Obviously, You Need More Feminist Lectures From Miriam Mogilevsky

Posted on | December 29, 2014 | 125 Comments

The cult of “consciousness raising” . . . means that every college sophomore who has taken a couple of Women’s Studies classes believes she possesses a moral and intellectual superiority that qualifies her to tutor us about how women are oppressed by the patriarchy.
This attitude of arrogant condescension, this presumption that feminists possess a sort of gnosis that endows them with superior insight, is what makes them so obnoxious when communicating in their accustomed modes — the Lecture, the Screed and the Rant.

I wrote that before I’d ever heard of Miriam Mogilevsky, otherwise I might have called this “The Miriam Mogilevsky Principle.”

Ms. Mogilevsky is a recent graduate of Northwestern University who is younger than my oldest daughter. My daughter graduated college summa cum laude in 2011 and, unlike Ms. Mogilevsky, has (a) a husband and (b) a job. Whereas my daughter’s job involves teaching reading and writing to the children of Haitian immigrants, Ms. Mogilevsky considers it her job to lecture adults about what terrible misogynists we all are. Here are a few of her recent lectures at DailyDot.com:

The 4 rules guys should follow
when they get rejected on Tinder
Rejection is inevitable, but this helpful guide
will make dealing with it a little easier.
— Sept. 8

How to talk about the Ray Rice
scandal without being a total jerk
Here’s how to cover the issue correctly.
— Sept. 18

Should we outlaw catcalling?
Street harassment is an epidemic, but
here’s why the police won’t solve anything.
— Sept. 23

Stop calling Amanda Bynes ‘crazy’
I don’t know anything about Amanda Bynes’
mental state, and neither do you.
— Oct. 10

How to disagree on Twitter
Despite what you may have heard, it’s possible
to have a calm discussion in 140 characters or less.
— Oct. 31

4 better ways to prevent rape
than blaming victims
Don Lemon wanted to know what Bill Cosby’s
alleged victims could have done to stop him.
Here’s some better questions.
— Nov. 20

How Rolling Stone failed rape survivors
Rolling Stone’s University of Virginia
fiasco is bad news for everyone.
— Dec. 8

As you can see, Ms. Mogilevsky is an expert on everything, and her career consists of offering unsolicited advice to the rest of us, because we are so hopelessly stupid we wouldn’t know how to tie our own shoelaces if we didn’t have her to lecture us about everything. Ms. Mogilevsky’s two usual modes of discourse are, “Let me tell you what to think” and “Let me tell you what you are permitted to say.”

Exactly when did Americans vote to elect Miriam Mogilevsky our National Arbiter of Correct Thought? Who else was on the ballot? Were there no actual adults nominated for this position or were only graduate students at Columbia University eligible? The selection process is mysterious, but clearly someone thought the world was in desperate need of Ms. Mogilevsky’s precocious and all-encompassing wisdom, because otherwise how to explain this?

4 ways feminism can
make you better in bed
Consent isn’t the only thing that’s sexy in bed.
— Sept. 30

Damn, y’all, we’ve been doing it wrong for thousands of years and we never would have known it, if Miriam Mogilevsky hadn’t told us.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! He says “This sort of mockery and failure-shaming is precisely the correct response,” and that’s my New Year’s resolution: To be precisely correct. Also, please hit the freaking tip jar!

Category: Feminism

Comments

125 Responses to “Obviously, You Need More Feminist Lectures From Miriam Mogilevsky”

Political Rift » Obviously, You Need More Feminist Lectures From Miriam Mogilevsky
December 29th, 2014 @ 3:48 pm

[…] Robert Stacy McCain Last week I remarked: The cult of “consciousness raising” . . . means that every college […]
Dana
December 29th, 2014 @ 3:53 pm

Actually, following a brief perusal of Miss (not Ms) Mogilevsky’s articles, it seems to me that she makes at least some sense. yeah, she lapses into silliness whenever she mentions “gender nonconformists,” and she really, really, really wants to believe “Jackie,” but some of what she wrote is really just common sense. The “4 better ways to prevent rape” were mostly spot on target, for example.
JohnPSquibob
December 29th, 2014 @ 3:54 pm

Miriam Mogilevsky Wlll You Please Go Now!
Jim R
December 29th, 2014 @ 4:16 pm

She comes across mostly as silly and with little real-world experience. Typical college-age kid, I’d say.

My biggest beef with her is the relentless focus on “support the victim”, which I interpret as patting them on the arm, saying, “There, there” and not asking any questions. While I’m sure that this might make many survivors feel a bit better (at least, temporarily), I don’t see how it solves the problems. Indeed, as has been discussed quite thoroughly with regard to “Jackie” at UVA, to not ask questions AT BEST means that an innocent person may be punished and AT WORST leaves a monster at liberty to do it again. And again. And again.

On another thread, there has been considerable discussion about “feminism”. Is THIS what it’s come to: “Women are as tough and capable as men and fully able to play in the big leagues… but you’ve got to be gentle and considerate of their delicate feelings if something bad happens to them!”? Compare this with female police officers or combat vets who’ve seen quite a lot of bad sh!t in their lives yet are expected to deal rationally and dispassionately with it… and generally do.
Fail Burton
December 29th, 2014 @ 4:22 pm

Forget Bynes, this arrogant nobody knows the mental state of all men. She is a typical gossipy small town fishwife. She’s in everyone’s business, has no idea what live and let live means nor that her behavior reveals a deep sociopathy. She is a bigot with no tools of self-criticism to mark either herself or anyone else as such. Put a black face on: automatic non-bigot, no matter how much they target whites with racist comments. White? Just racist; no words or names required. I can always tell these types by their unflinching worship of Ta-Nehisi Coates, a despicable anti-white bigot if there ever was one. Take away whites and that guy literally has no career. Can he repair a forklift, make furniture, or even forge a writing career based on talent? We all know the answer to what leeches do.
Eidolon
December 29th, 2014 @ 4:29 pm

You assert that “female police officers…generally do” perform well under pressure (paraphrasing, admittedly). I’d be fascinated to see a (fair-minded) study of the behavior of women under fire (impossible under current social conditions, of course). I’ve seen video of various instances of dangerous situations groups of cops find themselves in with both men and women present, and the men immediately respond while the women move to avoid the danger placing themselves behind the larger male cops. It would be tremendously interesting to study male and female behavior in these situations and see if it’s actually the case that female police behave similarly to the men when in peril (of course ability to respond via physical strength is another issue on top of that). There’s also the case of the first female fighter pilot who killed herself via incompetent flying, tolerated up to that point because there was a desire to have a female pilot to tout publicly.

Of course I don’t blame the female cops for having that reaction. Obviously not everyone is cut out for those jobs. It’s fine if they can’t handle the job, but as with men, anyone who isn’t able to perform the job correctly ought to be fired, for their own safety and everyone else’s. I think a sane society wouldn’t be putting women in those positions in the first place.
Fail Burton
December 29th, 2014 @ 4:32 pm

You are being gulled. What intersectionalists never write about is as telling as what they do write about. People like this woman conspicuously never profile approved groups other than positively. They certainly don’t apply equal principles. In fact there is no reason to obsessively single out humans as sexual and racial groupings in the first place. Like all intersectionalists, she will have credibility with me on the day she pie-charts a Vet’s Hospital and complains about the lack of diversity. Until that day she is just another simple-minded liar.
SausageAway
December 29th, 2014 @ 4:48 pm

What a wonderful straw man argument the author of this “piece” builds and then burns.
K-Bob
December 29th, 2014 @ 5:05 pm

Thanks again for your work on this topic, Stacy.

Writer James Delingpole has been mining this vein (at least the easier to get at bits where you don’t have to have oxygen pumped in).

Over at Breitbart London he and Milo SomethingGreek-oplois-or-other are doing an end-of-year wrapup on liberalism. They included a slapstick slap at the MOFE’s (I just came up with that: for Modern Feminists). I quote the germaine passage here:

It is no coincidence that most of the angry young women making these complaints are childless. In the (possibly quite unlikely) event that one day they find a male they are prepared to mate with and they are blessed with a son, what they will belatedly realise is this: that they have helped create a world viciously and unfairly inimical to the interests of the person they most love – their boy – whom their tiresome campaigning will have stigmatised as a greedy, testosteronal, rapist-in-waiting.

Well done, I say.

————————

Re MOFE:

I think it would be a good thing to distinguish the folks Stacy keeps bringing to our attention from the more “original” sorts of feminists. It’s true many of the early feminist authors were indeed leftists, but many of the early feminist “icons” were most definitely NOT. (For example, Susan B. Anthony is considered to be an early feminist by many old-schoolers. Also, up until recently, many excellent conservative women called themselves feminists.) So I think the MOFEs should be singled out for ridicule at a different level from their predecessors. (As to the prior parenthetic enclosure, conservatives who used to call themselves feminist have mostly walked away from the term in disgust at what the MOFEs have done to it. Main exception as usual, Phyllis Chesler. That doesn’t mean they were never feminists, it just means that the term itself has been ruined, just like the concept of classical liberalism or the previously innocuous word, “gay.”)

I know it takes a bit away from the impact of the thesis here, but some early feminists were genuinely concerned with women’s health, the ability to get women out of forced sexual slavery, property rights, and many other things that the MOFEs have long abandoned. The MOFE aim is nihilistic revenge fantasy, coupled with desperately clingy relationships of the recursively distaff kind. It’s not really “feminism” at all. Not anymore.
Jim R
December 29th, 2014 @ 5:05 pm

That’s a very good point.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 29th, 2014 @ 5:39 pm

I do not consent to her lectures! It is microagression I tell you!
Adobe_Walls
December 29th, 2014 @ 5:51 pm

Then the use of body cameras should produce some good data.
K-Bob
December 29th, 2014 @ 5:54 pm

What an excellently built case you present. Splendid academic rigor. Too bad you couldn’t include some sort of hockey-stick graph.
Fail Burton
December 29th, 2014 @ 6:00 pm

I don’t know that anyone in America is ridiculing women who want inheritance rights, the right to vote or have their own bank account. It is not my fault radical gender feminists call themselves feminists any more than it is the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm calls itself The Freedom and Justice Party. We often make the distinction by using “intersectional” or “gender” or “radical feminists.”

Of one thing there is little doubt: these women don’t like men. That in and of itself is their ideology. It has no goals other than men should stop being men and heterosexuality be mistrusted. That is an intellectual version of England expelling Jews in the middle ages. Within this ideology, we are expelled.

As just one example, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen anthologies call for every type of human but straight white men, even singling them out as persona non grata. In any real sense, how is that different from singling out Jews or blacks? Anyone’s who’s read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich will recognize that “artistic” program.

And out of all the groups in America that have created come-one-come-all anthologies and awards who is that? That’s right: the straight white male. Intersectionalism stinks of rancid hypocrisy. What they cry for they themselves do not practice. Go to any of their Twitter feeds and the diversity they bitch about is nowhere evident.

If it’s a lesbian it’s gay world, if they’re black they find every nugget of blackness, every cop who’s hit a black kid and regularly feature b&w photos from the civil rights era. The feminist WisCon SF convention actually has a racially segregated room and off campus race-dinner.
Durasim
December 29th, 2014 @ 6:02 pm

“they have helped create a world viciously and unfairly inimical to the interests of the person they most love – their boy – whom their tiresome campaigning will have stigmatised as a greedy, testosteronal, rapist-in-waiting”

This assumes that feminists who somehow have sons will necessarily be divided or split between their natural affection for their male offspring and their ideological commitment to their movement. For some feminists, this is not even a struggle or a dilemma. Some loudly proclaim that they wish they killed their male offspring and staved off any threat to feminism:

“(I) hate myself for not pouring him down the sink at Planned Parenthood or grabbing a rusty coathanger and doing the job myself even if it killed me.”

http://riehlworldview.com/2007/08/do-some-radical.html
Fail Burton
December 29th, 2014 @ 6:03 pm

Support the victim does away with equal protection, due process and the principles behind law itself. This is a supremacist cult who are actively campaigning to make Men’s Laws. I will again refer you to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Such people have always existed and when they enter our institutions they are flat out dangerous.
RS
December 29th, 2014 @ 6:05 pm

Meh.

Mogilevsky is typical of all adolescents throughout the course of human history. They have no experience, yet they know everything and will demand that you allow them to tell you. It is the “knowledge” typical of someone who’s never had a mortgage, or children, or a car payment. It is the pronouncement of someone who has taken an introductory course in life and now seeks to piss in the punchbowl of my party of adults with his/her inanities. She is a toddler screaming “look at me, look at me” every 30 seconds.

Honey, grow up or go to your room.
K-Bob
December 29th, 2014 @ 6:20 pm

Divide, accuse, set one upon the other. It’s all they have.

It’s the old grade-school technique of pretending you’re the “right” sort of kid by pointing your finger at all the “wrong” sorts. It’s basically a coward’s ploy to try and avoid getting beat up by the predators. They end up becoming the sniveling followers in the van of the worst sorts of groups.
Phil_McG
December 29th, 2014 @ 7:01 pm

I’ve read some of her articles too. Her shtick is she’s a “reasonable” progressive. That’s like being a “reasonable” cannibal.

In practice, all her pretension to reason means is that she uses less inflammatory rationalisations to reach more or less the exact same conclusions as the more excitable leftwing loons gnawing away at the foundations of Western civilisation.

For example, in her own words:

“I want to see gender roles eradicated”

“we need affirmative action”

“our country is still besieged by abstinence-only sex education, which promotes rape culture in a million ways”

“abortion should be legal in basically any circumstance”

“except for Native Americans, there really isn’t such a thing as an “American.””

“Reasonable” progressives are to the red-in-tooth-and-claw kind what “moderate” Muslims are to the Islamic fundamentalists.

I.e., when the latter come to get you for being an infidel/privileged white heterosexual cisgendered male (delete as appropriate), the “reasonable”, “moderate” folks will simper politely and sweetly and reasonably explain why you had it coming.

So, screw her. (Not literally – she has the sex appeal of a dead haddock.)
SausageAway
December 29th, 2014 @ 7:29 pm

The opening paragraph sets the scene. Its his account using his outlook which he then flames. Classic straw man argument is what he is constructing. Assuming you are educated, you should recognize how manipulative such tactics are and how patronizingly obvious they also are.
WarEagle81
December 29th, 2014 @ 7:50 pm

I bet most of us remember when we were young and knew everything.
Fail Burton
December 29th, 2014 @ 7:57 pm

The everything I knew was to be cool and live and let live. These people are assaulting us for essentially no reason other than their deep sociopathies. They treat us and talk about us in the exact same way radical Muslims do Jews.
Fail Burton
December 29th, 2014 @ 7:58 pm

I disagree: it is not typical of one’s teen-age years to join the KKK.
Fail Burton
December 29th, 2014 @ 8:01 pm

Are you on some type of word-rationing? If you have a case, make it.
Fail Burton
December 29th, 2014 @ 8:08 pm

I dare this wise Solomon to write about diversity in Vet’s Hospitals and how I might lose the right to vote if I don’t sign up for the draft, a thing she is not legally required to do. Let’s hear it. Let’s hear how we should think about topics feminists pointedly never address. Then tell me how I should think about the 100% male freezer warehouses from which she gets her gourmet fishsticks. Where is the demand for diversity for the right to work in bitterly cold and dangerous conditions. “Where’s the gals?” is mysteriously never asked. Go march on a freezer warehouse. You won’t get any answers from black ivory towers at The Atlantic where they don’t even know where their table salt comes from. Those underground feminist free dwellings are for privileged rats. Then go re-invent time-keeping at sea without a blueprint.
K-Bob
December 29th, 2014 @ 9:18 pm

To call it a straw man is to beg the question on what the concept means. If you’ve followed the issue at all you don’t need most of the premises involved explained.

Your accusation looks like something one might try after walking into a debate in the last two minutes. Unfortunately for your accusation, the case presented here involves the reader being familiar with a huge body of work carried out over the past few years.

Where you come up with “patronizing” is a mystery. Random word choice?
SausageAway
December 29th, 2014 @ 9:23 pm

I know what a strawman argument is – do you?
If in doubt, re-explore his opening paragraph – his framing of the situation in those terms is what makes it a straw-man: just because he says so doesn’t make it so. Are you his agent or something?
K-Bob
December 29th, 2014 @ 9:25 pm

Yeah, I figured. But psychopaths hopefully are the rare exception.
SausageAway
December 29th, 2014 @ 9:36 pm

I did. The author is making a straw man argument which he then burns.
K-Bob
December 29th, 2014 @ 10:00 pm

You apparently do not know what a straw man argument is.

Does pointing out the flaw in your argument require that I be his agent? Who knew?

Hey everyone, look at me; suddenly I’m an agent!
SausageAway
December 29th, 2014 @ 10:15 pm

Your not saying anything to contradict the view that this article is a straw man.
Nothing.
Durasim
December 29th, 2014 @ 10:20 pm

Perhaps they are the exception. But when every other member of a movement is ready and willing to defend and justify the behavior of the “rare exceptions,” then the psychopaths do not have to be so numerous.

And indeed, the feminists all circled the wagons around “BitingBeaver” and defend her tirades to this very day. To the feminists, the biggest outrage was that any men dared to criticize this “woman.” Pity the poor boys that she whelped.
K-Bob
December 29th, 2014 @ 10:35 pm

So you don’t care to make an actual case, and it’s up to us to refute your lack of case.

Good luck with that.
Durasim
December 29th, 2014 @ 10:48 pm

McCain used his own prior quotation reflecting his opinion that certain college students, and especially feminists, often exhibit unwarranted contempt and condescension towards persons who have not been instructed in their manner of “studies.”

And then he pointed to Mogilevsky and cited her articles as examples of such behavior and attitudes. And the titles and content of Mogilevsky’s missives seem to spew condescension and contempt in abundance. Mogilevsky and her “writings” seem to be consistent with McCain’s claimed unfavorable observations.

Stating an “outlook” about something and then identifying an illustrative example that matches with one’s “outlook” is not a “straw man.”
Daniel Freeman
December 29th, 2014 @ 11:02 pm

I would interpret that differently. It has been noted that women like to watch men work in ways that they can’t always explain. The theory that I like best is that it’s a complementary evolutionary adaptation, so that predators (human or otherwise) can’t sneak up on the tribemate focused on his task. I’ve seen a video of a policewoman performing with great competence by herself, and I’ve seen a video of one just standing there watching the crowd while her partner subdued an unarmed woman, and I think that in crisis situations, their instinct would be to watch and make sure that no one can sneak up behind the men. It might even be the right instinct, since it got put there by the natural selection process of which tribes survived more.
robertstacymccain
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:06 am

But when I was young, there was no Internet to enable my arrogance.
SausageAway
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:58 am

lol, sure thing dude, its not a straw man, he paints a balanced and fair portrayal of events. chortle.
SausageAway
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:00 am

I have.
Durasim
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:24 am

What is he required to do? Start out with a preamble about the decades long advent of academic feminism, then an essay on internet activism and political blogging and all its variants? Then give a disclaimer and deliver an obligatory paean to the college students that are not preening, lecturing feminists before he points out examples of the ones that are?

Maybe you should start a hashtag.
#notallcollegefeminists
get2djnow
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:59 am

You know, proving a negative and all that jazz.
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 2:03 am

It’s true. In the old days no editor would enable these sociopathic essays which attack an audience and they were left in diaries under pillows where they belong. This is what you’re reading: overweening arrogance powered by zero accomplishments and real world experience. Go out and experience the world before talking down to it.
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 2:05 am

Example with comparisons and context would be helpful. But you’re just pranking us so why would you do that?
K-Bob
December 30th, 2014 @ 4:09 am

Your views are your problem to fix.

As to the structure of your argument, if one could call it that, an unsupported accusation is like writing a story that begins: “The End.”
Quartermaster
December 30th, 2014 @ 10:03 am

Come now! We didn’t need the internet to enable anything.
Quartermaster
December 30th, 2014 @ 10:04 am

Micro? Nothing micro about it.
Neo
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:34 pm

Wasn’t that her in “Good Will Hunting” ? .. you know, when she was a man .. at that bar ?
… or was that her brother ?
plumpplumberbalding
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:37 pm

Rule #1 about radical feminists – they’re lying. Lying until proven otherwise. You see, their agenda isn’t about the truth. The truth is that these whacked out women are trying to destroy this society. Merciless ridicule and incessant comparison with KNOWN truth. Never accept anything that they say without careful research. That’s what they’re truly afraid of. Once it’s common knowledge just how deceitful they truly are, they’ll lose some of their power. Mendacious politicians use them for their access to the women’s vote. Truth will break that cycle.
Durasim
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:45 pm

Well, in a few years, Mogilevsky can assume her new role as even more obnoxious and feminist Linda Richman.
plumpplumberbalding
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:45 pm

It’s a plain known fact that women are worse than worthless in combat. Too weak physically, and simply not up to combat operations of some duration in the field. The first rule is trust your buddy. What happens when snowflake can’t pull her wounded buddy out of the line of fire? In the real world, she has to go. No one will trust her. Short fuse, uncleared mine, lots of things happen. Point is, she will get someone killed. So, she has to go. Kind of like fight club……first rule is you don’t talk about fight club.
orbicularioculi
December 30th, 2014 @ 7:46 pm

She’s a typical feminist bullshit artist who doesn’t realize how FOS she is. My response to her is STFU. Just go away.