The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 05.23.16

Posted on | May 23, 2016 | 6 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Jonah Goldberg Lays Out Why He’s Not Voting For Donald Trump
Da Tech Guy: Facebook Suspended You? But But Dialogue!
The Political Hat: Fear and Loathing At The Nevada Democratic Convention
Michelle Malkin: Hey, Gun-Grabbers – Hands Off My Kids’ Lego Weapons
Twitchy: No “Space To Destroy” This Time? Baltimore Mayor Calls For Calm After Police Officer Acquitted
Shark Tank: Lawsuit Filed To Open Primary For State Attorney


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Facebook Reverses Ban On Conservative Lauren Southern
American Thinker: Abolish The Department Of Justice
Don Surber: Trump as Sinatra Vs. Hillary As Sinead O’Connor
Jammie Wearing Fools: Irony Overload – Baby Food Spill Causes Evacuation At Sarasota Planned Parenthood
Joe For America: Without Hillary’s Nose Candy, She’s A “Raving Maniac”
JustOneMinute: Trump Juggernaut Continues
Pamela Geller: Kosovo, The New Jihad State In The Heart Of Europe
Shot In The Dark: The DFL’s Praetorian Guard – Still Praetorian, Still Guarding
STUMP: Central States – I Guess The Plan Is To Run Out Of Money
The Jawa Report: War Porn! ISIS Goes Boom!
The Lonely Conservative: Target Stock Tumbled After Transgender Bathroom Announcement
The Quinton Report: Freddie Gray Family Attorney Praises Judge Who Ruled Cop Not Guilty
This Ain’t Hell: New York Times’ Untold Damage
Weasel Zippers: Obama Lifts Embargo On Selling Weapons To Vietnam
Megan McArdle: Don’t Blame The Republican Party For The Rise Of Trump
Mark Steyn: A Se’nnight Of Steyn


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Category: Linkagery

On @MattMcGorry, @MeghanEMurphy and the ‘Male Feminist’ Problem

Posted on | May 23, 2016 | 34 Comments

 

In case you didn’t know, Matt McGorry is an actor who, in March 2015, was inspired by Emma Watson’s “He for She” campaign to declare:

I’m embarrassed to admit that I only recently discovered the ACTUAL definition of “feminism”. The fact that the term is sometimes clouded with anything other than pure support and positivity in our society is very tragic. I believe in gender equality. Being a feminist is for both women AND men. I AM A FEMINIST.

McGorry has continued his “male feminist” act to the point where BuzzFeed wrote a entire article mocking him and everybody got the joke.

This is 2016, OK? A belief in “gender equality” is not such a bold idea that anyone, male or female, can expect to be praised for advocating it. What has made feminism controversial is the question of what “gender equality” means, and what measures are needed to achieve it. Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It, as I keep saying. It is much safer (and much wiser) to oppose feminism altogether than to attempt marching in lockstep with the movement down the Road to Gender Equality. We’ve been marching on this road for more than 40 years, and feminists are just as angry today as they were in 1968, the main difference being that feminist anger now wields enormous legal, cultural, economic and political power. Totalitarians can never have enough power, however, and so the angry demands for more “equality” continue.

Meghan Murphy is permanently angry. As proprietor of Feminist Current, “Canada’s leading feminist website,” Ms. Murphy never met a man she couldn’t find a reason to hate, and there are very few things in the world she hates more than a “male feminist” like Matt McGorry:

As evidenced by the embarrassing level of swooning coming from American liberal media, Matt McGorry has hereby been crowned King of Feminism… And he’s not too humble to accept the throne. . . .
At the same time that McGorry is working to turn our radical movement into milquetoast, he’s claiming he plans to “shake people’s definition up of feminism.” Like, how? By explaining that feminism is not actually for women, but for men? . . .
Claiming that “feminism” is actually about “gender equality” is exactly what allows MRAs to pretend “reverse sexism” is real and to pretend our movement is just as much about men’s rights as women’s. The reason we name “women” in feminism is because women are the class oppressed by men. And we aren’t seeking equality with men, we are seeking an end to male power and to gender, in and of itself.

Didn’t I just explain this Saturday? Didn’t I quote feminists as far back as Shulamith Firestone declaring that their goal is “the elimination . . . of the sex distinction itself”? Didn’t I quote Catharine McKinnon to the same effect? And didn’t I follow this up on Sunday with an in-depth examination of radical feminist Rachel Ivey’s arguments?

 

“Gender is a hierarchical system which maintains the subordination of females as a class to males through force,” Ms. Ivey insists, and I’m sure Ms. Murphy agrees, because this is what all feminists believe. This is what feminism is — it’s not about “gender equality,” it’s about “the end of civilization as we know it,” as Sidney Abbott and Barbara Love declared in 1972, “destroying culture as we know it,” as Andrea Dworkin proclaimed in 1974. Feminism’s goals have always been essentially destructive, and to call yourself a “feminist” is to volunteer for service in this wrecking crew.

You could ask Dean Esmay to tell you some stories of men driven to suicide by the destructive forces of feminism. When removed from the abstract theory of ideologues and enacted as public policy, feminism functions to “empower” the most dishonest, cruel and selfish of women. Feminism is the politics of revenge, and attracts the support of vindictive women who, having developed a general contempt for men, are always seeking opportunities to unleash their sadistic fury against any man who is foolish enough to stray within range. (Never talk to a feminist.)

There is nothing to be gained by becoming a “male feminist,” except a bad reputation. Feminists hate all men, and habitually slander every male of their acquaintance. The man who befriends a feminist thereby “empowers” her to defame him as soon as he is out of earshot. The fool who tries be an exception to the rule — the “male feminist” who hopes to be admired by women who hate men — will inevitably be disappointed. Carefully read Meghan Murphy’s denunciation of Matt McGorry:

These efforts to convince men that they, too, are “feminists” just because they say so, whether or not they invest any energy into challenging ideas like masculinity, pushing back against the objectification of women, questioning a heteronormative and male-centered view of sex and sexuality . . . are not helpful. . . .
A feminist isn’t simply anyone who claims the label — the word actually means something. . . .
This party the media is throwing for Matt McGorry: America’s Next Top Feminist should tell Matt McGorry a little something about the kind of “feminism” he’s putting forth — the kind that doesn’t confront systems of power, that is void of radical aims and messaging, and the kind that is male-centered.
Feminism doesn’t have male leaders — we have male allies. And the fact that McGorry is being positioned as an expert on our movement, despite his cluelessness, is patriarchy.

You see that Meghan Murphy is against masculinity, per se. She is also against “objectification,” i.e., men’s admiration of women’s beauty, and denounces “heteronormative” sex because it is “male-centered,” meaning that she is against any kind of sex that a man might actually enjoy. She is certainly not alone in these anti-male/anti-heterosexual beliefs.

“Patriarchy is a system which is male dominated, male identified, and male centered, and within which women are subordinated. . . . Heteronormative ideology is a system of beliefs that indicates or implies that there are only two distinct sexes (male and female) and two clear gender roles in which heterosexuality is the only ‘normal’ sexual orientation, identifying all other forms of sexuality and/or gender as ‘abnormal.’ Heteronormative patriarchy identifies certain characteristics as ‘masculine’ or feminine,’ limiting humanity’s ability to function holistically.”
— Ashley Donnelly, “Denial and Salvation: The Twilight Saga and Heteronormative Patriarchy,” in Theorizing Twilight: Critical Essays on What’s at Stake in a Post-Vampire World, edited by Maggie Parke and Natalie Wilson (2011)

It is wrong to believe there are “two distinct sexes,” according to feminism, and it is also wrong to believe heterosexuality is normal. Furthermore, it is wrong to believe that men and women have characteristic traits which we may call “masculine” and “feminine,” according to feminists, because “gender” is an illusion imposed upon us by patriarchy. The fact that this claim is being made in a book about vampire movies is remarkable — who goes to see a movie and monitors the plot for heteronormative patriarchy? — but what should truly alarm us is that this claim is made by a professor at Ball State University. That is to say, the taxpayers of Indiana are paying Professor Ashley Donnelly to indoctrinate young people in this bizarre worldview, and there is no one in the administration or faculty who would dare criticize her claims, for fear of being denounced as a sexist homophobe.

Feminism is against masculinity and against heterosexuality, which is why we required to celebrate the transgender kindergartner, because feminists do not want boys to become either masculine or heterosexual.

Consider this: Jocelyn MacDonald is a Marxist atheist feminist who condemns males as “parasites,” and who has recently joined forces with another feminist, Brie Ripley, on a project called “Tie My Tubes.” These feminists advocate surgical sterilization for young women — promoting “voluntary sterilization as a key part of reproductive health care” — who seek to exempt themselves from the most dangerous and harmful consequence of heteronormative patriarchy, i.e., procreation.

“I will never become pregnant because I am in the process of getting a tubal ligation. . . . Sterilization will give me the agency I desire over my body and my future. . . .
“Preventing pregnancy shouldn’t cost you financially, physically, interpersonally, or emotionally. . . .
“Question authority, especially of the white male variety.”
— Brie Ripley, Feb. 13

 

Feminism is a Death Cult, and their War Against Human Nature follows its own bizarre logic, to an anti-scientific attitude toward sexual behavior:

Sex is about reproductive biology. Human beings are mammals, and any eighth-grader can figure out what that means in terms of sex.
Once you understand this scientific definition of sex, everything else is just details. Young people have to figure out how to attract potential partners, how to choose a good partner from among the prospective candidates, and how to negotiate a relationship that will lead toward lifelong monogamous pair-bonding — i.e., a successful marriage — because this is the ideal situation in which to raise children. . . .
The road to Equality is paved with dead babies. Feminism’s idea of “empowerment” for women requires forsaking motherhood and, once the possibility of procreation is excluded, what does sex mean? If a woman decides to be a non-participant in the reproduction of the species, does she have any need for marriage? Indeed, why bother with men at all?

You can read the rest of that, but the facts are obvious enough: Feminists are against men, marriage, motherhood, capitalism and Christianity. No intelligent or honest person can support the feminist agenda.

 

Feminism is a movement by women, for women, against men. Feminists are women like Meghan Murphy. Incapable of finding happiness in life, feminists blame their misery on men, and seek to eliminate male happiness, so that everyone can become equally miserable.

+ + + + +

The Sex Trouble project began in 2014 and reader support is vital to this research into radical feminism. Contrary to what feminists claim, patriarchy is usually just another word for “paying the bills.” And remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Never doubt God answers prayers. Thanks in advance.




 

 


MORE FROM THE ‘SEX TROUBLE’ SERIES:

 


Category: Sex Trouble

Rule 5 Sunday: Women In Limousines

Posted on | May 22, 2016 | 16 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Now that I’m an Uber driver, a question I often get asked by my passengers is “Don’t the taxi drivers hate you?” It’s true, a lot of the local taxi companies have adorned their cabs with “No Uber” stickers, but judging from the way the drivers themselves operate, there’s no actual animosity. We’re all in this together, trying to pick up and drop off people in (frequently) crowded and stressful circumstances, and it’s best to just be professional and courteous and let the other guy in ahead of you once in a while. Limousines, on the other hand…but at least those often have attractive drivers, like Miss Kainaz here.
As usual, many of the following links are to pics generally considered NSFW. Your failure to exercise discretion in the timing and location of the clicking is not our problem. You may consider yourself warned.

Admittedly, the Bollywood version of a limo driver, but not completely unrepresentative.

90 Miles from Tyranny kicks off this week’s links with Morning Mistress, Hot Pick of the Late Night, and Girls with Guns; Goodstuff reminds us “If You See Swamp Thing, Say Swamp Thing!” with Adrienne Barbeau, while Animal Magnetism peers into the future for a Rule 5 Trump Cabinet Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon. The Last Tradition contributes Kate Moss and Behati Prinsloo, while First Street Journal celebrates women in uniform doing Basic Training.

EBL’s herd of (occasionally mutant) heifers this week includes Kentucky Cankle, Josi Denise, Naked Shakespeare, Ivanka Trump, Too Damn Hot, and Venezuela.

A View from the Beach brings us Maggie Rawlins, Washington D.C. Rockfish Warning Revisited, Actress Accused of “Cultural Appropriation” Over Big Butt, Thursday Morning Wake Up!, “Caught Out in the Rain”, How to Talk Like a Vegan (If You Really Must), Spring Training Needed, Underwear Model Sets Off Uproar, Socialism Progressing as Expected in Venezuela,and STD Infected Zombies Plague New Orleans.

The DaleyGator’s DaleyBabes included Melissa Fumero, Cara Castronouva, Maya Gilbert, Melinda Clarke, Ra Chapman, Sayaka Ohnuki, and Bridget Regan.

American Power returns with Alessandra Ambrosio, Jackie Johnson, April Rose, Blake Lively, Bella Hadid, Brook Power, Denise Schaefer, and Natasha Oakley with Devin Brugman.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Eugena Washington, his vintage babe is Patricia Medina, and Sex in Advertising is covered by Elsa Hosk. At Dustbury, it’s Zizi Jeanmaire and Nina Burri.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! I’ll be taking the laptop (and the correct adapter!) to Baltimore next week, so links for next week’s Rule 5 Sunday Memorial Day Preview Edition will be due to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox by midnight on Saturday, May 28. Your links for the FMJRA are also appreciated; those are due by noon on the 28th.


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Category: Rule 5

More Feminists, More Gender Theory

Posted on | May 22, 2016 | 65 Comments

“When we’re talking about rape culture and idealism, we have to talk about Slut Walk. . . . The fallacy here is not wanting to end rape culture. The fallacy is that marching around with ‘End Rape Culture’ on my back was actually going to end rape culture.”
— Rachel Ivey, 2013

In response to Saturday’s post — “‘Feminist Motherhood’ and the ‘Transgender Kindergartner’” — Professor Donald Douglas of American Power complimented me that my “range of citations is extremely impressive.” Contrary to what some people think, the eruption of transgender madness has very deep roots in feminist theory, as I demonstrated with quotes dating as early as 1970, when Shulamith Firestone declared “the end goal of feminist revolution must be . . . not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself.”

Among the other sources I cited was a 2011 Ms. magazine article about feminist motherhood and a 2015 book about campus sexual assault policy which blamed heterosexuality and masculinity for “sexual violence” as an expression of “patriarchal power.” One reason I keep piling up quotations like that is to demonstrate, from a multiplicity of sources over the course of time, that all feminism is fundamentally alike, in terms of its hostility to human nature. For more than four decades, the feminist movement has been against men, marriage, motherhood, capitalism and Christianity — and ultimately against heterosexuality, per se. When feminists speak of “equality,” they do not mean simple fairness; rather, they intend the destruction of all social distinctions between men and women, to bring about a genderless utopia of androgyny. Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It. I keep providing more evidence to further corroborate this conclusion, and will continue doing so until this truth is universally acknowledged.

 

Saturday, I called attention to a 2013 video, “The End of Gender: Revolution, Not Reform,” by Rachel Ivey of the radical environmental group Deep Green Resistance (DGR). About three-and-a-half minutes into this presentation, Ms. Ivey notes the irony that her organization’s position on gender has provoked more controversy than the fact that DGR is “a group advocating the forcible dismantling of civilization.”

This destructive agenda is where radical environmentalism and radical feminism merge to become coterminous phenomena. What most people fail to understand about feminism is that its ideology is essentially destructive, in the same way that Marxist-Leninist ideology is destructive, and that this is no accident, because modern feminism arose from the crypto-Marxist radical New Left of the 1960s. So-called “Red Diaper babies,” the children of Communist Party members, were prominent and influential among early leaders of the Women’s Liberation movement. A crucial moment in the formation of this movement was when Shulamith Firestone used a mailing list of women in the New Left group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to organize feminists in New York. (See In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution by Susan Brownmiller, pp. 18-20.) The feminist concept of “consciousness-raising” was borrowed directly from Communist organizing tactics: “In the Old Left,” Red Diaper baby Anne Forer told Brownmiller (p. 21), “they used to say that the workers don’t know they’re oppressed so we have to raise their consciousness.”

“Gender is a hierarchical system which maintains the subordination of females as a class to males through force. Gender is a material system of power which uses violence and psychological coercion to exploit female labor, sex, reproduction, emotional support, etc., for the benefit of males. Gender is not natural or voluntary, since a person is not naturally subordinate and no one chooses to be subordinated.”
— Rachel Ivey, 2013

Ms. Ivey here summarizes an idea — that every misfortune, hardship or unhappiness experienced by any woman is the result of a system of oppression — which is the fundamental basis of all feminist theory. This produces an ideology and rhetoric I have described thus:

Feminism justifies anti-male attitudes by promoting an ideological belief that I call feminism’s Patriarchal Thesis:

1. All women are victims of oppression;
2. All men benefit from women’s oppression;
therefore
3. Whatever.

Believing that normal human life is a system of injustice in which all women (collectively) are victimized by all men (collectively), feminists can justify anything they say or do as part of their struggle against historic oppression.

Just as Marxists believe that workers are oppressed by capitalism, feminists believe women are oppressed by patriarchy, and a basic task of feminism is to help women gain consciousness of their oppression.

“Feminist consciousness is consciousness of victimization . . . to come to see oneself as a victim.”
— Sandra Lee Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (1990)

“All women are prisoners and hostages to men’s world. . . . Each man is a threat. We can’t escape men. . . .
“Being around any man constitutes a threat to us, because they are our oppressors. Being wanted by a man and him treating you as if you were his is inherently violent.”
— Radical Wind, 2013

You see that while Professor Bartky and the anonymous feminist blogger are saying different things, they begin with the same premise, namely that oppression (“victimization”) is the universal condition of women. Where the blogger goes further than the professor is in making explicit that heterosexuality is both cause and effect of this oppression. This feminist argument can be traced back to the early 1970s, and was developed into a comprehensive theory by Professor Dee Graham in her 1994 book, Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence and Women’s Lives. It is from Professor Graham’s theory that the blogger Radical Wind derived her claim that women are “hostages” who cannot escape men.

 

To argue that male heterosexuality “is inherently violent” may seem extreme, but this claim has very deep roots in the history of the feminist movement, and continues to influence feminism today. When we see feminists protesting “rape culture,” we must understand that what they mean by this term is quite nearly synonymous with heterosexuality.

“In terms of the oppression of women, heterosexuality is the ideology of male supremacy.”
— Margaret Small, “Lesbians and the Class Position of Women,” in Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement, edited by Nancy Myron and Charlotte Bunch (1975)

“This is the essence of so-called romance, which is rape embellished with meaningful looks. . . .
“The traditional flowers of courtship are the traditional flowers of the grave, delivered to the victim before the kill. . . .
“The annihilation of a woman’s personality, individuality, will, character, is prerequisite to male sexuality . . .”
— Andrea Dworkin, “The Night and Danger,” 1979, in Letters From a War Zone (1988)

“I think that widespread heterosexuality among women is a highly artificial product of the patriarchy. . . . I think that most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.”
— Marilyn Frye, “A Lesbian’s Perspective on Women’s Studies,” speech to the National Women’s Studies Association conference, 1980

“In contrast to young women, whose empowerment can be seen as a process of resistance to male dominated heterosexuality, young, able-bodied, heterosexual men can access power through the language, structures and identities of hegemonic masculinity.”
— Janet Holland, Caroline Ramazanoglu, Sue Sharpe and Rachel Thomson, The Male in the Head: Young People, Heterosexuality and Power (1998)

“As many feminists have pointed out, heterosexuality is organized in such a way that the power men have in society gets carried into relationships and can encourage women’s subservience, sexually and emotionally.”
— Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions (fifth edition, 2012)

Feminist “rape culture” discourse extends far beyond the crime of sexual assault to condemn practically all male/female relationships as based in the coercive patriarchal system of “male dominated heterosexuality.”

 

The recent protests against “rape culture” on university campuses, demanding the enforcement of policies that effectively criminalize heterosexuality and deny male students due-process protections, must be understood in context of the feminist movement’s history:

The origins of feminism’s “rape culture” discourse can be traced back to the Women’s Liberation movement of the late 1960s and ’70s. Treatises like “Rape: The All-American Crime” (Susan Griffin, 1971) and Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (Susan Brownmiller, 1975) depicted rape as an exercise of male power that was inherent in, and necessary to, the system of male supremacy. Brownmiller described rapists as “front-line masculine shock troops, terrorist guerrillas” who served to keep women captive and subjugated under a regime of pervasive sexual fear. . . . Radical feminists denied that heterosexual behavior was “natural.” There was no biological “urge” or “instinct” involved in the observable patterns of male and female sexual behavior, feminists insisted. Instead, all of this was “socially constructed” by an oppressive male-dominated system that proponents of feminist gender theory now call heteronormative patriarchy. Viewing sexual behavior in this political context of systemic and collective male power, it is impossible for feminists to view any sexual behavior as private or personal. No man or woman is merely an individual in feminist theory, but each is viewed as acting within a system where men (as a collective group) exercise power to unjustly oppress women (as a collective group).

This collective mentality, where all relationships are manifestations of an oppressive system of “male supremacy,” makes it impossible for the feminist to view herself (or any man) as an individual, each responsible for his or her own actions. No matter how wealthy, well-educated or influential the feminist may be, she always considers herself a victim of oppression and every man — no matter how honest or kind he is, no matter how lowly his place in the world — is part of the system that oppresses her. Feminism, like Marxism, is a profoundly irrational worldview, a secular religion that claims for itself the authority of science in order to justify a revolution to destroy civilization as we know it.

 

“Women organize to overthrow male power and thus the entire gender system,” Rachel Ivey said in describing the feminist movement’s ultimate goal. “Because without patriarchy there would be no need for gender.”

You may read the transcript of Ms. Ivey’s 2013 DGR presentation on gender and, if you are a student of history and political science, you will notice she insists on a materialist understanding of patriarchal oppression. “Gender is a material system of power,” Ms. Ivey says. “Rape culture, right along with female poverty, lack of education, the trafficking of our bodies — it’s maintained through material structures. Not through people’s ideas.” This is a feminist adaptation of the Marxist doctrine of historical materialism, and its application to “gender” is likely to produce effects quite like what Lenin, Stalin, Mao and other Marxist tyrants achieved in the 20th century, namely catastrophic failure.

Ask yourself this: Why did Margaret Thatcher hate feminism? Was she in favor of rape and oppression? And why did feminists hate her? One might think that feminists would celebrate as a heroine of their cause a woman who had fought her way to the pinnacle of political power, as the first woman ever to become Prime Minister of the British empire. Yet feminists knew, as did Lady Thatcher, that their movement was not her movement, for feminism is exactly like Communism, in that it is implacably hostile to individual liberty and human dignity. Lady Thatcher famously said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” She might well have added, the problem with feminism is that eventually you run out of other people’s daughters.

 

How many children does the typical feminist have? Not many. Insofar as they do not eschew heterosexual intercourse altogether, feminists are more likely to have abortions than to have children.

“I don’t particularly like babies. They are loud and smelly and, above all other things, demanding . . . time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness. . . . Nothing will make me want a baby. . . . This is why, if my birth control fails, I am totally having an abortion.”
— Amanda Marcotte, March 2014

Feminism is a totalitarian movement, a systematic ideology of cruelty inspired by hatred — not only hatred of men, but of human life itself.

Feminism is poison. It is not merely wrong, but also evil.





 


Category: Sex Trouble

‘Feminist Motherhood’ and the ‘Transgender Kindergartner’

Posted on | May 21, 2016 | 47 Comments

David and Hannah Edwards are raising their 5-year-old son as a girl.

“From a very young age, Hannah said, her son always identified with the female characters in stories. This translated into dressing up as the girl character during playtime and requesting princess costumes to wear not just for Halloween, but for everyday attire.”
— MinnPost.com, Feb. 2

“The Edwardses filed a complaint with the St. Paul Human Rights Department on March 24, claiming their child was bullied at [a charter school] after starting kindergarten as a boy and switching that identification to a girl midway through the year.”
— Minneapolis Star-Tribune, April 13

When I saw the headline on a Think Progress tweet — “It takes a village to bully a transgender kindergartner” — my left eyebrow arched. This is an autonomic reflex, I think, although academic experts might theorize that arching an eyebrow in profound skepticism is socially constructed along with the gender binary and the heterosexual matrix. Professors get paid to overthink everything, and after two years of researching radical feminism, I’ve come to realize how this hyper-intellectual tendency makes it impossible for some people to live a happy, normal existence. When you need a theory to explain everything, especially if you are the kind of “progressive” who sees oppression all around you, the ordinary tasks of daily life become unnecessarily complicated. Parenting, for example:

When Dave and Hannah Edwards were lucky enough to win the lottery to enroll their child at Nova Classical Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota, they were excited about the charter school’s small classrooms, the kind teacher they’d met, and the special attention their kid would receive. What they didn’t anticipate was an entire community rising up against their family as they became the latest victims of an anti-transgender backlash sweeping the country.
Over the course of the school year, the kindergartner would transition from a gender non-conforming boy to a transgender girl. . . .
At the beginning of her Kindergarten year, the Edwards’ daughter still identified as a boy. She still wore the boys’ uniform and identified with male pronouns. But they already knew she was gender non-conforming from the many girly things she liked. Plus, Hannah told ThinkProgress, “She would say things like, ‘In my heart, I’m a girl,’ or ‘In my heart, I think I might be half and half.’”
This proved problematic at school. Classmates would make fun of her for her shoes, backpack, or other preferences that were more associated with girls than with boys. The Edwards, both teachers themselves, approached Nova to discuss ways to minimize that bullying. “We came from a place of both being educators and really believing in children having the educational tools and language to talk about things and how that might make a difference.” Hannah explained. “Kids, when they’re given the opportunity, can really learn and grow and they want to be good people.”
Their first impression was that the school was on the same page. In fact, administrators agreed to incorporate the book My Princess Boy into an anti-bullying lesson about gender diversity. But when they emailed the school community on October 14th to inform them of this lesson, the backlash began. “Once parents knew, things changed completely,” Dave said.

You can read the whole thing, but the fact that the parents of this boy/girl are both teachers should give you pause. What sort of theory of “gender” did Dave and Hannah Edwards learn in college, and how are these theories being implemented in public school policies and curricula? Furthermore, if the Edwards’ son is so profoundly confused, why?

Is it possible that the parenting methods of Dave and Hannah Edwards were influenced by what they learned as part of their own education? Isn’t it true that feminist influence in academia promotes hostility toward “gender” distinctions? Aren’t feminists against normal manifestations of sexual differences — men being masculine and women being feminine — because they believe these traits are “socially constructed”?

Shulamith Firestone, Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Joan Scanlon.

“Humanity has begun to transcend Nature: we can no longer justify the maintenance of a discriminatory sex class system on grounds of its origin in nature. . . .
“And just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be . . . not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally. . . . The tyranny of the biological family would be broken.”
— Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970)

“We want to destroy sexism, that is, polar role definitions of male and female, man and woman. We want to destroy patriarchal power at its source, the family; in its most hideous form, the nation-state. We want to destroy the structure of culture as we know it, its art, its churches, its laws . . .
“The nuclear family is the school of values in a sexist, sexually repressed society. One learns what one must know: the roles, rituals, and behaviors appropriate to male-female polarity and the internalized mechanisms of sexual repression. . . .
“We must refuse to submit to all forms of behavior and relationship which reinforce male-female polarity . . . “
— Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (1974)

“Women and men are divided by gender, made into the sexes as we know them, by the social requirements of its dominant form, heterosexuality, which institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission.”
— Catharine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989)

“Gender, as radical feminists have always understood it, is a term which describes the systematic oppression of women, as a subordinate group, for the advantage of the dominant group, men.”
— Joan Scanlon, 2010

For more than 40 years, radical feminists have advocated androgyny — the abolition of gender — as the means of achieving “equality.” Radical feminism “sees gender not as an identity or personal choice but as a caste system designed for the perpetuation of male supremacy.” This is distinct from the so-called “Third Wave” feminist theory of Judith Butler, et al., but neither the radicals nor the postmodern disciples of Professor Butler are in favor of what most people would consider normal behavior.

Tobias “Tobi” Hill-Meyer, the boy who was raised by a lesbian feminist couple and grew up to become a transgender pornographer, is the tip of a large iceberg of evidence about what “feminist motherhood” produces.

 

Feminism condemns normal human behavior as “male privilege” and “tyranny” (Firestone), “patriarchal power” and “sexual repression” (Dworkin), “male sexual dominance” (MacKinnon), and “the systematic oppression of women” (Scanlon). Because of feminism’s hegemonic influence in academia, these ideas have become widely accepted on university campuses, and inevitably have begun influencing policy and curricula in public schools. Feminist ideas about “gender” are also influential in the entertainment industry and the news media, so that we see Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner featured on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine and celebrated as Glamour magazine’s “Woman of the Year.”

 

The liberal media employ a rhetoric of “diversity” surrounding these issues, and activists exploit children to create a dishonest narrative about “victims of an anti-transgender backlash,” to deceive the public and distract parents from the bizarre agenda being promoted. Many people are understandably shocked by efforts to normalize “transgender” identity for children — parents like David and Hannah Edwards calling their son “her” — but what is in some ways even more radical is the obverse effect, i.e., stigmatizing normal behaviors. Expressions of ordinary beliefs that boys should act like boys are condemned as “bullying,” and the celebration of “gender non-conforming” children implies that parents who raise their sons and daughters normally are oppressing their children by forcing them to conform to an artificial “social construction.”

“The view that heterosexuality is a key site of male power is widely accepted within feminism. Within most feminist accounts, heterosexuality is seen not as an individual preference, something we are born like or gradually develop into, but as a socially constructed institution which structures and maintains male domination, in particular through the way it channels women into marriage and motherhood.”
— Diane Richardson, “Theorizing Heterosexuality,” in Rethinking Sexuality (2000)

“If we accept that gender is constructed and that it is not in any way ‘naturally’ or inevitably connected to sex, then the distinction between sex and gender comes to seem increasingly unstable. In that case, gender is radically independent of sex, ‘a free-floating artifice’ as [Professor Judith] Butler puts it, raising the question as to whether ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps sex was always already gender, so that the sex/gender distinction is not actually a distinction at all. Butler dispenses with the idea that either gender or sex is an ‘abiding substance’ by arguing that a heterosexual, heterosexist culture establishes the coherence of these categories in order to perpetuate and maintain what the feminist poet and critic Adrienne Rich has called ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ — the dominant order in which men and women are required or even forced to be heterosexual.”
— Sara Salih, Judith Butler (2002)

“Heterosexuality and masculinity . . . are made manifest through patriarchy, which normalizes men as dominant over women. . . .
“This tenet of patriarchy is thus deeply connected to acts of sexual violence, which have been theorized as a physical reaffirmation of patriarchal power by men over women.”
— Sara Carrigan Wooten, The Crisis of Campus Sexual Violence: Critical Perspectives on Prevention and Response (2015)

Feminism Is Queer, as Eastern Washington University Professor Mimi Marinucci has explained, requiring what Professor Butler calls “the subversion of identity.” Feminist gender theory aims not only to eliminate normal adult roles associated with marriage and family (men as husband/father, women as wife/mother) but also to eliminate the traits and behaviors associated with those roles — the masculinity of men, the femininity of women, and heterosexuality, per se. Framing their arguments in a rhetoric of “social justice,” Third Wave feminists depict males and heterosexuals as “privileged” (bad) while women and homosexuals are “oppressed” (and therefore good). We see this attitude displayed by Everyday Feminism editor Melissa Fabello, who constantly voices her contempt for heterosexual males while working for a website that celebrates “LGBTQIA” sexuality:

How to Respectfully Love a
Trans Woman: Navigating Transmisogyny
in Your Romantic Relationship
— Kaylee Jakubowski, Jan. 19, 2015

5 Ways to Stand Up to Toxic Messages
and Accept Yourself as a Bisexual Person
— Erin Tatum, Jan. 25, 2015

Your Top 10 Questions About
Being Genderqueer Answered
— Kris Nelson, July 17, 2015

What Is Heteronormativity — And How Does
It Apply to Your Feminism? Here Are 4 Examples
— Kris Nelson, July 24, 2015

Ever Been Told You’re
‘Too Pretty to Be a Lesbian?’
Here Are 3 Ways to Respond
— Maddie McClouskey, Nov. 2, 2015

Yes, I Chose to Be Queer —
I Was Not Born This Way,
And Here’s Why That’s Okay
— Hari Ziyad, Nov. 5, 2015

3 Things ‘We’re Not All Lesbians’ Is
Really Saying (And Why It’s Anti-Feminist)
— Carmen Rios, Dec. 13, 2015

Why Freezing My Sperm Matters
to Me as a Trans Woman
— Rhiannon Catherwood, Dec. 25, 2015

3 Ways Gender and Sexuality Are
More Fluid Than We Think
— Alex-Quan Pham, Feb. 4, 2016

6 Ways Transphobia Directly Contributes to
High Rates of Suicide in Trans Communities
— Brynn Tannehill, March 19, 2016

I’m Gender Non-Conforming — And I Need
People to Stop Pressuring Me to ‘Pass’
— Alex-Quan Pham, April 10, 2016

7 Ways Parents Can Be More
Body Positive Toward Their Queer
and Transgender Kids
— Meg Zulch, April 26, 2016

This sampling of headlines from Everyday Feminism indicates the extent to which a bias against normal sexuality and normal “gender identity” has become characteristic of the feminist movement in the 21st century.

Feminist mothers actively seek to undermine their sons’ masculinity from an early age. A typical example from a 2014 column by Rosita Gonzalez:

When I first learned I would have a son, my first thought was, “Well, I don’t know what to do with a son!” I had come from a family of girls. I had babysat only girls. And I was a feminist. . . .
So, when my son was young, I began teaching him to be compassionate. I stressed the importance of his feelings and the feelings of others. . . .
In my feminist frenzy, I bought him dolls and dressed him in neutral-colored clothing. I endured comments like, “What a sweet, cute girl! How old is she?”

Fiona Joy Green, a professor of Women and Gender Studies at Canada’s University of Winnipeg, wrote in 2001, “Since the birth of my son . . . I have been raising him with the conscious understanding that the mother-son relationship as proscribed by patriarchy is limited, damaging, and dangerous.” Professor Green wrote of “the struggles of feminist mothers to raise sons in ways that challenge the status quo.” Natalie Wilson, who teaches Women’s Studies at Cal State University-San Marcos, wrote in Ms. magazine in 2011 that she “dreaded” giving birth to a son:

I wanted a daughter — a girl that would grow into a woman with whom I could fight the feminist good fight, a girl whom I could give the feminist upbringing I never had, a girl who I could let know from Day One was as strong, smart and capable as any penis-privileged human. Looking back, this dread of having a son embarrasses me. I see now that it is just as important to raise feminist sons as it is to raise feminist daughters. . . .
As a card-carrying member of the ‘gender is socially constructed club,’ I thus believed I could raise my son to love justice more than football, peace more than toy guns and hot pink more than camouflage.

Football and toy guns are bad, because masculinity is bad, according to feminist theory, and the project of raising “feminist sons” therefore requires mothers to find ways to “challenge the status quo.”

Encouraging boys to identify with girl characters in stories and wear “princess costumes” during playtime? That’s feminist motherhood.

+ + + + +

Thanks to the many readers whose contributions have supported the Sex Trouble project. Your prayers are always deeply appreciated.




 


Category: Sex Trouble

FMJRA 2.0: Pink Cadillac

Posted on | May 21, 2016 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Australian Gay-Marriage Crusader Was Fugitive Wanted on Kiddie Porn Charge
The Political Hat
First Street Journal
The Daley Gator
Hot Gas
Living In Anglo-America
IOTW Report

Late Night With Rule 5 Monday
Animal Magnetism
90 Miles From Tyranny
A View from the Beach
Proof Positive
Batshit Crazy News

Feminists Against Heterosexuality (@CarolineHeldman Edition)
The Political Hat

Police: Lesbian Teacher Had Sex in Cemetery, Spent the Night With Teen Girl
The Political Hat
Living In Anglo-America

Prosecutors in Scotland Say Lesbian Couple Murdered Two-Year-Old Boy
The Political Hat

In The Mailbox, 05.16.16
A View from the Beach
Proof Positive

Fear And Loathing In Reno: What I Saw At The Nevada State GOP Convention
A View from the Beach
Batshit Crazy News

On @DKThomp, Trumpism and the Misunderstood Crisis of White America
Batshit Crazy News

In The Mailbox, 05.17.16
Proof Positive
Batshit Crazy News

Late Night With The FMJRA
Batshit Crazy News

‘Entangled in the Homosexual Web’
Batshit Crazy News

In The Mailbox: 05.18.16
A View from the Beach
Proof Positive
Batshit Crazy News

Guys: Leave @Jindi Alone
Living In Anglo-America
Batshit Crazy News

Mommy Blogger @JosiDenise Tells the Truth: Nobody’s Reading Your Fake Crap
Batshit Crazy News

In The Mailbox: 05.19.16
A View from the Beach
Proof Positive
Batshit Crazy News

‘Unwanted Social Advances’
Batshit Crazy News

In The Mailbox: 05.20.16
Proof Positive
Batshit Crazy News

Top linkers this week:

  1.  Batshit Crazy News (12)
  2.  Proof Positive (6)
  3.  A View from the Beach (5)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!


18 Tracks

Category: FMJRA Award

A Balm For Conservatives In Trumpreich

Posted on | May 21, 2016 | 211 Comments

by Smitty

Given time constraints and general bewilderment at the Democrat takeover of the GOP, there just hasn’t been much to say. Hopefully Darleen will get Friday Fiction going again. On Twitter, it’s been an endless parade of horribles if I don’t join the Trumpenproletariat. Fortunately, the indispensable Jonah Goldberg offers a fine read to help with the can’t-get-motivated-to-vote-for-a-Democrat blues. Read the whole thing, including the blowback against the mighty James Taranto:

I may not be the philologist James is, but I do grok that Perry was speaking metaphorically when he said Trump was a cancer and leading us to Hell. But speaking figuratively and speaking seriously are not antipodes. One can use metaphors and still speak with sincerity. When Jesus said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved,” he was speaking metaphorically but not insincerely. I made the mistake of thinking Rick Perry was serious when he said these things. Perhaps Taranto’s the wiser man for cynically believing words never matter when uttered by politicians.

I guess I should thank Johnny B. Cryin’ and Mike Pence. The Duhnamic Duo, just ahead of the Indiana primary, broke whatever weak geas had me thinking that one should default to supporting the GOP nominee. The mask is off. I joke about our “1.1-party system. That “1.1” is like a stencil for an international gesture, pointed downward. For the last decade, the Vichy GOP has struggled between craving the bigger offices in DC afforded the majority party, and utter disgust for the Bitter Cling-On conservative base that would deliver that majority.
It’s sort of a Glorious Progressive Revolution, the way that conservatives have been thrown under the bus, in favor of Donald of Orange. (Donald is the extroverted sociopath from New York, controlled by the Tribble on his head. Donald is not to be confused with the introverted sociopath from New York holding the remote for the Tribble.) About the only shoe left to drop is the nominating convention. I’ll hold off joining the Libertarian party until I hear what Ted Cruz has to say. As the leading conservative remaining in the Republocrat Party, and a genius of Jonah Goldberg’s caliber, Ted is about the only person imaginable who could argue me into any GOP support. Promises to be some fine rhetoric. My guess is that he’ll come real, real close to returning Pence’s carefully calibrated flaccid support for a Trump/Busey ticket.

Category: Politics, Republicans

What Happened to Professor Bealer?

Posted on | May 21, 2016 | 13 Comments

 

Tara Bealer taught sociology at East Stroudsburg University in Nazareth, Pa. She got her bachelor’s degree from Cedar Crest College (annual tuition $35,600) in Allentown, Pa., and in 2006 got her master’s degree from Lehigh University (annual tuition $46,230) in Bethlehem, Pa. Somewhere along the way, however, Professor Bealer went astray.

Having counseled recovering addicts in New Jersey and taught sociology at East Stroudsburg University last year, a Northampton County woman was charged with selling heroin authorities said was found in her home during a Wednesday search.
Tara E. Bealer, 41, of East Chestnut Street, Nazareth, is charged with four counts of drug possession with intent to deliver, six counts of drug possession, 71 counts of drug paraphernalia possession, two counts of marijuana possession and one count of endangering a child’s welfare by selling drugs with a child in the home.
Nazareth police said they responded Nov. 21 to a reported overdose at Bealer’s home and found heroin packages, but did not say if anyone was charged at that time. This prompted an investigation involving police having someone make three purchases of heroin from Bealer at her home.

What bizarre madness is this? Were there no warning signs?

“I was shocked at first when I saw this in the news,” said ESU senior Gabrielle Marcantoni, a social work major who took Marriage and Family and Intro to Sociology courses under Bealer in 2014 and 2015. “Then again, I’m not surprised because something about her always seemed off. I remember her missing a lot of classes and sometimes being late. And she seemed to have this rude attitude toward some of the students.”
ESU junior Kathleen Kraemer, an English and sociology major, is editor-in-chief of ESU’s student newspaper, The Stroud Courier.
“Professor Bealer was animated and tried to engage the class, but she wasn’t very successful because of the large class size,” said Kraemer, one of Bealer’s Marriage and Family students last spring, not recalling any rude attitude. “She did miss quite a few classes. When she did, not even her student assistants knew where she was. I was initially surprised myself when I became aware of the criminal charges because she didn’t come off to me as the type to use or traffic in drugs. Then again, she did miss a lot of classes.”

If your sociology professor doesn’t show up for class, kids, it’s because she’s too busy dealing heroin. Paying off her student loans, I guess.

Professor Bealer was teaching “Marriage and Family” classes, and her family is very important to her, as the judge heard in court last month:

A suspended Northampton County Community College professor facing more than 80 charges after selling heroin from her Nazareth home wants bail conditions amended to see her teenage daughter . . .
Following the hearing, Anthony Rybak, the attorney representing Bealer, said she is seeking a bail modification that would allow her to see her 14-year-old daughter.

Professor Bealer is such a positive influence in the lives of young people:

Nazareth police Chief Thomas Trachta said a fatal overdose from heroin in November led to borough police setting up the undercover operation. . . .
Trachta didn’t identify the overdose victim at the time, but Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli previously said the victim was 26-years-old.
Nazareth police on Jan. 3 learned from an informant that Tara E. Bealer, 41, of the first block of East Chestnut Street, was selling upward of 50 bags of heroin daily from her home, court records filed by police say. . . .
Nazareth police Commissioner Randall Miller said the borough will continue to investigate and follow-up on other narcotic crimes in an effort to crack down on illegal drugs in the community. Morganelli in a Jan. 5 news conference said the Northampton County Task Force also is cracking down on heroin use in the county.
“There is a growing epidemic of heroin in Pennsylvania,” Morganelli had said.

An epidemic of dead junkies. Because your professor is dealing heroin.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)





 


Category: Crime, Education
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