hatred of males. Normal women have fathers and brothers and husbands and sons they love. Normal women have male co-workers and friends whom they respect and admire. Whatever problems normal women may have in their lives, they don’t buy into feminism’s conspiracy theory of heteronormative patriarchal oppression.

“What are the behaviors and roles considered appropriate for one’s sex? . . .
“If you are a Feminist . . . the answer to this should be ‘There are no behaviors and roles considered appropriate for my sex because Females can be and do anything.’
“If you are not a Feminist, your answer might be ‘My role as a woman is to be a Wife (fuckhole) and Mother (breeder).’”
— Cathy Brennan, December 2012

How can feminists ever hope to gain support from normal women? Sure, they may pick up a few misfit stragglers who turn lesbian because of propaganda like Orange Is the New Black. And, yes, feminists want to normalize lesbianism in your daughter’s school.

Still, feminism’s War on Human Nature can’t succeed entirely via direct recruitment — e.g., housewives turning gay by watching cable TV — and so they must stir up anti-male resentment among otherwise normal women. Therefore, feminism constantly focuses its public rhetoric toward “issues” that highlight male/female conflict, presenting males as objects of contempt, and attempting to provoke a “conversation” that feminists can control: Rule 12.

A concern troll popped up in my Twitter timeline this morning:

Are we having a referendum on catcalls? If we are, then, I vote "no." Next question. @MaryReiki @instapundit

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 3, 2014

You see? The whole point of the “catcall” video was to provoke conflict over a phony “issue” that is not really an issue at all. That is to say, everybody is anti-catcall, except those men who are actually engaged in this boorish behavior, so why is there an “issue” here?

Objectively, catcalling presents no cause for political controversy. Ah, but it does give feminists a chance to (a) demonize men, and (b) discredit any male commentator who attempts to dispute feminism’s authority to define what catcalling means as an “issue.” This is really about who controls the narrative, see?

There is a tactic of debate known as throwing your antagonist onto the horns of a dilemma: Present him with a binary choice and demand that he either agree or disagree with a controversial proposition. For example, I might ask a feminist if she agrees that “Rapists Serve All Men by Enforcing Male Supremacy.” If she says “yes,” she looks like a paranoid lunatic. If she says “no,” she has rejected the fundamental feminist interpretation of rape’s social and cultural meaning.

“Susan Brownmiller’s [1976] book, Against Our Will, is a milestone in the women’s movement because it demythologized — desexualized — rape. We learned . . . that sexual and physical violence against women is not ‘sexual’ at all but simply violent. Men use it to dominate women. . . .
“Susan Brownmiller showed us that rapists serve all men by enforcing male supremacy. . . . [W]e should be clear that our quarrel is not only with certain abusive men but with male supremacy. Our goal should be not merely to redefine our sexuality but to redefine the world and our place in it.”
— Ann Jones, “Family Matters,” in The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism, edited by Dorchen Leidholdt and Janice G. Raymond (1990)

A statement like that is either true or it is not. Either rape is a crime — proscribed by our society’s most ancient and venerable laws, and condemned by all law-abiding citizens — or else rape is, as feminists believe, a political manifestation of “male supremacy.”

Feminists never want to debate this subject openly, you see. Instead, they have built echo chambers in university Women’s Studies programs where the factual premises of their perverse theories can never be questioned. Women’s universal oppression under “male supremacy” — is that the genuine reality of women’s lives, or not? Anyone who expresses doubt toward that basic premise in an academic environment will be shouted down and demonized by feminists. Larry Summers was compelled to resign as president of Harvard University merely for suggesting that “innate differences” between men and women might have meaningful significance in their career choices.

Feminists can’t permit a free debate where the flawed premises of their warped totalitarian ideology might be called into question. Instead, they must silence their critics or attempt to discredit critics through character assassination. We see how feminists tried to do this to George Will, who disputed their phony campus “rape epidemic” campaign, by falsely depicting Will as “pro-rape.” The tactic is basically Kafkatrapping, “using denial of guilt as proof of guilt.” As I said of the “SlutWalk” movement, we may distill feminist rhetoric on this subject to its totalitarian essence, “Shut up, because rape.”

We are expected to believe — or at least required, by the rules of public discourse imposed by feminism’s hegemonic cultural authority, to pretend we believe — that relentless propaganda about a (non-existent) “rape epidemic” on university campuses is unrelated to feminism’s anti-male/anti-heterosexual ideology. Feminism is about “liberating girls and women, those who are born into the sex caste female, from the unnatural, yet universal roles patriarchy has assigned.” Feminism is about abolishing the traditional family and promoting lesbianism and, perhaps ultimately, a genocidal reduction of the planet’s male population.

All that is necessary to discredit feminism is to quote what feminists say, when they believe they are speaking only to their fellow feminists.

• Essential Feminist Quotes: ‘Most Women Have to Be Coerced into Heterosexuality’
• Essential Feminist Quotes: ‘Rapists Serve All Men by Enforcing Male Supremacy’
• Essential Feminist Quotes: ‘Lesbianism and Feminism Have Been Coterminous’
• Essential Feminist Quotes: ‘Access to a Sexuality Autonomous from the Male’

“Male sexual violence against women and ‘normal’ heterosexual intercourse are essential to patriarchy because they establish the dominance of the penis over the vagina, and thus the power relations between the sexes. . . . When a male sexually violates a female, he is doing work for patriarchy.”
— Dee Graham, Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Lives (1994)

The anti-social lunacy of feminist ideology is rejected by all sane people. Feminism would have near-zero political influence were it not for the terroristic intimidation of silencing tactics by which feminists conceal their intellectual bankruptcy from public scrutiny.

Feminists can “win” arguments only if they are permitted to control the terms of debate, to decide what the issues are, to limit the parameters of discussion, and to disqualify critics who refuse to cooperate with feminism’s Orwellian thought-control project.

“OK, Stacy, but what does this have to do with the mid-term elections?” asks the reader, because conservative political bloggers are supposed to be talking about nothing else but the Real Clear Politics poll averages and Nate Silver’s Senate projections.

WHAT WILL BE THE ‘GENDER GAP’ ON TUESDAY?

How many of those key Senate elections will be determined by women’s preference for the (feminist-approved) Democrat candidates?

In how many of those Senate campaigns have Democrats attempted to leverage the “War on Women” meme against Republicans?

"Culture matters. As Andrew Breitbart liked to say, politics is downstream of culture." — @SarahPalinUSA, July 2013 http://t.co/ZFjNEco5RB

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 3, 2014

Readers are free to go check the latest Senate polls, and I’ll still be here talking about feminism’s cultural hegemony, OK? Don’t let me distract you from whatever Karl Rove is saying on Fox News.

We have congressional elections every two years, and elect a president every four years, but the culture shapes the attitudes and beliefs of our youth seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, every year, from the time a kid starts watching Sesame Street until the time he’s an adult who has been so thoroughly indoctrinated that he cannot think outside the limits of this cultural programming.

“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.”
– William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)

We return, then, to the catcalling video, and the concern troll who was trying to bait me into reacting according to script, implying that I was “excus[ing] the catcalls” and trying to steer the conversation back toward “misogyny.” Nice try, troll, but you’re not going to force me to play a phony game by your dishonest rules. Mama didn’t raise no fools.

The #StreetHarassment conversation isn't actually about #StreetHarassment. Nobody is pro-#StreetHarassment. 1/5

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 3, 2014

That is to say, everybody with enough education to write a paragraph about #StreetHarassment is against it. 2/5

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 3, 2014

So, why are feminists talk-talk-talking about #StreetHarassment if everybody is already against it? 3/5

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 3, 2014

The feminist message of the #StreetHarassment meme is: ALL MEN ARE EVIL. It's anti-male propaganda. Period. 4/5

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 3, 2014

What the feminist #StreetHarassment message exposes is #feminism's anti-male agenda. IT. IS. THAT. SIMPLE. 5/5

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 3, 2014

“Turn the camera around,” as Andrew Breitbart used to say. Instead of them demanding answers from you — “Look at this awful misogyny! Why don’t you denounce this misogyny? Is it true that you secretly hate women?” — you start asking them questions:

1. Who appointed you as Grand Inquisitor?
2. What is the basis of your authority to interrogate me about this? What difference does my opinion make?
3. When did Americans elect you as Our Moral Superior?
4. Where do you get the idea that I’m obliged to cooperate in this transparent political “gotcha” game you’re paying?
5. Why is it necessary that I answer your questions?
6. How much is the Democrat Party paying you to do this?

“Five W’s and an H,” as our student newspaper adviser at Turner Middle School explained to us when I was 12 years old.

The Left loves nothing more than to arrogate to themselves a pretended authority to speak on behalf of alleged victims of oppression. Covering themselves in secondhand martyrdom, figuratively brandishing the victim’s corpse as a shield against criticism, leftists start playing the Grand Inquistor, demanding that we respond according to the script. Matthew Shepard, James Byrd Jr., Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown — somebody’s dead, and the Left wants to turn this death into a political morality play that means exactly what they say it means, and nothing else. People are killed every day in America, but only certain deaths provide the Left with opportunities for these media-orchestrated events, “A National Conversation About [Insert ‘Social Justice’ Issue Here].”

Because the vast majority of people never realize that they were programmed by skillful indoctrinators, as Buckley put it, they can’t figure out what’s really happening in these ginned-up media controversies. Well, everybody is against racism, sexism and homophobia. Nobody is in favor of “police brutality.” Nobody is pro-pollution or pro-poverty or pro-rape. So why do we find ourselves constantly subjected to these moralistic lectures on cable TV news channels, as if we need to be told for the umpteenth time how dreadfully oppressive American society is? The Daily Atrocity Parade in the liberal media is a continuation of the cultural Marxism programming everybody got in the Government Youth Indoctrination Centers euphemistically known as “public schools,” and we are supposed to react like Pavlov’s dog: “Racism! Sexism! Poverty! Global Warming! Vote Democrat!”

Anybody with common sense recognizes that there is something distinctly weird about all this. How is it that the media decides which dead victims are worthy of wall-to-wall cable news TV coverage? And why is the moral of the story always the same? VOTE DEMOCRAT!

Every once in a while, simply as a matter of arithmetic and random coincidence, you’d think maybe twice a year somebody would get killed in a manner that would tend to the opposite conclusion. Unfortunately, Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

What’s with this Michael Brown deal in Ferguson, really? I haven’t paid much attention to it, but what little I’ve seen tends to suggest (a) Brown was a teenage dopehead who (b) ripped off some cigars at a convenience store, then (c) Brown resisted arrest when Officer Darren Wilson attempted to apprehend him, and (d) Officer Wilson shot Brown: “Evidence shows that Brown was struggling to get officer Wilson’s pistol.”

A lamentable incident, certainly, but you’d have to be as stupid as a typical Democrat voter to see this as a “social justice” issue deserving constant media commentary. There are lots of typical Democrat voters in Ferguson, however, so they had a riot.

My point, however, is not the subnormal intelligence of Democrat voters, although anybody who takes Al Sharpton seriously is in obvious need of remedial education. Rather, my point is: Why does the media insist we pay attention to the death of Michael Brown?

Two word answer: VOTE DEMOCRAT!

The moral of the media message is always the same, you see.

Whether it’s a concern troll with only one Twitter follower, or a CNN reporter or an MSNBC host,  it’s the same Alinsky playbook. Here is this “issue,” and here is a liberal demanding that we, the lab rats in the Skinner box, provide the programmed response.

Zombie-like, we must repeat the mantra: “Misogyny is a bad thing. All men are rapists. All women are oppressed.” And, hey, Mom, let your young daughter have a slumber party with Lena Dunham.

What could possibly go wrong?

"I’ve been obsessed with it since I was a kid." — @LenaDunham >> http://t.co/OT2tQeUcXz h/t @BreannaHowe pic.twitter.com/0cuD3BmufQ

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 3, 2014

heteronormativity deems certain behaviours harmful, and others "normal"; the state and media are always invested in maintaining that

— Grace Dunham (@simongdunham) November 3, 2014

Heh: "Heteronormativity" FTW! https://t.co/T6Qszm78yy Thanks, celebrity pervert's loyal lesbian sister! #feminism #LenaDunham

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 4, 2014

"Dunham Family Values" {{ shudder }} @justthoughts19 @KevinNR @benshapiro

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 4, 2014

From a future deposition of @lenadunham's sister: @Beer__Wolf @TwitchyTeam @michellemalkin @soderstrom @rsmccain pic.twitter.com/uTn8LyNigZ

— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) November 3, 2014

 

This essay is part of the “Sex Trouble” series about radical feminism’s war against human nature, a reader-supported project that began in July.

Among the entries in this series are “Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the Long Shadow of the ‘Lavender Menace’” (July 14), “Feminists Worry That Disney Movies Are Making Girls Heterosexual” (July 26), “Hey, Moms: Feminists Think They Know What’s Wrong With Your Children” (Aug. 6), “Reading Feminist Theory” (Aug. 23), “Kate Millett’s Tedious Madness” (Sept. 1), “Slate Scrapes the Bottom” (Sept. 19), “Gender Theory Hits K-12 Schools” (Oct. 9), “The Indecent Mind of Andrea Dworkin” (Oct. 12) and “The Externalization of Responsibility: Monica Lewinsky’s Personal Shame” (Oct. 21).

To support continuing research for this project, which I plan to turn into an ebook, readers are encouraged to remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

 

 

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