The Other McCain

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

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


Shop Amazon – Organize the Office
Shop Amazon Fashion – Up to 50% Off Spring Styles

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”


Shop Amazon – $15 Off Select Fire TV Devices
Shop The Spring Event!

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.

+ + + + +

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

The ‘Regret Equals Rape’ Factor (Also, USC Is Decadent and Depraved)

Posted on | April 5, 2016 | 58 Comments

Everybody remembers the notorious case of John Doe v. Washington and Lee University, in which a university official reportedly told students that “regret equals rape,” advice that John Doe blamed for a false accusation of sexual assault against him by an ex-girlfriend. Washington and Lee settled that lawsuit in February, avoiding a court trial that might have have exposed the elite private university (annual tuition $46,417) to disastrous publicity. This “regret equals rape” motif has appeared in several other cases among the more than 100 lawsuits filed against universities by male students who say they were falsely accused of sexual misconduct and denied due process in the campus kangaroo court system. What happens, in some of  these cases, is that what seemed an entirely consensual encounter is subsequently deemed sexual assault, usually months later, after the accuser has regret or remorse about a hook-up or a relationship. Consider this, from a court filing involving a John Doe lawsuit against the University of Southern California:

Jane, who was a student and athlete at USC, and a group of her friends attended a fraternity party in January 2013 at a large, off-campus house in the hills near Los Angeles. Jane and her friends caught a bus from the fraternity house to the party location. John, a member of the USC football team, was on the same bus. Also attending the party were two male students from an out-of-state university, “Student 1” and “Student 2,” who were friends of John?s teammate. At some point in the evening Jane began to dance, and John began dancing with her. John said that he and Student 1 were both dancing with Jane, “sandwiching” her between them. When asked about this, Jane did not remember whether it had occurred. After dancing together for a few minutes, John pushed Jane onto a couch and gave her a provocative “lap dance,” which John characterized as “flirtatious” and “silly,” and Jane characterized as somewhat “uncomfortable” because people were watching. After the dance, John, Jane, and Student 1 went to a bedroom together. John had vaginal intercourse with Jane while Jane performed oral sex on Student 1. During the sexual activity, John and Student 1 made comments to each other about Jane?s body. All parties agree that the entirety of this encounter was consensual. Jane returned to her group of friends and told them she had sex with John; she seemed happy and excited about it. Approximately 45 minutes later, Jane and John returned to the bedroom a second time. There were multiple men in the room, and people were continually entering and exiting the room.. . .

It was during this second trip to the bedroom that the incident occurred which “Jane” later claimed was assault. Everybody involved was apparently drunk and, pardon me for drawing any unfair conclusions here, but once she had willingly done a three-way (“the entirety of this encounter was consensual”) during this party, what might a reasonable person suppose the expectations were for this second trip to the bedroom? How about “anything goes”? Call me old-fashioned, maybe, but I have no idea what the prevailing customs and norms are for drunken college orgies nowadays. Really, when you’re partying with football players and frat boys at USC (annual tuition $50,210), what are the reasonable expectations concerning acts of sexual perversion?

Well, John Doe got expelled for his role in this orgy, not because the university has any moral standards — USC Is Decadent and Depraved — but because “Jane” got counseling and decided she was a victim:

The incident happened in January 2013. Jane reported it to SJACS in August 2013. She told SJACS representatives that in mid-February her athletic coach suggested that she had confidence issues, and therefore recommended that she see an athletics counselor. When the counselor asked Jane if she had ever been sexually assaulted, “it dawned on me and I connected it.” She then reported to the counselor that she was assaulted by John and several other men at the party. She told her parents about the incident in July of that year, and reported the incident to the school in August.

The rest of the story is merely details, unless you happen to care about the fate of John, who is just another guy who got chewed up by the campus machinery where male students are denied due-process rights.

What conclusions can we draw from this case? It seems obvious that every student at USC is a dangerous pervert. This is why parents pay $50,210 a year, so that their sons and daughters can have drunken orgies at a “prestigious” private university that has no moral standards whatsoever.

Students at USC are freaks and creeps and degenerates of every description. No conscientious parent would spend a cent to send their child to such a wretched hive of scum and villainy as USC, and therefore the only students who enroll there are the offspring of negligent parents who don’t mind squandering $50,210 a year to have their child “educated” in that foul cesspool of immoral hedonism.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE II: A commenter points out that the court filing cited is a judge’s ruling in the accused student’s favor. Here’s a news account:

SAN FRANCISCO — Wading into the fraught issue of sex crimes on college campuses, a state appeals court has reversed the suspension of a male USC student accused of participating in a group sexual assault against a female student.
The Second District Court of Appeal held that the male student, a USC football player referred to only as John Doe, wasn’t given sufficient notice of the allegations against him or a fair hearing by the school before being suspended.
The ruling highlights the difficult task universities have in balancing accused students’ due process rights with the concerns of victims and federal officials who have urged schools to adopt procedures to keep campuses safe.
Justice Audrey Collins acknowledged in Tuesday’s unanimous panel decision “that universities need adequate tools to address the very serious and sensitive problem of sexual assault on campus.” Still she wrote that “it is not too heavy a burden to require that students facing disciplinary action be informed of the factual basis for the charges against them.”
The male student’s attorney, Marc Harris of Scheper Kim & Harris, said that his client is “extremely gratified by the decision.” . . .
“All the issues that we raised in the court of appeal are issues that we brought up with USC” before turning to the state courts, he said. “This has been a long, painful and damaging path that John has had to take,” he said. He declined to say whether his client will seek to return to USC.

Honestly, if John Doe were my client, I would advise strongly against going anywhere near USC. The place is corrupt beyond description.




 


Category: Crime, Education, Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 04.05.12

Posted on | April 5, 2016 | 5 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Huma and Hillary
Da Tech Guy: Stacy McCain, the ELCA, and Misidentifying the Foe
The Political Hat: Defender of What Faith?
Michelle Malkin: #VSPShooting – Trooper Assassin James Brown III Was A Cop-Hating Django
Twitchy: Trump Surrogate Roger Stone Threatens To Sic Thugs On Delegates
Shark Tank: Mr. Rubio Goes (Back) to Washington


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Sanders Campaign Keeps Cash Flow Pumping
American Thinker: Trump’s Irrational Trade Non-Sequitur
Conservatives4Palin: Sarah Palin Enlightens Pro-Rape Rapper Azealia Banks
Don Surber: How Kondracke Is Wrong About NATO
Jammie Wearing Fools: Hannity’s Ridiculously Pro-Trump “Town Hall”
Joe For America: Did Michelle Obama Say White Folks Are What’s Wrong With America?
JustOneMinute: Go ‘Nova
Pamela Geller: Navy Reports Huge Shipment Of Iranian Weapons Seized En Route To Yemen Jihadis Fighting US Allies
Shot In The Dark: It’s Always Sunny In Goteborg
STUMP: Chicago Day Of Action Roundup, and Where’s The Money?
The Jawa Report: Ministry Of Irony – Belgian Police Ban Anti-Muslim Protest, End Up Using Water Cannons On Muslim Protesters
The Lonely Conservative: Donald Trump’s Delegate Problem
The Quinton Report: Bernie Sanders Claims No Constitutional Protection For Unborn
This Ain’t Hell: Joe Medicine Crow, RIP
Weasel Zippers: LA Times Goes Full Racist
Megan McArdle: When Drugs Are Legal, Gangs Will Diversify
Mark Steyn: Just For Laughs Festival (Toronto Branch)


Shop Amazon – $15 Off Select Fire TV Devices
Shop Amazon – Organize the Office

Category: Linkagery
« go back — keep looking »