The Other McCain

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

Crazy #ShoutYourStatus Tweets Reveal What Feminists Want to Teach Your Kids

Posted on | April 9, 2016 | 52 Comments

 

Emily DePasse (@eld3393 on Twitter) calls herself “The Carrie Bradshaw of Herpes” — a reference to the protagonist of Sex and the City — and she’s teaching her beliefs to children at a private school in Baltimore.

DePasse is a feminist who joined the #ShoutYourStatus campaign for Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) Awareness Month, declaring that her herpes infection had not prevented her from having a “fulfilling sex life.” DePasse went so far as to assert that being infected with herpes “actually made my sex life healthier & more satisfying than before.”

Such claims — in effect, “Herpes is good for you!” — might seem startling, but not as startling as the fact that DePasse has been teaching her feminist beliefs to seventh-graders at Baltimore Friends School, an elite private academy where tuition is more than $25,000 a year.

DePasse designed her own sex education curriculum, after she said the opportunity to teach the class “fell into my lap.” Monday, she described how one of the seventh-grade boys in her class, “On his way out the classroom . . . said to me, ‘See you tomorrow Sex Lady.'”

DePasse said she “kicked off” her celebration of STI Awareness Month by talking about her “herpes story” with her students. Thursday, she reflected: “Teaching sex ed this week has taught me that it really, really, REALLY needs to happen over the course of childhood.”

Who is this “Sex Lady” who talks to 12-year-old boys about her herpes infection? DePasse graduated last year from Maryland’s Salisbury University, where she majored in Gender and Sexuality Studies, doing her senior project on “The Secret Sexual Revolution at Salisbury University in the 1960s and 1970s.” Not long after graduating, in July 2015, DePasse was diagnosed with genital herpes, she explained in December:

Twelve weeks after my initial diagnosis, I received the results of my latest blood test: “This test confirms patient has genital herpes, HSV2 +.” I never realized how much it affected my self-esteem until I saw the paper reflecting proof that I carried the virus, officially. That weekend, I drank myself into oblivion. My hangover consisted of spending an entire day in my bed, sleeping, crying, and staring at that f–king piece of paper. Herpes won. I was defeated. I now consider those days as some of the darkest in my life. No one tells you what to do post-diagnosis. For months, I fell asleep reading herpes forums, hoping to educate myself more about the virus that now claimed my body as its home.

DePasse said she was inspired when she “stumbled upon Ella Dawson,” who made headlines in 2015 by declaring that, although she “never had unprotected sex,” she experienced a “tidal wave of shame” when she was diagnosed with herpes. (Condoms don’t prevent herpes or HPV.) Dawson got her degree in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from elite Wesleyan University (annual tuition $48,974) in 2014. Reading about Dawson’s 2015 “herpes disclosure gave me hope that one day, I too would be okay,” DePasse wrote on her blog in December, where she asserted:

It is our terminology and misunderstanding of the virus that leads us to stigmatize the STD and those who carry it. . . .
Friends and family members have seen me struggle navigating life post-graduation and post-diagnosis, and it has been a complete disaster — I have been a complete disaster. There are times when I have been an irresponsible, immature, and sh–ty person over the last six months. I cannot change my actions, or how I handled my herpes diagnosis, but I believe that in sharing my story, I have the potential to change others in similar situations as myself.

In February, DePasse wrote a controversial article at the progressive website Thought Catalog entitled “To The Girls He HASN’T Given Herpes To Yet: This Is For You,” in which she described contact with women she had seen interacting with her ex-boyfriend on social-media sites:

So to the woman who thinks she’s won him over, the woman who thinks she has him hooked, I hope you think again. I hope you put yourself first in this. I know you’re asking questions, I know you’re thinking deeper than what you see. I know your friends are, too (They friend-requested me on Facebook, after all). I know how you feel towards me. I know, he likes your pictures — the selfies, the friends, the seemingly innocent moments — but that’s his game. You think to yourself, “This time must be different. It’s me.” Well my dear, you and every other girl he’s focused on for six months or less. I know we only know one another through twenty-something, social media stalking, but I will be there for you if things ever do go awry.

DePasse complained she had “been painted as a bitter and crazy spirit, an angry feminist” by some critics of that article. Perhaps more troubling is that, like so many others in the feminist movement, DePasse appears to be committed to teaching anti-moral attitudes to children.

The so-called “safe sex” agenda of promoting condom usage, which began as a response to the AIDS epidemic among gay men in the 1980, was embraced by Third Wave feminists in the 1990s. However, the fact that condoms are not effective in preventing the spread of diseases like HPV and herpes was commonly ignored by “safe sex” activists. Furthermore, campaigns aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy rates led some sex educators to encourage young people to engage in oral sex and anal sex, including homosexual activity. While such practices obviously do not cause pregnancy, they can and do spread sexual diseases, and public health officials in recent years have expressed concern about the prevalence of these diseases, particularly among young women and minorities. A 2010 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the herpes rate “was nearly twice as high among women (21%) as men (11%), and more than three times higher among African-Americans (39%) than whites (12%). The infection rate among African-American women was 48%.” For obvious reasons, promiscuity increases the risk of infection, and the CDC found that about 27% of those who reported 10 or more partners are infected with herpes.

DePasse has written at length about her sexual behavior on her “ELD Soul” blog. She attended Our Lady of Good Counsel High School, where tuition is $19,550 a year. Despite attending a Catholic prep school, DePasse explained how “when I first made the decision to have sex” during her sophomore year, “I wrote my mom a letter explaining that I needed to get on birth control.” The next year, she developed an eating disorder, DePasse explained, becoming “skin and bones” at 5-foot-7 and only 99 pounds. “The more emaciated I became, the more powerful I felt,” she wrote, adding that she was subsequently diagnosed with “general anxiety disorder” as a high-school senior:

I began taking Zoloft to assist with my anxiety, especially since I would be headed off to college in the fall. I chose Salisbury University, where my then-boyfriend was attending. Yes, I was that girl, the one who followed her boyfriend to college. We broke up within two months of me being there, and I did not dive into another relationship until my junior year. . . .
Although each of these relationships lasted over a year, I wish I had ended both of them sooner. I always choose to see people for their potential, rather than who they are in the present moment. I often give people more chances than they deserve, especially when it comes to relationships. I have had boyfriends go through my text messages, and even my diary. I have been labeled as a slut and whore in these situations. Although I knew it wasn’t okay then, I still tolerated it. I let it go, and I shouldn’t have. It is evident to me now that I was a victim of emotional/verbal abuse. I sacrificed my identity and my self-worth . . .

Elsewhere on her blog, DePasse has written, “At this point in my life, I do not foresee myself having children, nor do I really want them,” and describes herself as “self-admittedly too selfish to have children.” Feminism has long been hostile toward marriage and motherhood.

 

“Women are an oppressed class. . . . We are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants, and cheap labor.”
— Redstockings, 1969

“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

“The enslavement of women in marriage is all the more cruel and inhumane by virtue of the fact that it appears to exist with the consent of the enslaved group.”
— Sheila Cronan, 1970

“Pregnancy is barbaric.”
— Shulamith Firestone, 1970

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

“Heterosexuality is the structure that keeps sexist oppression in place in the private realm; where sexism in general operates to also oppress in the public sphere. In other words heterosexuality reinforces the hierarchy established by sexism to keep women dominated in ‘sexual interaction, romantic love, marriage, and the family.'”
— “Heterosexuality: The Role it Plays in Feminism and Lesbianism,” 2007

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

“Why do women keep getting married? . . . It’s conceivable somebody could be happy despite being married, but never because they were married. . . .
“Sex and love is the dynamic that keeps women’s oppression going . . .
“Motherhood is a heavily permeated sex role.”
— Ti-Grace Atkinson, 2011

“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, 2014

 

Feminism’s anti-family, anti-marriage, pro-abortion message has been strongly condemned by religious authorities, most recently in a message (Amoris Laetitia, “The Joy of Love”) by Pope Francis. Declaring that “the father and mother, a couple with their personal story of love . . . embody the primordial divine plan,” the Pope denounced abortion: “So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother’s womb, that no alleged right to one’s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life.”

Catholic teachings appear to have had no influence on Emily DePasse since her graduation from Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in 2011. She originally planned to become a teacher, DePasse wrote on her blog, but changed her major as a freshman at Salisbury University after she “found several feminist-focused courses” in the catalog:

At this point in time, I did not even consider myself a feminist, but the topics piqued my interest, so I looked further. Somehow searching through the nooks and crannies of the Salisbury website, I found Gender and Sexuality Studies. The day that I changed my major was the day I started working toward my purpose.

DePasse’s classes included “LGBTQ History,” “Philosophy & Feminism,” “Human Sexuality Education,” “Sociology of Gender,” and “Psychology of Sexuality,” and she did a research project entitled “Here She Comes: The Mechanics of Female Sexuality and Impact on Body Image.”

DePasse apparently got her assignment to teach sex to seventh-graders at Baltimore Friends School through an internship with “If I Knew,” which describes itself on Facebook as a “prevention education project of Jewish Community Services” in Baltimore. DePasse’s promotion of the claim that herpes “made my sex life healthier & more satisfying than before” was apparently inspired by the #ShoutYourStatus campaign:

Writer and social media maven Ella Dawson, along with social work student Kayla Axelrod, freelance writer Britni de la Cretaz, and writer/activist Lachrista Greco started the hashtag #ShoutYourStatus to destigmatize STIs. Their goal is to promote a more open conversation about living with STIs. . . .
“The truth of the matter is, many people are living, and living happily, as STI+ people,” de la Cretaz told Revelist. “Being able to be publicly open about my status as someone with genital herpes is a privilege and I want to use that privilege to help other people feel less alone.”

Britni de la Cretaz is a recovering alcoholic who has described substance abuse as a way women “cope with the weight of living in a white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy.” De la Cretaz has argued that sexually transmitted diseases “should be destigmatized” because people infected with these diseases suffer “discrimination . . . fueled by harmful stereotypes . . . rooted in misinformation and scare tactics.” De la Cretaz says the “myth” that women with sexually transmitted diseases are promiscuous involves “sex-shaming and a whole lot of misogyny”:

Because it literally shouldn’t matter if someone got herpes and had sex with one person or 100 people. When I say we need to break the stigma, I mean for everyone that has it, and not just because some people get it from their first partner.
These narratives exist in the same sphere as our ideas about survivors of sexual violence. We’ve created these non-existent “perfect victims” to determine whose assault is valid and who deserved it based on behavior they were or were not engaging in. . . .
Genital herpes is nothing to be ashamed of whether someone contracted it from their first partner or after a rape or from sex work or from their 200th partner.

The #ShoutYourStatus campaign generated Tweets like these:

 

Conservative columnist Matt Barber wrote that the attitudes of the #ShoutYourStatus feminists reminded him of a Bible verse: “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Philippians 3:10). However, with more than 90,000 students enrolled annually in Women’s Studies and Gender Studies programs at more than 700 U.S. colleges and universities, this feminist agenda is increasingly influential in American society, and is already being promoted to 7th-graders.

 


Category: Education, Sex Trouble

Dear ‘Nice Guys’

Posted on | April 8, 2016 | 117 Comments

While scrolling through Feminist Tumblr today — yes, I read that crap, so you don’t have to — I read yet another denunciation of “nice guys,” which is actually a feminist synonym for loser, particularly a clueless loser who doesn’t know why he keeps losing. In order to rationalize his lack of romantic success, the Nice Guy complains that girls (particularly the good-looking ones he would like to be with) don’t like Nice Guys, a category to which he assigns himself. Instead, according to the Nice Guy, good-looking girls always date jerks, which is a category to which the Nice Guy assigns any guy who is actually dating a good-looking girl.

Now, I despise feminism, and I cannot be accused of sympathizing with these evil hate-mongering women on Tumblr, but young men are not helping matters by saying stupid things that give feminists an excuse to point and laugh: “Hahahaha! Men are such clueless losers!”

Get your act together, and stop blaming women for your problems. Your rationalization is the mirror-reverse of feminist thinking. That is to say, unhappy women don’t want to take responsibility for their own unhappiness, and therefore accept the feminist rationalization that “patriarchy” is the source of their problems: “Blame men!”

This is scapegoating, OK? Don’t be like that. Take responsibility, accept your own shortcomings, and learn to deal with life as it is.

Women don’t always go for jerks. A more logical explanation is that guys who are successful with women often act like jerks, because . . .

Well, if he’s the kind of guy who is naturally successful with women, and he’s never had a shortage of high-quality female companionship, why should he bother making any effort to be considerate?

However, let’s ask, what kind of guys do women really like?

Tall, handsome, rich, muscular — yeah, if a guy’s got the physique of a champion athlete, the looks of a movie star, and the bank account of a successful software developer, he’s not going to be lonely.

What women actually like about guys is not a secret, and if you’re not successful with women, obviously, you’re not an NBA All-Star. A comparatively small number of men — let’s say, the top 15% in terms of overall attractiveness — sail through life without ever worrying about their “game,” as the pickup artists (PUAs) call it. Those guys have had their pick of girlfriends since middle school and, while they might suffer heartbreaks along the way, it’s not like they’re going to have trouble finding a new girlfriend if their current relationship doesn’t work out.

OK, does the natural-born winner act like a jerk? Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t, but the point is, it doesn’t matter how he acts. He’s got what the ladies like, and he does not need to condescend to them in order to attract companionship. So, yes, seen from your perspective as a clueless loser, the winner may seem selfish, cruel and insensitive. However, his rudeness is not why he’s winning and you’re losing, and your Nice Guy rationalizations are never going to change the score of that game.

How ‘Pick-Up Artist’ Philosophy and Its More Misogynist
Backlash Shaped Mind of Alleged Killer Elliot Rodger

That was Amanda Marcotte’s deranged reaction to the May 2014 Isla Vista murder spree committed by a creepy little weirdo who, in his own twisted mind, considered himself the “supreme gentleman.” As I said at the time, this incident in California became a cultural Rashomon, where everybody with access to a computer seemed to feel obliged to share their own interpretation of why the creepy little weirdo was so creepy and weird. In his 141-page “manifesto,” the creepy little weirdo mentioned a girl, the sister of a classmate, on whom he had developed a crush in middle school. This elicited an angry response:

The woman’s father said it was Saturday morning when his 20-year-old daughter realized Rodger had made her part of his sick story.
“She’s devastated by this,” the dad said in a phone interview. “She doesn’t even remember this guy. . . . She’s always been the most delicate kid you’d ever want to meet. For him to call her a bully, this kid was really disillusioned.
“She was 10 years old,” the dad added. “He was two years older than her. He was in my son’s class. She was in the seventh grade and he was in eighth grade. . . . Can you imagine a 10-year-old kid bullying a 12-year-old? This little, petite girl bullying him?”
In his screed, Rodger called his crush an “evil bitch” who “teased and ridiculed” him and “wounded me deeply.”

Elliot Rodger, the “supreme gentleman,” i.e., Nice Guy.

 

One of the weirdest things about Elliot Rodger’s twisted worldview was his fetishistic obsession with blondes. His father was British and his mother was Malaysian. Could we speculate that his fixation on blonde girls was symptomatic of some kind of weird alienation, rooted in insecurity about his mixed ethnic background? What did blonde girls symbolize in his deranged mind? But who can explain madness?

It is usually a mistake to generalize from the example of psycho killers. For example, Lee Harvey Oswald was a Marxist and an assassin; should we start rounding up Marxists? Jeffrey Dahmer was a gay man and a murderous cannibal; should we start rounding up gays? Ted Kaczynski was a Harvard graduate and a terrorist bomber; should we start rounding up Harvard graduates? People who commit horrific crimes can be categorized any number of ways, but the key point is that very few people commit horrific crimes. There are probably quite a few gay Marxists at Harvard, none of whom are mass murderers.

What Elliot Rodger represents is not “misogyny,” but rather how certain patterns of thinking can trap people inside their own failures. If everything wrong in your life is always explained away as somebody else’s fault — if you rationalize your failures by scapegoating others — you have thrown away every tool with which you can solve your problems.

You are your own problem. Nobody else is responsible for whatever personal inadequacy or bad choices explains why you keep failing. Even if you can point to someone who clearly did you wrong, guess what? There’s a long line at the Complaint Desk at Social Justice Wal-Mart, and it’s a waste of time worrying about it. You think you have problems?

After Anal Rape, Left Wing Activist
Felt ‘Guilt And Responsibility’
His Migrant Attacker Was Deported

Hey, at least you didn’t get raped by a Somali refugee. So you’ve got that much going for you. The key to happiness is lowering expectations, so that merely being adequate counts as success. If nothing particularly dreadful happened to you today, that’s a win, see? You got in your car, drove to work, finished your shift, and drove back home. Think of all the terrible things that didn’t happen. You didn’t get flattened by an out-of-control semi truck and die in fiery crash. You didn’t get carjacked by a psychotic crackhead. You didn’t get fired from your job or evicted from your apartment. You’re a winner, man. Well, what about the fact that you’re living alone, eating microwave burritos and have zero luck with the ladies?

Find an angle, my friend. Improve your fitness, hit the gym, do something about your wardrobe and grooming. You are your own problem, and the thing about having zero luck is, you don’t have to improve by much in order to improve infinitely — that’s the difference between zero and one. There are more than 3.5 billion females on the planet and how completely wretched are you, if you can’t find one who would be interested in you? Somewhere in the mountains of Peru or Pakistan, for all you know, there’s a lonely woman in a hut who wishes she could live in a neat little apartment and cook frozen burritos in a microwave.

Get your act together, young man. Solve your own problems and stop blaming women for your problems. It’s not their fault you’re a loser. Here you are in the 21st century, the beneficiary of 7,000 years of successful patriarchal world domination, and you can’t find a woman?

Boy, you’re letting down the team. You think keeping women oppressed is easy? Maintaining hegemonic male supremacy takes teamwork.

The secret — and don’t worry, I’m not disclosing anything the feminists haven’t already figured out — is monogamous pair-bonding. Each man has to find exactly one woman and close the deal. Happily ever after, ’til death do you part, the whole package. Unfortunately, some guys don’t have the kind of team spirit necessary to victory. They want to “play the field,” or cheat on their wives, or in some other way deviate from the time-tested formula for patriarchal success. Consequently, there has been an increase in chaos and misery, and therefore . . . feminism.

“I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.”
— Ronald Reagan, 1981

That, my young friends, is the way a winner thinks. You do not have to accept as inevitable some sort of gloom-and-doom forecast of decline (“The Future of Men: Masculinity in the Twenty-First Century”), no matter what any “expert” tells you about social trends. Whatever the current trend may be, winners win, and losers lose.

Don’t complain about losing, young man. Some guys who think they’re “winners” made the mistake of having sex with feminists, and got herpes.

This is another reason to consider yourself a winner, see? You didn’t have sex with a feminist and thereby avoided an incurable viral disease.

Never have sex with a feminist. You’re better off being alone.

 

Category: Sex Trouble

In the Mailbox: 04.08.16

Posted on | April 8, 2016 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Bill Clinton Chides #BlackLivesMatter Protestors For Being Uppity
Da Tech Guy: Donald Trump Sour Grapes I – Jackie Robinson And Touching The Bases
The Political Hat: The Golden State Tells Californians “Kill Yourselves”
Michelle Malkin: The Dumbest Thing A Congresscritter Wrote This Week
Twitchy: John Kasich Has A Hot Source Who Says He’ll Be The Nominee
Shark Tank: DeSantis Rakes In Millions For FL Senate Campaign


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: 9-Year-Old Reporter Breaks Crime News, Sparks Backlash On Parenting
American Thinker: Catholic School That Invited Pro-Jihad Speaker Doubles Down
Don Surber: Seth Mandel Defends America’s Mayor
Pamela Geller: Professor Fascinated With Islam Takes Family to Syria To Fight For ISIS
Protein Wisdom: Russia Bans Polish Board Game
Shot In The Dark: Better To Signal Virtue Than Be Virtuous
STUMP: Puerto Rico Roundup – Noticing the Disaster
The Jawa Report: Attention Twitter User @Abu_Waahid2
The Lonely Conservative: New York Values Ted Cruz
This Ain’t Hell: Seattle’s Folly – Liberal Democrats Weaponizing Taxes
Weasel Zippers: Philly Hit With Lawsuit Over Concealing Possible Non-Citizen Voters
Megan McArdle: The Panama Papers Actually Reflect Pretty Well On Capitalism
Mark Steyn: The New Man And His Gender Gap


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Category: Linkagery

Death, Destruction, and the Dragon Awards

Posted on | April 8, 2016 | 19 Comments

— by Wombat-socho

I am probably the last person to find out that Dragon*Con, probably the largest non-comics convention in fandom, has finally bestirred itself and created its own set of awards – the Dragon Awards. This has been greeted with much glee by Sad and Rabid Puppies alike, with Declann Finn going so far as to declare victory. I’d say he and our Supreme Dark Lord are probably correct in predicting that the Dragons will almost certainly eclipse the Hugos, given the much larger voting base which makes any kind of gaming the nominations or the final vote futile. Looking forward to seeing how it works out.

Bosch Fawstin has attracted a fair amount of attention for being a “recovered Muslim” and outspoken cartoonist, currently engaged in annoying his former co-religionists by offering to draw Mohammed on Everybody Draw Mohammed Day for people who can’t draw. He’s also gained some notoriety for his comic book series The Infidel, featuring Pigman. I picked up all three issues (the other two books are War of Words and Reprisal) for the Kindle, and was pleasantly surprised that the Kindle Fire does an outstanding job of presenting comics. The Infidel itself is a complicated tale, being at the same time an examination of the divisions between Muslims (and ex-Muslims) played out between twin Albanian brothers and a superhero comic in which Pigman wages a violent counter-jihad against Muslims that comes to a climax in Mecca itself. Fawstin’s style is reminiscent of Frank Miller’s in The Dark Knight Returns, though Killian Duke has far less to work with than Bruce Wayne. It is disturbing, thought-provoking, and very well done; I hope Fawstin has more issues planned.

I wish I could say the same for Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, which I’m very glad I borrowed from the county library instead of blowing eighteen dollars (!) on the Kindle edition. While it starts with an interesting idea – the Moon is hit by a pair of fast, dense objects that break it into many smaller pieces, which threaten humanity with extinction, so a global crash priority effort to expand our presence in space rapidly ensues – the execution is sadly reminiscent of his previous SF novel, the clunky Anathem. Most of the book is taken up with the base of the story: rapid expansion of the International Space Station as an ark for humanity, selection of an elite group of kids from around the world, a tragic mission to retrieve a comet to provide water to the rapidly expanding orbital colony, and a disastrous attempt to reach Mars by a breakaway group of colonists. Many important (and not a few unimportant) characters carry the Idiot Ball in this part of the book, to the point where one begins to yearn for a Heinlein Individual of either sex to just start shooting the assholes causing all the trouble. This unfortunately doesn’t happen, and soon humanity in space is reduced to seven women and a genewriter, which over the course of five thousand years grows to several millions of men and women living in a greatly expanded set of orbital habitats largely built from Lunar rubble. We don’t get any exposition of that part, nor do we get any narrative covering the people hiding under mountains or at the bottom of the sea in submarines. What we do get, as in Anathem, is a hurried final section telling the tale of the orbital folks meeting the undermountain folks and then the undersea folk, with a fair amount of conflict between the two blocks of orbital folk. It’s almost as if Stephenson got bored with the plot and just decided to wrap it up and turn it in; frankly, I would have much rather he just stopped after the council of the Seven Eves. This has been nominated for the Hugo, but frankly, I don’t think it deserves it; if I bother to buy a MidAmericon membership and vote, I’m certainly not going to rank it very highly if I vote for it at all.

Speaking of my county library, apparently somebody in the purchasing department likes the combination of BDSM pornromance and technothrillers that is John Ringo’s “Paladin of Shadows” series, because they have the whole series from Ghost through Tiger By The Tail, which Ringo co-wrote with Ryan Sear. I checked them all out, because they’re decent brain candy, and the proportion of rough sex to balls-out violence diminishes as the series goes on. In addition, Ringo is parceling out information about the Keldara culture bit by bit, and I admit to being very fascinated with it. The series has all been out for a few years by now, so I’m not going to bore you with plot summaries, especially because it’s pretty formulaic: the US has a problem, usually involving WMD (although in Choosers of the Slain, it’s a missing daughter of a political donor with clout) and only the Kildar and his Mountain Tigers have the plausible deniability and sheer “git er dun” to solve that problem. And somehow, wherever they go, the Kildar keeps collecting loose women…many of whom turn out to be real people with useful skills, or at least trainable. Adds some occasionally dark humor to the tales of dirty deeds done in the nastier parts of the Third World…like, say, Disney World. At $6.99 apiece for the Kindle, I may wind up adding these to the electronic part of my library.


Category: Books, Zeitgeist

In The Mailbox: 04.07.16

Posted on | April 7, 2016 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.07.16

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Book post later on tonight featuring (mong others) Bosch Fawstin’s The Infidel, featuring Pigman (3 Book Series).


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: The Schlonged Twins – Now Off To New York
Da Tech Guy: The Virgin Mary Vs. Wendy Davis At Notre Dame
The Political Hat: Socialism For Dummies By A Dummy
Michelle Malkin: Requiem For A VA Victim
Twitchy: Scott Walker Finds Common Ground With Bernie Sanders
Shark Tank: Governor Scott Called A**hole By Veteran Heckler


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Sanders Says Hillary “Not Qualified” To Be President
American Thinker: Trump “Concession” Suggests Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Conservatives4Palin: Bristol Palin Asks, “Azealia Banks, Which Of Your Songs Will Teach Me Your Values?”
Don Surber: Every CEO Wants To Be An SJW This Year
Jammie Wearing Fools: Not A Parody – WaPo Writer Plans To Raise Her Cats Gender-Neutral
Joe For America: Rudy All-In For The Donald
JustOneMinute: On To Panama!
Pamela Geller: Mark Steyn Blisters Leftists Who Mocked Victims Of Muslim Rape Gangs
Protein Wisdom: Why Does PayPal Hate Women?
Shot In The Dark: Roots
STUMP: Chicago Day Of Action – Some Fliers
The Jawa Report: Females Totally Safe In Molenbeek
The Lonely Conservative: AGs In Blue States Begin Inquisition Against Climate Change “Disbelievers”
The Quinton Report: Merle Haggard – Remembering A Legend
This Ain’t Hell: Rainbow Ray And The Navy’s Highest Priority
Weasel Zippers: Dems On FEC Target Conservatives, Vote To Punish Maker Of Anti-Obama Movie
Megan McArdle: Business Bears The Weight Of New York’s Benefits
Mark Steyn: “When Mark Steyn Struck Back”


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Category: Linkagery

Never Take Advice From Feminists

Posted on | April 7, 2016 | 72 Comments

 

Peggy Orenstein is a feminist whose books include Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids and Life in a Half-Changed World (2001):

At 34, Peggy Orenstein faced a series of dilemmas shared by many women of her generation: She was unsure whether she wanted children, unsure about the impact of motherhood on her career, her relationship, and her sense of self. Why, when women seemed to have so many choices, did she suddenly feel that she had none? After feminist liberation and its subsequent backlash, she realized that women’s lives, including her own, were now in a state of flux.

Question: Why would a woman wait until she’s 34 to start thinking about “whether she wanted children”? Quite frankly, by the time a woman is 34, she may be past the point where motherhood is even possible. Infertility is a serious problem affecting women in their 30s, the risk of birth defects is substantially higher for older mothers and, beyond this, there are other considerations to keep in mind. Suppose you become a mom for the first time at age 23. You’ll be 39 when your child turns 16 and gets a driver’s license, and not yet 45 when your kid graduates college. If you delay motherhood until you’re 38, well, just do the math.

Is parenthood a task best performed by the young and energetic, or by weary middle-aged folks? When my wife and I babysit our grandsons, we are reminded, as my wife says, “This is why old people don’t have babies.” Children are a blessing, but every parent knows how exhausting the task can be and, whatever prudential arguments you make in favor of delaying parenthood, you cannot pretend there are no trade-offs.

When my wife and I had our first child, we were living in a $250-a-month rental in Georgia, and struggling to keep up. My father came to visit and, when I mentioned our financial difficulties, Dad said, “Son, if you wait to have kids until you can afford to have kids, you’ll never have kids.”

This is the answer to Peggy Orenstein’s question, “Why, when women seemed to have so many choices, did she suddenly feel that she had none?” Somewhere amid their celebration of women’s “choices,” feminists neglected to consider the inescapable realities of human nature. Time moves in only one direction — forward — and you have only one life to live, and the “choices” available to Peggy Orenstein at 34 were limited by the choices she had made at every previous stage of her life.

“It’s not that we’re stupid. It’s that we’ve been misinformed.”

That quote, from a woman who realized she had lost her chance at motherhood by waiting too long, is the brutal truth behind the myth of “choice.” How did things work out for Peggy Orenstein? After years of struggling with infertility, she gave birth to a daughter, Daisy, in 2003.

The influence of feminism tends to steer individual women, and even entire societies, toward “The Darwinian Dead End,” as I’ve called it. The rhetoric of “choice” and “empowerment” is so strongly associated with declining fertility that, nearly a half-century after the eruption of the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1960s, you might suppose this ideology would have perished along with its proponents.

Shulamith Firestone was found dead, alone in her apartment in 2012, after years of mental illness. Andrea Dworkin died in 2005 after years of health problems caused by her extreme obesity. Just last year, another feminist pioneer reached her final destination:

Longtime NYC-based feminist and lesbian activist Sidney Abbott, 78, was found dead Wednesday morning after a fire in her home in Southold, Suffolk County.
The fire was discovered by her next-door neighbor, an off-duty volunteer firefighter who rushed to the burning Cape-style home and found the former member of the “Lavender Menace” and author of “Sappho Was a Right-on Woman” on the floor of her smoke-filled living room. . . .
Abbott was a force for gay women’s rights in New York and beyond since the ’70s, when she helped urge NOW not to ignore lesbian issues.
She had been wheelchair dependent in recent years, and had limited mobility, said Jacqueline Michot Ceballos, a friend for nearly 50 years.
“We were the earliest members of NOW, from day one in New York City, back in 1967,” said Ceballos, a former NOW-New York president and founder of the Veteran Feminists of America.

What all of these women have in common, in addition to being (a) feminists and (b) dead, is that (c) they never had children.

“Pregnancy is barbaric,” Firestone declared in her influential 1970 manifesto, The Dialectic of Sex, and hostility toward motherhood has been a defining message of the feminist movement for decades.

 

The impact of this anti-natal ideology has been reflected in a decline in birth rates and an increase in childlessness. However, this logical result of the Feminist Death Cult has not been random in its effects. Because feminism is relentlessly promoted in higher education, where university Women’s Studies programs function as the intellectual/activist core of the Feminist-Industrial Complex, the sharpest declines in fertility have been among college-educated women. Consider the Census Bureau data on fertility by educational achievement:

Not a high school graduate
Lifetime births (average) ….. 2.6
Childless ………………………….. 11.6%

Bachelor’s degree
Lifetime births (average) ….. 1.8
Childless ………………………….. 19.9%

High-school dropouts, on average, had 44% more children than women who had college diplomas. Childlessness was 72% more common for college graduates than for high-school dropouts. Over the course of decades, as feminism discourages motherhood among highly intelligent women, fewer children will be born to educated mothers and, inevitably, the overall percentage of children born to less-intelligent mothers must increase. While there is not a total correlation between (a) intelligence and (b) years of school attendance (as college dropouts like Bill Gates prove), data suggesting the “dumbing-down” of motherhood should concern any student of demographics and public policy. (See “The Value of Motherhood” and more about The Contraceptive Culture.) Despite the dangerous consequences of feminism’s bizarre hostility toward normal human behavior, proponents of feminist gender theory now have so much power among the “progressive” elite that the White House on Wednesday held an event about “breaking down gender stereotypes in children’s media and toys” so as to “encourage all of our young people to pursue their passions and interests without regard to their gender.”

What this talk of “stereotypes” means is that the federal government is committed to promoting an anti-human ideology that has caused many young people to become hopelessly confused about their “gender.”

Do you want your child to be a “genderfluid polyamorous demiromantic grey-ace” when they grow up? Probably not. Why do you think feminism in the 21st century attracts so many confused weirdos?

“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, “How to Be a Genderqueer Feminist”

“Right now, today, as of writing this, I identify as queer. But I didn’t always. And no, I’m not referring to that awkward, uncomfortable time in my life where I knew that something felt ‘off,’ but I couldn’t quite place it, and so I paraded around in the charade of ‘straight.’ I mean that a few years ago, I identified as homoflexible. And before that, a lesbian. And even before that, bisexual.”
— Melissa Fabello

“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

Why do you think the Everyday Feminist website, edited by Ms. Fabello, features Ms. Mogilevsky as a columnist, sharing advice like “5 Ways Straight Women Can Be Better Allies to Queer Women”?

If it is “sexism” to believe men and women are different, as Ms. Penny insists, and if feminism teaches that these “made-up categories” are “violently imposed,” then are we surprised that Ms. Fabello condemns heterosexuality as a “charade”? Do we need to speculate why the “homoflexible” Ms. Mogilevsky cannot “experience primary sexual attraction” and thinks it an important task of feminists to teach women how to “be better allies to queer women”?

No, these are all entirely logical consequences of feminist theory. Once “progressive” parents (and schools, and media, and even the White House) decided that there are no meaningful differences between male and female, and that “gender stereotypes” must be destroyed, this kind of pathetic confusion was an inevitable result. When I describe feminism as a War Against Human Nature, does anyone think that this phrase is hyperbole? Am I a misogynist, a bigot, an enemy of “equality”? Or rather is it the case that Ideas Have Consequences, as Richard Weaver warned, and that crazy ideas have crazy consequences?

Never take advice from a feminist, and certainly don’t let feminists tell you how to raise your children. Feminists hate 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

The road to feminism’s utopia of “gender equality” is paved with dead babies. Yet these Death Cult fanatics still expect to be taken seriously when they offer parenting advice to those of us who consider our children a blessing from God. Peggy Orenstein has published a new book, Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape, that is being hyped by the liberal media, including the New York Times:

Advice on Boys and Sex, From
the Author of ‘Girls and Sex’
I invited readers to submit questions to Ms. Orenstein. Amid all the questions about our daughters — how do we talk to them, how do we teach them, how do we protect them — were a flurry of questions about our sons. Ms. Orenstein understood. “Obviously you’re only having half the conversation if you only talk about girls,” she said. “Boys absolutely need to learn the same things.”

Here’s some advice from me: Warn your sons to avoid feminists and, while you’re at it, teach your daughters to avoid feminists, too.

What kind of fool would believe that a feminist like Peggy Orenstein has any useful advice to share about boys, girls or anything else? If you need advice on how to avoid motherhood until your ovaries have nearly withered away, well, I guess maybe she’s an expert on that. On the other hand, if you’d prefer to have children before you’re on the cusp of menopause, and hope that your children will do the same — so that you might become a grandparent before you’re in the nursing home or the graveyard — then maybe you need to seek advice elsewhere.

By the way, since I’m sharing advice here, don’t ever let feminists talk to your kids about sex. Feminists are all perverted freaks — “genderqueer” nutjobs like Laurie Penny, “homoflexible” weirdos like Melissa Fabello, etc. — and guess what? They want your kids to be freaks, too.

“Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon. . . . He is a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don’t listen to him. Remember that — do not listen.”
— The Exorcist (1973)

Anyone who thinks it is an exaggeration to describe feminism as a satanic menace might want to read the 1997 book Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America by Peter Jones. A professor of theology, Professor Jones pointed out that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “spiritual adviser,” Jean Houston, was closely associated with so-called “New Age” paganism. Professor Jones is also author of the 1992 book The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back: An Old Heresy for the New Age, and thus has been warning for more than two decades about this kind of degenerate neo-pagan trend.

Most feminists are atheists, of course, and I doubt Melissa Fabello or Miriam Mogilevsky would describe themselves as “spiritual” in any way. However, it is worth considering a theological understanding of 21st-century feminism, if only because the lunacy of Laurie Penny and the bizarre evil of Amanda Marcotte can scarcely be explained rationally.

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




 

 


Category: Abortion, Family, Religion, Sex Trouble

‘In Canada Alone, There Are 66 Gender and Women’s Studies Departments’

Posted on | April 6, 2016 | 28 Comments

The astonishing fact in the headline — the proliferation of what I’ve called The Feminist-Industrial Complex in higher education — is cited by Professor Janice Fiamengo in her 15-minute YouTube video with the provocative title, “Women’s Studies Must Die.”

These programs in Canadian universities, she explains, employ hundreds of professors, both full-time and part-time, and when you consider that there are roughly 10 times as many Women’s Studies programs at U.S. colleges and universities (now on more than 700 campuses nationwide), you realize that there are now thousands of faculty whose primary occupation is indoctrinating students in feminist ideology.

Women’s Studies programs “have no more place at a university than voodoo,” Professor Fiamengo says, because “these courses are not about knowledge. They’re about theories of oppression and resistance,” many of them taught from radical Marxist, “queer” or postmodern perspectives. “The fundamental tenets of feminism are not up for debate” in Women’s Studies programs, as Professor Fiamengo explains. As I have elsewhere noted, Women’s Studies courses are not about teaching facts, but instead are about training political activists. Cult mind-control methods are employed to induce students to accept “feminist consciousness,” which is essentially a religious faith in women’s universal victimhood under patriarchal oppression. Taxpayers are required to fund the higher education system where these beliefs are taught; feminism is thereby subsidized and approved as a matter of official government policy.


The best analysis of what is taught in these programs is Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women’s Studies, by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge. Professor Patai is also author of another excellent book I highly recommend, Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism. For decades now, these programs have continued with little critical scrutiny, either within academia or from legislators in charge of approving education budgets. Why? Because anyone who questions the need for Women’s Studies courses will instantly be accused of sexism, a rhetorical weapon that feminists have used to expand their hegemonic power within academia, and to silence critics of their agenda.

“I spent years studying feminist theory,” Professor Fiamengo says in her video. “I learned things that are untrue, about ‘gender is a social construct’ and about the ‘deep-rooted misogyny of patriarchal culture,’ and it took years to unlearn them. That hundreds of thousands of students across North America still learn these untruths . . . is staggering.” Indeed, it is staggering that so few citizens — most of whom think of “feminism” as essentially harmless belief in “equality” — are unaware of the hateful ideology being promoute in our universities.

People need to wake the hell up.

 


Category: Education, Sex Trouble

Cruz, Sanders Win Wisconsin

Posted on | April 6, 2016 | 55 Comments

Tuesday was a bad night for front-runners in both parties:

Senator Ted Cruz soundly defeated Donald J. Trump in the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday, breathing new life into efforts to halt Mr. Trump’s divisive presidential candidacy and dealing a blow to his chances of clinching the Republican nomination before the party’s summer convention.
With more than 80 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Cruz had received 48 percent of the vote to 34 percent for Mr. Trump. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio was a distant third with 14 percent.
Mr. Trump’s loss was his most significant setback since Mr. Cruz narrowly defeated him in Iowa, the campaign’s first nominating contest. And after largely dominating the Republican field from the moment he announced his candidacy last June, Mr. Trump now faces a fresh challenge: bouncing back in the face of searing attack ads by Republicans bent on stopping him, questions about his demeanor and campaign organization, and a single ascendant challenger in Mr. Cruz.
In winning Wisconsin so convincingly, Mr. Cruz, of Texas, showed he was capable of appealing to more than just the hard-line and religious conservative Republicans who have been the foundation of his campaign.
“Tonight is a turning point,” he told cheering supporters in Milwaukee. “It is a rallying cry. It is a call from the hard-working men and women of Wisconsin to the people of America: We have a choice, a real choice.”

Meanwhile, Hillary feels the Bern:

Bernie Sanders scored a decisive victory in the Wisconsin Democratic primary Tuesday night, racking up his seventh victory in eight contests against Hillary Clinton as the race barrels toward a critical showdown in New York.
Sanders’ victory kicked off a critical two-week stretch for the Vermont senator, who is trying to show he can become a genuine threat to topple the front-runner in the home stretch of the presidential primary and not merely dog Clinton until the July convention in Philadelphia.
Sanders relished the win at a rally in Laramie, Wyoming, ahead of the state’s Saturday caucuses, telling supporters he was written off as a “fringe candidacy” when he launched his campaign 11 months ago.
“With our victory tonight in Wisconsin, we have now won seven out of eight of the last caucuses and primaries. And we have won almost all of them with overwhelming landslide numbers,” he said. “What momentum is about is that at a time in contemporary politics when every major candidate has a super PAC, we have said no to the super PACs, said no to the billionaires who fund those super PACs.”

Whether Sanders can defeat Clinton or not, clearly her weakness — and the discontent of her party’s left-wing “fringe” — could spell trouble for Democrats, if Republicans can get their act together. The talk on TV this morning is that Republicans may be headed to an “open convention,” with no candidate getting enough delegates to win the nomination in the first round of balloting. As delegates would be released from their pledges on the second and subsequent ballots, anything could happen.

 

Thank God I made the strategic decision to stay out of this year’s GOP primary campaign. Everybody I know in the blogging world is going insane over this conflict, while I’m placidly continuing my research into radical feminism, which is a different kind of insanity, but one in which I have no personal stake, except to end it.

 


Category: Democrats, Election, Politics, Republicans, Wisconsin
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