The Other McCain

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

Space Opera, Skulduggery, and a Stray Draftsman

Posted on | April 28, 2016 | 18 Comments

— by Wombat-socho

The end of tax season ate most the time I usually devote to reading, so it’s only been in the last couple of weeks that I’ve actually had any time to fire up the Kindle or thumb through a book off my (not nearly numerous enough) shelves. Finished Vaughn Heppner’s The Lost Colony first; it’s a decent enough sequel to the first three books in his “Lost Starship” series, even if it didn’t go where I thought it was going. Captain Maddox and the crew of the starship Victory are off to save humanity again, this time despite a force of infiltrating androids replacing humanity’s leaders, the machinations of the New Men, and the possibly lethal lures laid out by Professor Ludendorff. Good brain candy, and quite possibly better reading than at least one of the Hugo-nominated novels this year.

Speaking of which, the nominations are out, and our Supreme Dark Lord has some amusing things to say about them and the entirely predictable reactions by marginally talented hacks like John Scalzi. Also, links to an interview and Reddit AMA with Chuck Tingle, author of the Hugo-nominated “Space Raptor Butt Invasion”. Must be read to be believed. The International Lord of Hate had rather less to say, but as usual, he’s right. I’m not even going to speculate on how it’s going to turn out; I have better things to spend $50 on than a MidAmericon II membership, and with the Dragon Awards coming out, the Hugos are soon going to be as irrelevant to fandom and the SF market as (sadly) the Neffies.

Meanwhile, back at my Kindle, Marko Kloos’ fourth novel, Chains of Command, is out. I read most of it on the way up to Minneapolis, the remainder on the way back, and I’m giving serious thought to re-reading it this weekend. It is, of course, the latest volume in the “Frontlines” series, describing the war between -very recently united- humanity and the alien Lankies, who up to this point have been having it all their own way against the divided and technologically inferior monkey-boys. Our hero Andrew Grayson is bored, playing platoon sergeant for a basic training unit in the same base he originally trained at a lifetime ago, when he gets tapped for the special ops mission to end all special ops missions. You’ll recall that toward the end of the previous novel, a big chunk of the North American Commonwealth’s senior leadership (civilian and military) did a bunk to points unknown, taking a dozen combat ships and transports full of the leaders’ families? Seems the traitors’ bolthole’s been found, and a legend in the NAC special ops community wants Grayson to lead a platoon of Spaceborne Infantry troopers under his command to get those ships back for the impending invasion of Lanky-held Mars. It’s a similar theme to Heppner’s novel, but Kloos is a very different writer and this book goes in a very different direction. If you liked the first three “Frontlines” novels, you’re going to like this one too.

This week’s moldy oldie is Keith Laumer’s The Time Bender, recently republished for the Kindle by Hachette’s Gateway imprint. The Time Bender in question is Lafayette O’Leary, a draftsman whose dabbling in autohypnosis slides him from Colby Corners to Artesia, a pumpernickel principality with a dragon problem that the locals think O’Leary’s the man to solve.  Unfortunately for O’Leary, his propensity for coming unstuck in time and ability to tweak the local reality rapidly makes the dragon just one of many lethal problems he needs to solve. It’s a lighthearted fantasy, with occasional dark hints of what was to come in Dinosaur Beach, and the original DAW edition with the Kelly Freas cover is available if you don’t feel like buying e-books from Hachette.


Category: Books

Feminism Is a Synonym for ‘Shut Up’

Posted on | April 28, 2016 | 49 Comments

A major goal of feminism is to silence opposition. Because their ideology cannot withstand informed and articulate criticism, feminists therefore require a dishonest vocabulary of jargon that functions to disqualify and discredit their opponents. A man expressing disagreement with a feminist will invariably be accused of “sexism” or “misogyny,” and if he persists in his criticism, he will be accused of “harassment.” What these terms actually mean — other than as pejorative labels, deployed to smear the movement’s enemies — is seldom examined. It is quite often the case that men who ostensibly support feminism engage in abusive behavior toward women (e.g., Jian Ghomeshi), whereas men who oppose the movement are branded “misogynists” for no other reason than their willingness to state their criticism honestly and openly.

 

Do you see how Anita Sarkeesian deploys the term “harassment” here to suggest that any disagreement with her is harassment? The only reason anyone might dispute her “critique,” we are supposed to believe, is that those who disagree with her do not give “women the benefit of the doubt” — they are prejudiced against women — and therefore are engaged in “subtle harassment.” This rhetorical tactic is an implied threat, intended to intimidate any would-be critic of Sarkeesian, who will be accused of harassment if he does not enthusiastically agree with everything she says.

Feminists have used this kind of dishonest rhetoric for so long that it is seldom recognized as what it is, a propaganda tactic of psychological warfare. Consider, for example, the circular logic of “Lewis’ Law.” This was stated on Twitter by British feminist Helen Lewis in August 2012: “The comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.”

 

In other words, the way people respond to feminist arguments proves that feminist ideology is correct. The basic error of this is to assume that ignorant or offensive comments posted on an Internet article — expressions of “sexism,” which Ms. Lewis sees as justifying her cause — are representative of some larger social problem, rather than demonstrating something about the quality of Internet commenters. Suppose, for example, that Helen Lewis makes a particularly stupid argument that men find insulting, e.g., “Yes, there is one great contribution men can make to feminism: pick up a mop,” which was the headline on a Guardian column Ms. Lewis published in January. How you expect men to respond to such an insult? Do you think the average fellow, confronted with such a headline, will sit down and compose a thoughtful 700-word column in reply? Or do you expect him to say something rude about Ms. Lewis as a person? Does a rude comment prove anything?

 

The man who responds to Ms. Lewis’ arguments by making rude personal comments about her has proven nothing at all, but certainly his rudeness cannot be cited as evidence that her arguments are correct. Is feminism nothing but a movement to prevent men from saying rude things to women? Are feminists primarily concerned about courtesy? Is “mind your manners” the sum and essence of feminist ideology?

Perhaps Ms. Lewis should give her lectures on civility to the obstreperous feminists who heckled Christian Hoff Sommers during an event this week at the University of Massachusetts:

AMHERST — When three conservatives sought to speak about freedom of speech at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, they drew shouted insults, apparently from students at the state’s premier public university. . . .
Hoff Sommers [was] met with shouts of “racist” from members of the audience even before she spoke. Hoff Sommers, a Democrat and former professor of philosophy at Clark University in Worcester, is the author of numerous books, including “Who Stole Feminism?”, “The War Against Boys” and “One Nation Under Therapy.”
“Stop talking to us like children!” shouted one person from the audience as she tried to begin.
“Stop acting like a child and I will,” replied Hoff Sommers, who is now a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Throughout the evening, audience members interrupted speakers, accused panelists of being racist, yelled catcalls and insulted them while asking questions.

If you have seen video of this event, you know there was one particularly obnoxious female student who kept yelling rude things at the top of her lungs. Professor Sommers addressed her directly:

“I am here to provide some adult supervision. [heckler: “Racist!”] Calm down young lady. The correct word for contemporary Third Wave campus feminism is not cancer, but madness — utter madness.”

After further interruptions, Professor Sommers joked about the heckler, “I invited her here as a demonstration of utter madness.” Someone edited video of the heckler into a looped digital file:

Now, a man might respond to that video clip by remarking that the young woman is unattractive, and that would be a sexist thing to say. (How dare you objectify her with the male gaze?) Of course, the UMass student’s deranged tantrum would be no less offensive if she were good-looking. We have seen this in the case of “Free the Nipple” activist Tiernan Hebron — not a bad-looking woman, but hopelessly crazy, and using feminist rhetoric to rationalize her bizarre and self-destructive behavior.

Arguments must stand on their own merits, rather than being accepted or rejected on the basis of whether the people making the argument are attractive and well-mannered. We should not mistake good looks or good manners for evidence that someone is also wise and honest. And this is what is wrong with Lewis’ Law. People say rude things in Internet comments because this is just a quick and easy way for them to express disapproval. The problem with feminism is that, after more than 40 years of the movement’s increasing influence in our culture, there are very few educated and articulate people who are both (a) adequately qualified to criticize feminism and (b) in a position to publish such criticism.

The fact that my popular @rsmccain Twitter account was suspended after I was accused of “participating in targeted abuse,” shows why articulate critics of feminism are so few. Only because I am a freelance journalist with 30 years’ experience behind me — therefore not dependent on any editor’s approval and utterly unconcerned with damage to my future career prospects — have I been able to undertake the “Sex Trouble” project to research and explain radical feminism. Yet this has not prevented feminists from attempting to silence me by falsely accusing me of “harassment” or other malfeasance. Feminism’s hegemonic control of academia, as demonstrated by the psychotic behavior of UMass feminists when confronted by such critics as Professor Sommers, is a direct target of my research. Under the policies that now prevail on campus, no critic of feminism may be employed as a university professor. This means that our institutions of higher education are now engaged in ideological indoctrination, and every “educated” person is expected to embrace feminism. This has an enormous influence in the news media, where college education is a prerequisite to employment, so that no person skeptical of feminist ideology is likely to be employed as a reporter, editor or producer. To those employed in academia or journalism, feminists have a monopoly on truth, and all critics of feminism are simply ignorant.

Having thus gained control of both the education system and the dominant channels of public communication, feminists now become indignant whenever they encounter any direct expression of opposition: “How dare this person criticize me? This is misogyny! Harassment!”

“Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself . . . she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, 1786

Ideas Have Consequences, as Richard Weaver warned us, and if feminist ideas have harmful consequences, shouldn’t we be allowed to say so? When feminists are publicizing their herpes infections, can critics of feminism not even be allowed to say, “We told you so?”

 

Well, “slut-shaming” is impermissible, according to feminists. This means everyone is required to celebrate promiscuity as “liberation,” and never mind the devastating harms women experience as a result. Our daughters are expected to follow the advice of feminists like Jaclyn Friedman (“I’ve Gone Down and Dirty With Strangers”) and anyone who disapproves of such immoral hedonism is denounced as a misogynist.

Do proponents of good ideas need to silence their critics? Don’t we generally find that those who advocate bad ideas are most intolerant of opposition? Evil can never tolerate good and liars cannot stand the truth. This is why feminism is a synonym for “shut up.”





 


Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 04.28.16

Posted on | April 28, 2016 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Feminists, SJWs Flip Out Over U. Washington Cheerleader Tryout Poster
Da Tech Guy: Donald Trump As Hal Chase
The Political Hat: The White Privilege Myth – In Academia, In The Military, And In Incessantly Idiotic Pop Music
Michelle Malkin: Beyonce’s Beehive Of Bombastic Buffoons
Twitchy: Get ‘Em While They’re Hot! Hillary Unveils Latest Fundraising Gimmick
Shark Tank: Rubio’s Push To Extend Venezuela Sanctions


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: New From David Horowitz – Progressive Racism
American Thinker: Stand Up To Left-Wing Activist Bullies
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Allegiance By Kermit Roosevelt
Don Surber: ICE Releases 208 Murderers
Jammie Wearing Fools: Shocker – Black College Students Busted For Racist “White Power” Drawing
JustOneMinute: Obama Busted
Pamela Geller: Threats Of Throat-Slitting And Slaughter – Christian Persecution In Swedish Asylum Centers
Protein Wisdom: Scripps Students Say Hating White People Is Legitimate
Shot In The Dark: Like Protesting, But For Upper-Class Kenwood/Crocus Hill Matrons
STUMP: Stupidity Roundup – Funded Ratios And Racial Proportions
The Jawa Report: Netroots Guerrilla Marketers Take Down Bernie’s Facebook
The Lonely Conservative: Boehner Thinks Cruz Is “Lucifer” But Trump’s A Great Pal
The Quinton Report: George Takei’s Latest Slur
This Ain’t Hell: And The Hits Just Keep On Coming For The VA
Weasel Zippers: GDP 0.5%
Megan McArdle: Go Ahead, Make Your Own Cronut
Mark Steyn: Captain Quantum Says “I Got Nuttin'”


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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 04.27.16

Posted on | April 27, 2016 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Hillary Clinton – Will The Veil Be Lifted?
Da Tech Guy: John Ruberry – Obama The Internationalist Sticks His Nose Into UK Politics
The Political Hat: Table Of Oppression And Privilege Revisited
Michelle Malkin: Never Believe A Hollywood Lib Threatening To Leave America
Twitchy: Professor POTUS Of “Pen And Phone” Fame Tries To Teach GOP Senators Supreme Court 101
Shark Tank: Corrine Brown Appeals Her Case To SCOTUS


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: ICYMI Yesterday – Andrea Tantaros’ Tied up In Knots
American Thinker: Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity
BLACKFIVE: War Hawk By James Rollins And Grant Blackwood
Don Surber: Klansmen For Clinton Rise Again
Jammie Wearing Fools: State Department Hid Key Clinton Benghazi E-mail From Judicial Watch
Joe For America: Michelle Obama’s War On Religious Freedom
JustOneMinute: The Desolation Of Smug
Pamela Geller: Muslim Migrant Sex Attacks Increase In Austria
Protein Wisdom: Federal Court Rules That Biological Sex Is A Myth
Shot In The Dark: Some Say A Man Ain’t Happy, Until A Man Truly Dies
STUMP: Public Pensions Roundup – What’s In Meep’s Mailbag?
The Jawa Report: Security Guards Stop Children From Singing National Anthem At 9/11 Memorial
The Lonely Conservative: Wisconsin Establishment Turns On Cruz In Delegate Selection
The Quinton Report: Baltimore Sun Finally Corrects Jack Mehoff Story
This Ain’t Hell: SP4 Jonathan Sweeney Saving The World
Weasel Zippers: EPA Continues To Implement Global Warming Plan Struck Down By Supremes
Megan McArdle: Social Security Or Savings? Um, Try A Little of Both
Mark Steyn: Steyn Versus The Big Climate Enforcers


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Category: Linkagery

The ‘Oppression’ of the Elite

Posted on | April 27, 2016 | 40 Comments

Scripps College is an elite private women’s school in California with an enrollment of fewer than 1,000 students who pay annual tuition of $49,152. Last summer, two Scripps students “spent approximately 500 hours creating a 217-page ‘Unofficial Scripps Survival Guide’ intended to help new students acclimate to the college,” and this publication included some remarkable claims:

The Scripps Survival Guide defines “White Privilege” as “the set of unearned benefits white people gain as a result of systematic racism and discrimination” that “benefits even those white people who are disadvantaged by other forms of institutionalized oppression like ableism, classism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.”
The authors add that “asking people of color to educate us about racism,” “asking people of color to absolve us of our guilt,” and “identifying the ways that we are engaging in the perpetuation of white supremacy” are all things that “we need to stop doing right now.” In a section titled “Dear white students,” they elaborate that “[r]everse racism cannot exist because white people maintain power over people of color” and “because there are no institutions that were founded with the intention of discriminating against white people on the basis of their skin [color].” . . .
[C]reating segregated safe spaces is simply “the least we can do” for non-white students.
“Anger is a legitimate response to oppression,” the authors state in their letter to white people, “as is sadness, fear, frustration, exhaustion, and a general distaste or hatred of white people.”

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) An obvious question: Exactly how much “oppression” can any girl suffer at an elite college like Scripps? Isn’t the very fact that she is enrolled at such a ritzy school testimony to her privileged status? Or is Scripps College awarding full scholarships to underprivileged and downtrodden girls from underclass backgrounds? Are many girls coming “straight outta Compton” to Scripps? And are the other students — the rich girls spending Daddy’s money to the tune of $49,152 a year — so invested in “white supremacy” that “people of color” feel “fear” and “hatred” in their presence? Here’s more:

Jocelyn Gardner ’17 remembers being a bit overwhelmed by orientation as a first-year. “It was hard to absorb everything,” she recalls.
Now Scripps students have an extra resource to help them acclimate to campus life. The first-ever Unofficial Scripps College Survival Guide, a 217-page manual spearheaded by Gardner, is available on The Scripps Voice website. . . .
The idea for the unofficial guide originated with a small group of Scripps students in spring 2015; Gardner, the mental health columnist at The Scripps Voice, began leading the project over the summer. Her roommate, Lucienne Altman-Newell ’17, edited the guide. . . .
“It can take a long time to adjust to a new environment,” Altman-Newell observes. “We want to make sure that first-years have all of the information they need in one place and help them feel like they are already at home here.”

Ms. Gardner and Ms. Altman-Newell, wringing their little hands over “people of color” oppressed by “the perpetuation of white supremacy,” there in their enclave in sunny Southern California, for $49,152 a year.

Scripps College: Teaching Rich Girls to Hate Daddy Since 1926!

 

Category: Education

What Is This? Was #GamerGate About Fake Victims Faking Fake Harassment?

Posted on | April 27, 2016 | 22 Comments

Allum Bokhari at Breitbart:

Was Zoe Quinn GamerGate all along? Or, at least, its so-called “harassing” element — those who were accused of sending anonymous death threats and abuse to the feminist video games designer?
That’s the conclusion drawn by SpliceToday contributor Todd Seavey, after an extraordinary week in which Candace Owens, the founder of an anti-cyberbullying project, accused Quinn and her longtime feminist ally Randi Harper, of instigating a “cyber-terrorist” mob against her.
It should come as no surprise if Harper were involved with online hate-mobs. As Breitbart has highlighted in the past, the feminist web campaigner — who, amazingly, also claims to be an “anti-abuse” activist — has left a trail of victims in her wake around the web. Numerous individuals, ranging from data scientist Chris Von Csefalvay to tech mogul Vivek Wadhwa, have faced massive, coordinated attack campaigns from anonymous Internet users after tangling with Harper. In Csefalvay’s case, these extended to death and rape threats against both him and his wife.
Yet the involvement of Quinn, who has a (slightly) less notorious reputation than Harper, is interesting. For those who missed last year’s GamerGate controversy, Quinn is a feminist video games designer who claims to be one of the foremost victims of online abuse: the target of a year-long campaign of anonymous harassment that she claims “ruined her life.”
As a result of this alleged abuse — for which no-one has been arrested, and has never been traced back to a real person — Quinn has received thousands of dollars in donations from sympathetic users of the crowdfunding site Patreon. She also secured a book deal to write about her ordeal at the hands of anonymous internet meanies, and, despite remaining unpublished, Hollywood executives already want to adapt it into a movie — starring Scarlett Johansson.
Quinn was even invited to the United Nations to discuss her tribulations.
If that’s victimhood, I wonder what its opposite looks like.

Hmmmm. Todd Seavey’s column at SpliceToday:

One unfortunate thing about the battles between online feminists (such as Zoe Quinn) and online anti-feminists (such as the #GamerGate movement) is that explaining them always gets so complicated, in part due to the use of online aliases and fakery. The truth is unlikely to be followed by any normal, sane person who isn’t obsessed with the details.
So here’s the one-paragraph version of the latest (and it’s still longer than one might wish): It appears online feminist Zoe Quinn doesn’t just fake harassment against herself (as was long suspected) but, far more creepily, actively harasses other people. And not just any people but specifically those dedicated to exposing anonymous online harassers—most likely because that would expose Quinn and many of her cronies.

This is a stunning accusation, but not an unreasonable deduction from what happened to Candace Owen and Social Autopsy, evidently targeted by Quinn and Randi Harper for a smear campaign when it appeared that Social Autopsy might rival the Quinn/Harper project Crash Override. If what has been alleged in that incident is true, then Quinn and Harper are certainly willing to use online fakery to attack their enemies, and the possibility that much of the “harassment” attributed to #GamerGate was actually fake — perpetrated by anti-#GamerGate activists in a sort of digital Reichstag fire — is not really all that farfetched.

SJWs Always Lie, as someone has pointed out.

We shall monitor these developments . . .

 


Category: Conspiracy Theories

What #GamerGate Should Teach Us (But @JesseSingal Refuses to Learn)

Posted on | April 27, 2016 | 40 Comments

The world does not divide along neat political lines, but the temptation toward what Julian Sanchez dubbed epistemic closure is one that too many journalists are unable to resist. To approach the news from a perspective of partisanship — “Does this help Our Side?” — is the kind of error that leads to Walter Duranty acting as a propaganda agent for Stalin’s regime. Perhaps being an apologist for Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian, Sarah Nyberg and Randi Lee Harper isn’t an error as dangerous as Duranty’s cover-up of the Ukrainian terror-famine, but those responsible for the one-sided coverage of #GamerGate in the liberal media still don’t understand how they got it so wrong.

Let’s go back to WikiLeaks and #Anonymous, OK? Nearly the entire Left, and their comrades in the liberal media, were deeply prejudiced in favor of Julian Assange’s operation and so, when the hackers of #Anonymous sprang into action to defend Assange, the media portrayed #Anonymous as self-evidently heroic. On the other hand, I saw #Anonymous as a criminal conspiracy — DDOS attacks and other hacker exploits against banks, etc. — and my negative view was ultimately vindicated, when several of these hackers were exposed, arrested and prosecuted. The mythology of heroic hackers did not reflect who these people actually were in real life, and the attempt to justify their criminality on political grounds was a punk move: “Society made me do it! Blame society!”

Oddly, the same media that celebrated #Anonymous as heroes circa 2011 was eager to believe, in 2014, that #GamerGate were a bunch of reactionary misogynists, even though it was basically the same crew. Can we admit this, please? The same kind of nerd/geek dudes — the 4chan crowd — whose digital swarming tactics made #Anonymous such a ferocious force were also largely pro-#GamerGate. It’s weird how, in retrospect, the liberal media were all in favor of nerdy antisocial misfits when they could be fitted neatly into a progressive narrative and construed as heroic underdogs. It was like the #Occupy movement, really. Once you got past the liberal media hype, who were the dudes camping in Zuccotti Park? Losers full of self-pity, rationalizing their personal failures with left-wing politics. If you can sell the media on your narrative, journalists will help you conceal the disconnect between your heroic image and your grubby reality, the same way Walter Duranty concealed the truth about Stalin. And this factor — the willingness to tell a story a certain way, to fit a liberal narrative — got turned around against #GamerGate in a classic example of how media bias works.

Portraying #GamerGate as anti-feminist, and depicting the SJWs (social justice warriors) as victims of misogynistic “harassment,” the media was willing to ignore key questions: Who were the SJWs? Were their motives altruistic or selfish? Was it not the case that a lot of the SJWs were, by their own admission, afflicted with mental illness? Weren’t a lot of SJWs basically no-talent losers, trying to cash in by wrapping themselves in a costume of feminist victimhood? And wasn’t it true that #GamerGate exposed some rather shady connections between various SJW types and journalists covering the videogame industry?

My friend Beth Haper encouraged me to take a sustained interest in #GamerGate, the origins of which controversy are famously tangled, and the significance of which is not generally understood. At the time Beth called my attention to it, I had zero idea who Anita Sarkeesian was, or how her “critical theory” attack on the videogame industry related to my research into radical feminism, as Beth assured me it did. Now these connections seem obvious to me in a way they did not in the fall of 2014.

For conservative journalists, every story is ultimately a media bias story. If the mainstream media weren’t biased, there wouldn’t be any reason to try to expose the truth that gets omitted from the mainstream media. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that I actually am a journalist, and not an ideological ax-grinder or a professional “activist” type. My habit has always been to immerse myself completely in whatever story I’m covering — The Gonzo Way — and it takes an effort to step back and obtain some emotional distance from whatever it is I’m currently obsessed with. Tomorrow or next week, there will be another story for me to dive into, and I’ll forget all about this. Occasionally, a friend will remind me of a story I covered two or three years ago, and it seems like another lifetime. The Kaitlyn Hunt controversy of 2013, for example — I dug so deep into that, and now who even remembers it? But I digress . . .

The “Social Autopsy” controversy erupted on the periphery of #GamerGate this month. Basically, an entrepreneur named Candace Owens had an idea for an anti-bullying site which she hoped to fund with Kickstarter. Because the description of her project seemed to overlap SJW concerns about online harassment, Owens drew the attention of Zoe Quinn, Randi Lee Harper and other enemies of #GamerGate. Basically, it seems, SJWs perceived Owens as a competitor in the “stop harassment” racket Quinn & Co. have successfully exploited. Whether or not Owens’ project was a good idea is largely irrelevant to what ensued, namely that Quinn & Co. ganged up against Owens, and some media friends of the SJW crowd tried to spin the story in Quinn & Co.’s favor.

Here, let me quote the Encyclopedia Dramatic version of it:

Naturally, such a venture [as Owens’ site “Social Autopsy”] would create competition for Quinn and Harper’s golden goose, Crash Override. Quinn responded to this threat to her victimbux by dogpiling the creator’s Twitter. After this uncomfortable fact was exposed, Quinn renamed one of her dozens of Twitter accounts, @primeape which totally doesn’t make her look guilty. Harper responded by composing an angry blog post at Medium.com admitting that she and Quinn colluded in an ill-advised and probably illegal scheme to get Social Autopsy’s Kickstarter shut down. . . .
Corrupt “journalist” Jesse Singal reached out to Owens claiming he would write a neutral piece for New York Magazine, a formerly respectable magazine, now desperately trying to hang on to some degree of relevance. Turns out he is BFFs with Quinn and Harper, even participating in the harassment received by Owens, and he instead penned a hitpiece on Owens.

Is that account entirely fair and accurate? I can’t vouch for all of it, but it’s a concise summary of how Jesse Singal disgraced himself in an effort to spin the Quinn/Harper attack on Owens as something other than what it self-evidently was. Singal evidently divides the world into neat mental categories, where anyone who is against #GamerGate is fighting on the side of the angels, and this led him to write a story that concealed how Quinn/Harper had collaborated to sabotage Owens’ project.

JESSE! WAKE UP! THEY’RE CRAZY!

This is where being old enough to remember the 1960s and ’70s comes in handy. Get enough radicalism churning in society, and you’ll find that kooks come out of the woodwork to attach themselves to “social justice” movements. Really, how was it that “civil rights” gave way to the criminal thuggery of the Black Panthers? How did “peace and love” lead to the Manson Gang? Where did the Symbionese Liberation Army get the idea that assassinations, kidnapping and robbing banks was the way to go? And why did all those dimwits follow Jim Jones to Guyana, huh?

“Social justice,” you see, is a magnet for kooks.

If you haven’t read Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer, now would be a good day to remedy your ignorance of how “mass movements” operate, and the kind of kooks and misfits and hustlers who predictably flock to whatever the trendy “cause” of the avant-garde might currently be. This problem was overlooked by the liberal media who jumped aboard the SJW  bandwagon, condemning #GamerGate as a bunch of misogynists engaged in harassment. Over and over again, we found SJWs with biographies that seemed rather problematic. When you find ex-strippers and transvestites and people with chronic mental problems clustering up around a “social justice” movement, expect bad things to happen. When such people invite you to participate in their persecution complexes, a wise person will say, “No, thank you.”

Jesse Singal and some other liberal journalists were incautiously sympathetic toward the kooks and hustlers of SJW-ism.

Kaine Damo lays out the problem quite clearly:

We have been asked by mass media to trust this person [Zoe Quinn]. And when we say we don’t, if we dissent from their narrative, we get labelled harassers, sexists, a hate group, on and on.
GamerGate is a microcosm of a much larger problem with media. Every single day these supposedly reputable establishments give us reasons NOT to trust them. They deserve our skepticism. When media was banging the Iraq war drum it was obvious to any one that an outlet like Fox News had a focused agenda to push. The fact is, this is true of all major media outlets. They all have fallible people who fail to fact check, they all have friends to cover for, they all have their own agendas to push, and so they all need to be treated with skepticism. This is why GamerGate archives everything.
The same media that is telling you to believe Zoe Quinn is telling you that the gaming community and wider geek community is laden with misogynists, many of whom are intent on driving women out of gaming altogether, and video games contribute to sexist attitudes. This is a false moral panic, constructed by a handful of people, a convenient scapegoat to label dissenters from their narrative as terrible human beings and to use emotional manipulation for profit.

Bingo! A “false moral panic, constructed by a handful of people” — and where is the skepticism toward the motives of SJWs? Why are journalists willing to believe that Zoe Quinn is a selfless altruist? Why is it that, when #GamerGate says such people are con artists turning “social justice” into a corrupt racket, this makes #GamerGate the villain of the story?

People need to wake the hell up. Kooks are dangerous.

UPDATE: Was #GamerGate About Fake Victims Faking Fake Harassment?

 

Category: Media Bias

Feminism: It’s About SCIENCE!

Posted on | April 26, 2016 | 92 Comments

 

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.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply . . .”
— Genesis 1:27-28 (KJV)

Science and the Bible are not really in disagreement about sex. Godless atheists enjoy denouncing Christianity as “superstition,” but insofar as successful reproduction and child-rearing are concerned, do we find that Darwinism actually has anything to teach us? And am I the only one who has noticed that the fanatical advocates of Darwinism generally don’t do much in the way of reproducing the species? Having announced the Death of God in 1966, making godlessness the basis of their worldview, the secular elite now claim to worship at the altar of Science, and you might expect that pursuing a “survival of the fittest” strategy would lead these devout disciples of Darwin to procreate abundantly. Alas, no.

 

Those who imagine that they can kill God simply by not believing God exists are not as scientific as they claim to be. After all, if God does exist, his existence is independent of human belief, and therefore the logic of atheism is highly irrational. Atheists begin their argument with the conclusion — “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1 KJV) — then seek evidence to support that conclusion, and confirmation bias always leads them to believe they are correct.

The motive for this search, of course, is that fools wish to live in a godless world where they can pursue their own selfish desires without limits. If God does not exist, there are no rules, you see. Atheism therefore attracts to its banner immoral hedonists and greedy materialists, as well as power-mad totalitarians who want to dictate their own rules to the rest of us without regard for any eternal standard of Right and Wrong. If we are Beyond Good and Evil, as Nietzsche believed, then everything is simply about The Will to Power and, once people start thinking this way, it is only a matter of time before the Panzer divisions are rolling across the Polish frontier and the Stukas are dive-bombing Warsaw.

The lessons of the 20th century, however, have not been properly taught in our schools, and so our university campuses are nowadays under the administration of godless fools, who sometimes seem shocked to discover that their students are dangerous totalitarians. It turns out, quite routinely, that the atheist decides the Meaning of Life is “Give me what I want” and “Do what I say,” a philosophy of selfish irresponsibility.

Marriage and parenthood are not very compatible with such a philosophy, which is why the godless so often fail to reproduce. Nietzsche, of course, died a lunatic, most likely as a result of tertiary syphilis, and more recently Michel Foucault died of AIDS, but it is among feminists that we find the perfect philosophical expression of the Culture of Death.

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? This feminist argument has been obvious for many decades:

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

That quote from my book Sex Trouble (pp. 109-110) is not merely a summary of arguments by Denise Thompson, who is author of the 2001 book Radical Feminism Today. All she did was to describe a phenomenon that may be observed by anyone who studies feminism. Whatever else her ambitions include, if a woman desires to find a husband and have babies, there are obvious limits to how far she can go in supporting feminism, because the feminist movement is anti-marriage and anti-motherhood.

 

Feminism is fundamentally an anti-male ideology, and therefore is ultimately also an anti-heterosexual ideology. Whether or not the young woman who joins the feminist movement begins with any inclination toward lesbianism, she will discover that her commitment to the movement’s ideology makes it difficult for her to find happiness in heterosexual relationships. The kind of men who seek women as wives — romantic men, those who hope to find lasting love in a permanent, monogamous relationship — will tend to avoid women who denounce marriage as slavery, an institution of “social subordination.” Likewise, the young feminist will find that her support for the movement tends to exclude from her companionship any man who desires to become a father. Feminism is implacably hostile to motherhood, advocating abortion and contraception, and celebrating childlessness as the ideal expression of women’s liberation from the oppressive yoke of patriarchy. The social consequences of this hostility are obvious.

“Certainly all those institutions which were designed on the assumption and for the reinforcement of the male and female role system such as the family (and its sub-institution, marriage), sex, and love must be destroyed.”
— The Feminists, 1969

“Pregnancy is barbaric.”
— Shulamith Firestone, 1970

“Women’s oppression is based in the fact that she reproduces the species. . . .
“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)

“Women are a degraded and terrorized people. Women are degraded and terrorized by men. … Women’s bodies are possessed by men. … Women are an enslaved population. … Women are an occupied people.”
— Andrea Dworkin, 1977 speech at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in Letters from a War Zone (1993)

“The lesbian liberation movement has made possibly the most important contribution to a future sexual liberation. . . . What the women’s liberation movement did create was a homosexual liberation movement that politically challenged male supremacy in one of its most deeply institutionalized aspects — the tyranny of heterosexuality.”
— Linda Gordon, “The Struggle for Reproductive Freedom: Three Stages of Feminism,” in Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, edited by Zillah Eisenstein (1978)

“The first condition for escaping from forced motherhood and sexual slavery is escape from the patriarchal institution of marriage.”
— Alison M. Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (1988)

“Woman’s biology oppresses her only when she relates to men. The basis of the inequality of the sexes here is seen as the inequality inherent in heterosexual intercourse as a result of sex-specific anatomy. To transcend or avoid this in personal life by having sexual relations only with women — lesbianism — eliminates the gender-based underpin­nings of sexual inequality in this view. . . . 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)

“To the extent that women harbor negative attitudes toward lesbians and lesbianism, we demonstrate identification with men. To the extent that women express negative attitudes toward lesbians in our words and deeds, we strengthen patriarchy.”
— Dee Graham, Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Lives (1994)

“The term motherhood refers to the patriarchal institution . . . that is male-defined and controlled and is deeply oppressive to women.”
— Andrea O’Reilly, Feminist Mothering (2008)

“In the early 1970s both gay and feminist movements concurred in critiques of patriarchal, heterosexual institutions, such as the family, and there was a sense of common cause. . . . [A]ddressing the patriarchal structures that shaped family life, revealing women’s discontents with heterosexual relationships . . . feminists laid the foundation for a thoroughgoing critique of heterosexuality . . .”
— Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott, Theorizing Sexuality (2010)

The logical consequences of feminism are not usually apparent to young women when they first join the movement. A young woman feels she is treated unfairly in some way and the promise of “equality” appeals to her, and so she starts calling herself a feminist. She begins reading feminist writers who tell her that she is a victim of oppression, and she learns a vocabulary — “sexism,” “misogyny,” “objectification,” etc. — to describe male behavior she doesn’t like. She develops an attitude of resentment and suspicion, a sort of sexual paranoia that makes it impossible for her to enjoy normal interactions with men. If a man expresses admiration for her beauty, he is objectifying her with the “male gaze.” She despises men who are sexually interested in her, who want to possess her body, to degrade and enslave her in the tyranny of male supremacy.

Her hostility toward “the patriarchal institution of marriage” (Jaggar) may not immediately lead the young feminist to reject “the inequality inherent in heterosexual intercourse” (MacKinnon), yet she must avoid any man who is interested in finding a wife, and she must also renounce any desire to have children, because her “oppression is based in the fact that she reproduces the species” (Small). Having thereby abandoned the kind of scientific understanding of sex that is apparent to any eighth-grade biology student, what purpose is served by her relationships with men? If sex is nothing but immoral hedonism — the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake — then what is a man to her, other than an instrument to serve her own selfish needs? And if a man does not willingly accept this role, if he has needs and purposes of his own, how or why would he possibly be of any interest to a feminist?

A young woman who becomes a feminist as a high school or college student is unlikely to perceive all the implications of her ideology. She aspires to a professional career and, insofar as she thinks of marriage and motherhood at all, these are merely potential choices for the future, activities she might choose to pursue when she’s 25 or 30, once she has gotten her degree and established her career. She therefore must avoid any genuinely serious romantic involvement with her boyfriends, because such a relationship could lead toward “the patriarchal structures” (Jackson and Scott) of the traditional family. In postponing serious relationships with men, the young feminist thereby makes herself unavailable to any man who is interested in finding a wife, and she makes this decision at an age — in her teens or early 20s — when young people normally begin pairing off together, engaged in the process of courtship aimed toward forming lifelong partnerships. Despite the trend toward postponing marriage and parenthood, the typical first-time mother in the United States is about 25, and most American mothers have two children by the time they’re 30. More than 42% of women who eventually become mothers have their first baby before age 25. A woman who delays motherhood thereby diminishes the likelihood that she will ever have any children, and there has been a remarkable increase in childlessness.

 

These trends demonstrate the influence of the feminist movement, which encourages young women to reject sex in its basic scientific meaning, i.e., as naturally related to procreation. Feminism tells young women that they should pursue sex on the basis of immoral hedonism, as pleasure without responsibility. Most young women who adopt this irresponsible attitude do so with the mistaken belief that the choices they make in their teens and 20s will have no permanent consequences. The young feminist believes she can be promiscuous in her youth without impairing her ability to find a husband later, and that she can choose to postpone motherhood without any increased risk of childlessness. She believes in equality, and therefore listens to feminist advice. She doesn’t bother to ask what equality may require, or who is giving her this advice.

“I was the editor of my campus sex magazine. I had some one-night stands. I explored my sexuality and what I wanted, and I met a guy at a party and he was amazing. He was super-charismatic and sexy and funny and brilliant and I fell really hard for him. We started seeing each other and then, three weeks later, I woke up with an outbreak of genital herpes.”
— Ella Dawson, September 2015

“The labels I currently use for myself are queer, gay, femme, and homoflexible. (Basically, I’m a lesbian with exceptions.) The label bisexual doesn’t work for me right now. . . . I’m on the asexual spectrum somewhere . . . I don’t experience primary sexual attraction.”
— Miriam Mogilevsky, October 2015

“Only when we recognize that ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’ are made-up categories, invented to control human beings and violently imposed, can we truly understand the nature of sexism. . . .
“Questioning gender . . . is an essential part of the feminism that has sustained me through two decades of personal and political struggle.”
— Laurie Penny, October 2015

“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

Do you suppose many young women would call themselves feminists if they were informed of the character of those who lead this movement? Do you suppose many teenage girls hate babies, identify as “genderqueer,” or look forward to the morning when they wake up with genital herpes? Yet these are the attitudes, beliefs, identities and behaviors that the feminist movement celebrates. This is the “empowerment” and “liberation” that feminism encourages in the name of “equality.”

Those who worship at the altar of Science exhibit a remarkable willingness to ignore any fact that does not fit their theory, and we are not surprised to see strange claims made by those who ignore eighth-grade biology lessons. Feminist Tumblr is full of these young lunatics.

Simple Objective Fact of the Day:
opposite-sex relationships are favored in society because of heterosexism. People in same-sex relationships are allowed to point this out.

Actually, ma’am, “heterosexism” is necessary to “society” because without “opposite-sex relationships,” there would be no “society,” because there would be no people. This is an “Objective Fact” that we are allowed to point out, but even if we never pointed it out, it would still be true.

Because a statistically insignificant fraction of the world’s children are now conceived with the extraordinary assistance of Science, some people seem to believe that “opposite-sex relationships” are as obsolete as VHS tapes, manual typewriters, and vinyl 45-rpm records. Everybody’s gay now, and in the near future, all babies will be conceived in laboratory petri dishes, implanted in hired surrogates who will be paid to give birth, and then this generation of scientifically produced super-babies will be raised by trained experts in government-subsidized daycare centers. It is only the ignorant prejudice of “heterosexism” that causes “society” to expect that children will continue to be produced the old-fashioned way. And now, for some Simple Objective Facts:

Top Ten Countries by Total Fertility Rate
(Average lifetime births per woman)

  1. Niger …………………….. 6.76
  2. Burundi ………………… 6.09
  3. Mali ……………………… 6.06
  4. Somalia ………………… 5.99
  5. Uganda ………………… 5.89
  6. Burkina Faso ………… 5.86
  7. Zambia …………………. 5.72
  8. Malawi …………………. 5.60
  9. Angola …………………. 5.37
  10. Afghanistan …………. 5.33

Excuse me for suspecting that “heterosexism” is still quite prevalent in Burundi and Burkina Faso, Uganda and Afghanistan, and that all births in these countries result from “opposite-sex relationships.” While I suppose there might be some people in Mali or Malawi who could afford the “scientific” method — in vitro fertilization, etc. — why should they bother? These high-fertility societies aren’t suffering from any shortage of mothers and babies, whereas on the other hand . . .

Total Fertility Rates for
Selected Industrial Nations

South Korea …………… 1.25
Japan …………………….. 1.40
Greece ……………………. 1.42
Italy ……………………….. 1.43
Germany ………………… 1.44
Austria …………………… 1.46
Spain ……………………… 1.49
Switzerland ……………. 1.55
Canada ………………….. 1.59
Denmark ……………….. 1.73
Australia ………………… 1.77
Belgium …………………. 1.78
Netherlands …………… 1.78
United States …………. 1.87

The appropriate phrase here is demographic collapse, although “decadence” and “societal death spiral” might work as well.

Making atheism the basis of their belief system, celebrating selfish immoral hedonism as Science, feminists are the Darwinian Dead End.

“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil . . . I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live . . .”
— Deuteronomy 30:15, 19 (KJV)

To reject God is to reject life. The curse is upon them.

Science? It’s so simple any eight-grader could understand it.

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The Sex Trouble project has been supported by contributions from readers. The first edition of Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the War on Human Nature is available from Amazon.com, $11.96 in paperback or $1.99 in Kindle ebook format.





 

 


Category: Contraceptive Culture, Religion, Science, Sex Trouble
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