The Other McCain

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

Morning-After Death Pills

Posted on | March 30, 2016 | 14 Comments

 

Did you know that abortion drugs — Mifeprex or Mifepristone, originally known or RU486, a/k/a “the morning-after pill” — can kill you? Dozens of women have reportedly died as a result of complications from using Mifepristone, but this is a minor “side effect” compared to destroying the lives of some 2 million unborn children, which is what the drug is intended to do. Feminists hate babies and want to kill babies, and if a few women occasionally die in the process? Never mind. Feminists don’t care.

Feminism is a death cult, and the abortion industry donates millions to the Democrat Party, which means that the Obama administration does whatever Planned Parenthood tells them to do. The poweful influence of the abortion lobby was demonstrated once again this week:

Because of the high failure rate and the risks involved with RU-486 in later pregnancies, the FDA limited approval for use only in the first 49 days from the start of a woman’s last menstrual period. Planned Parenthood, by its own admission, ignores this limitation.
Now, the Food and Drug Administration announced on Wednesday, that it had given into to Planned Parenthood’s demands and altered the approved use of Mifeprex, (also known as Mifepristone or RU486), to come in line with off-label protocols used by Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses. The FDA has announced that it is extending the allowed time period for use of the abortion drug to 70 days.
But, according to the clinical trial submitted to the FDA for approval, the RU-486 regimen fails in 1 out of 12 women with pregnancies less than or equal to 49 days. Those failures, however, increase to 1 out of every 6 women with pregnancies just one week advanced (50-56 days), and further still to nearly 1 out of every 4 pregnancies at 57-63 days gestational age. When using RU-486, 1 out of 100 women with pregnancies less than or equal to 49 days will require emergency surgery; however, this number increases dramatically to 1 out of every 11 women with pregnancies of 57-63 days gestational age.
A spokesman for a leading pro-life group says this FDA change will cause more abortions with the abortion drugs and more failures that kill or injure women.
“The abortion pill is a huge cash cow for the Abortion Cartel, but the process of abortion using the abortion pill cocktail of two drugs, Mifeprex and Cytotec, is long, painful, bloody, and unpredictable for women and deadly for pre-born children,” Troy Newman of Operation Rescue told LifeNews.com. . . .
Women developing infections from usage of the RU 486 abortion drug experienced endometritis (involving the lining of the womb), pelvic inflammatory disease (involving the nearby reproductive organs such as the fallopian tubes or ovaries), and pelvic infections with sepsis (a serious systemic infection that has spread beyond the reproductive organs).

Read the whole story by Steven Ertelt.




 

Category: Abortion, Planned Parenthood

In The Mailbox: 03.29.2016

Posted on | March 29, 2016 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.29.2016

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Walker Endorses Cruz
The Political Hat: Feminists Will Save Society With The Power Of Witchcraft
Michelle Malkin: Obama Throws His Drool-Bucket Media Pals Under The Bus
Twitchy: Hillary Clinton Waxes Biblical At Anti-Gun Forum; Pivots To Alleged Police Brutality
Shark Tank: Secret Service Says NO Guns Inside GOP Convention


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: The Forgotten Promise Of American Liberty
American Thinker: The Prophet Glenn Beck?
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Clawback By J.A. Jance
Conservatives4Palin: CBO Misses Its Obamacare Projection By 24 Million People
Don Surber: Israel is The Worst? The UN Is Crazy
Jammie Wearing Fools: Former Trump U. Instructor Reveals The Reason For Its Collapse
Joe For America: Should #BlackLivesMatter Be Classified As A Hate Group?
JustOneMinute: Trump Campaign Manager Charged With Misdemeanor Battery
Pamela Geller: Muslim Terror Cell Fires On Campers, Hikers In California Park Shouting “Allahu Akbar!”
Shot In The Dark: Paging The Establishment Clause
STUMP: Public Pensions Watch – On COLAs And Chicago
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – Egypt Still An Islamic Theocracy
The Lonely Conservative: Team Trump Defector Says Don’t Vote For Trump
The Quinton Report: Rappers Create Rap Threatening Trump
This Ain’t Hell: Women Not Interested In Combat Jobs
Weasel Zippers: Facebook Boss Zuckerberg Says World Should Use Love to Combat ISIS
Megan McArdle: Even Uber Can’t Live Up To The Expectations It Set
Mark Steyn: Tomorrow’s Civilizational Cringe Today


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Category: Linkagery

Amy Schumer Will Tell You What to Think (And You Must Comply)

Posted on | March 29, 2016 | 44 Comments

 

What can I say about @AmySchumer? Only what I have said so often before: Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It, and the kind of “humor” that emerges from a totalitarian death cult is Amy Schumer’s stock in trade. She is the 21st-century heiress to the caustic legacy of Roseanne Barr, Rosie O’Donnell, Janeane Garofalo and Margaret Cho. Schumer arguably has great talent as a clown, but her stock-in-trade is the expression of resentment, which makes her hugely popular with women who share a similarly resentful attitude. If you’re my age — 56, and old enough to remember the Great Standup Comic Cable TV Bonzanza of the 1980s — you’ve seen this act before. There is a familiarity to Schumer’s deliberately vulgar routine (“We are whores. . . . I’ve taken the morning-after pill the night before”) and yet you may not recognize where this style comes from.

Basically, she is a feminist version of Andrew Dice Clay. “Feminist humor” is merely a reversal of that over-the-top sexist act, a type of humor that male comedians are no longer allowed to employ.

This is why so many young guys (and by “young,” I mean, under 40) react to the strictures of political correctness as badly as they do. Young guys have grown up in a world where so much is off-limits — sexist, racist, homophobic or otherwise “offensive” — that they feel like they’re cornered and under surveillance by the Thought Police. And so they delight in saying Things You Are Not Supposed to Say, an atavistic impulse. Look, I have never in my life felt the need to hurl certain slurs at women. There are some words (hint: starting with “C”) that you simply do not say, certainly not if you wish to take the high ground in opposition to feminists. Nor do you score any points for the cause of heteronormative patriarchy if your stock response to a feminist’s argument is to call her fat, ugly and “unf–kable.” Even if a feminist looks like John Goodman in drag, you probably don’t want to be the guy to point this out.

 

Amy Schumer Breaks Down in Tears
Over Body Image: “It’s Been
a Struggle My Whole Life”

Permit me to explain, to any clueless young men who might read this, that women are keenly aware that they are judged by their looks. Whether she is thin or fat, pretty or plain, there is no such thing as a woman who is not conscious of her own appearance, and who does not have some general sense of where she ranks in the hierarchy of attractiveness.

A reasonably good-looking woman, by the time she’s 18 or 19, knows exactly why the guy she meets at a party or in a bar is so eager to talk to her. And here is your cosmic thunderbolt of eternal truth, young man: Women are extremely judgmental.

Trust me when I tell you this, young man. Do not ever imagine that you can evade a woman’s radar in terms of what she wants.

One way to be a loser is to waste your time trying to overcome a woman’s instantaneous default “no.” You could spend years arguing with losers on pickup artist (PUA) forums about tactics, but you are never going to change human nature. Every woman’s default response is “no,” and if you can’t cope with rejection — if you don’t learn to walk away the minute she signals disinterest — you are squandering valuable time and energy.

Some guys (the upper 10% or 15% of overall attractiveness) can score reliably enough in almost any pickup scenario that they don’t really need “tactics” at all. What the rest of you fellows must learn is to stop wasting time trying to convert a “no” to a “yes,” or brooding over your failures.

Guys, if you’re at a frat party, when you approach a girl, understand this: She has sized you up — evaluating you in terms of your desirability — before you even say a word to her. Therefore, if her response to your opening line is not a total green-light reaction, take it in stride and move on. Just remember there are 3.5 billion women on this planet.

Maintain your cool, young man. Don’t flip out, don’t get angry, and don’t let yourself become demoralized by the fact that this girl shot you down. Just keep on blowing down the road, Mister Breeze.

Women are extremely judgmental, as I say, and once you figure that out, every variety of nonsensical feminist whining about “objectification” and “beauty standards” is exposed as rank hypocrisy. But I digress . . .

Amy Schumer is allowed to get away with doing the kind of vulgar sexual humor that might destroy a male comedian’s career nowadays. It was hilarous, back in the day, the first time I saw female stand-up comics “working blue,” as they say. The novelty factor has long since worn off, however, and what we increasingly see is women using sexual “humor” to score political points, rather than actually entertaining anyone who isn’t down for the feminist agenda. Now we must pay attention to this:

Amy Schumer has scolded “The Bachelor” host Chris Harrison for calling a contestant “complicated,” as if it’s a negative characteristic of a woman.
“There is nothing wrong with ‘complicated’ women Chris Harrison,” Schumer tweeted. “You treated it like something she should fight. A women shouldn’t try to be less complicated so as to hopefully attract a man. And she shouldn’t find value in herself just because a dude liked her. Come on bro.”
On Monday night, the show’s “Women Tell All” special aired, where past contestants from the current season come together to discuss what went wrong and get one last opportunity to tell the bachelor (this year, it’s Ben Higgins) what is on their minds. One contestant, Jubilee Sharpe, told Harrison that Higgins didn’t see her “complicated past as a huge obstacle,” to which Harrison called her complicated twice.
“I know you can’t control how complicated you are,” he told Sharpe. “You might be complicated, and I know you stir the pot sometimes, but I hope you realize you’re a pretty special woman, and I really appreciate you coming here and opening up the way you did.”

See? Amy Schumer is playing Thought Police here. While I make a point of avoiding toxic “reality TV” garbage like The Bachelor, and really don’t want to discuss that phony drama, Harrison wasn’t saying anything offensive. And pardon me for disagreeing with Ms. Schumer in her role as Commissar of Feminist Thought Police, but men are entitled to their own opinions about the traits they like or dislike in women.

Lecturing men that there’s “nothing wrong with ‘complicated’ women” may make Amy Schumer feel good about herself, and a thousand of her fans can show their agreement by retweeting her lecture, but that is not going to improve Jubilee Sharpe’s prospects for marital success. For all I know, maybe Jubilee Sharpe will make some lucky guy a wonderful wife, but when a woman speaks of herself as having a “complicated past,” couldn’t this be viewed as a flashing caution light for any guy evaluating her as a potential bride? Marriage is a high-stakes game, and it is best for a man to be careful in assessing his selection.

 

Why do you suppose 34-year-old Amy Schumer has never been married? Perhaps, like feminists generally, Ms. Schumer is against marriage.

“Marriage means rape and lifelong slavery,” Ti-Grace Atkinson declared, and her comrade Sheila Cronan called marriage “cruel and inhumane.” One could cite many more examples of feminists denouncing marriage as a prison, an institution in which women are oppressed by male supremacy, and so it would be insulting to any woman who calls herself a “feminist” to presume she has ever had any desire to marry a man.

Isn’t it also true, however, that Amy Schumer is “complicated”? This is the case with most feminists, really. They are “complicated,” they have “issues,” and their political agenda is transparently a matter of rationalizing their grievances and justifying their resentments.

This is not to say that Amy Schumer (or any other feminist) does not have actual reasons to be resentful. The problem with feminism, as with any other radical egalitarian ideology, is that rearranging the world to fit a political agenda is a poor substitute for dealing with your own problems as an individual. The Commissar of the Thought Police may think she is “empowering” women by unleashing her wrath against a TV personality who says something she considers offensive. But does this typical example of feminist bullying tactics actually help anyone?

Jubilee Sharpe says she has a “complicated past” — an orphan from Haiti adopted by an American couple — which she doesn’t think will be a “huge obstacle” to finding true love in the future. Who knows whether she is right or wrong? But why scold Chris Harrison for repeating the word she used to describe herself? It’s a TV show! It’s entertainment!

Is it really necessary — is it helpful to anyone — to turn a silly TV show into a Gender Studies seminar? And why is it wrong for Chris Harrison to imply (not that he actually said this) that “complicated” women are viewed negatively by men who are looking for wives? Is it not true that Jubilee Sharpe was involved in a lot of conflicts with her fellow contestants on the show? Isn’t this the sort of “complicated” behavior that guys want to watch out for when they’re assessing women? No matter how good-looking a woman is, do you want to get seriously involved with her if she doesn’t “play well with others”? This is just common sense.

Here’s some more common sense: Why is a tall, handsome, athletic, successful guy still a bachelor at age 26? A guy like that, you’d figure, he would already be married, or at least in a serious relationship. Do you think Ben Higgins might have a “complicated past,” too? “We dated for a year and a half before I broke up with him,” his ex-girlfriend told The Star last year, and here’s a story saying Ben and his ex-girlfriend are still buddies, despite his engagement to Lauren Bushnell, the lucky “winner” of the Bachelor show. What’s the deal there, huh? What do you think the odds are that Ben and Lauren are going to be “happily ever after”?

A cynical attitude toward “reality TV” romance is certainly appropriate. You live long enough, you become cynical about a lot of things, including any woman who calls herself a “feminist.” Let the young man beware: Feminists hate you, and there is no point wasting your precious time on the kind of woman who likes to hang out with Gloria Steinem.

There are two kinds of feminists: Sluts with herpes and crazy lesbians. No, wait — three kinds, because some crazy lesbians have herpes, too.

Happy heterosexual women don’t need feminism. They actually like men. They don’t blame their personal problems on innocent men. Happy heterosexual women don’t sit around crying about their “body image” issues. They take responsibility for their own lives and solve their own problems. They don’t guzzle tequila at frat parties, pass out and wake up the next day with some dude whose clever line was, “Nice tattoo.” Whatever her problems or disadvantages in life may be, the happy heterosexual woman does not need ideology to rationalize her failures. She does not lash out at men as scapegoats for her resentments.

This is why the feminist is always either (a) unhappy or (b) not heterosexual. Young men should recall this advice:

Guys: Learn to take a hint. Learn to walk away.
If a woman tells you she is a feminist, say nothing and walk away.
No feminist wants to hear what a man has to say, and life is too short to waste your time taking to feminists. Just walk away.
Leave feminists alone, and then they can complain about that.

Honestly, guys, you never want to be Inside Amy Schumer.




 

Category: Sex Trouble

Rule 5 Tuesday: All Easter Sweets 75% Off

Posted on | March 29, 2016 | 5 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Better late than never, eh? As usual, many of the following links are to pics of attractive women attractively (un)dressed. Since these are generally considered NSFW, the management is not responsible for any problems caused by your failure to exercise discretion. This week’s appetizer is from one of the classic Brown & Bigelow pinup calendars.

Easter traditions

Leading off this week is Goodstuff, with Li Gong teaching some geography, followed by Ninety Miles from Tyranny with Hot Pick of the Late Night, Morning Mistress (Is That Thing On?), and Girls with Guns; Animal Magnetism contributed Rule 5 B.S. Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon, The Last Tradition added Alessandra Ambrosio and Maria Kanellis, and First Street Journal pays tribute this week to the women of the Syrian Army.

EBL’s herd this week includes Donne Siciliane, Rihan Said, Julia Fischer, Sex and the Single Cave Girl, Grace Kelly, Bunnies and Easter, We’ll Always Have Paris, and the Easter Parade.

A View from the Beach offers Angela Lindvall, World War Zero Fought in Germany 3200 Years Ago, Are All Feminists Crazy?, Congress Makes Catfish “Meat” and Causes Controversy, Sexbots, not Sexpots, Court Case Favors Redskins, If This Is Wednesday, This Must Be Tahiti, “Manic Depression”, Horse’s Ass Attacks Horse, Spanish Neandertals and Other Stuff (Cave girls, of course), Great Tits Use Good Grammar, If You See This Person Drowning . . ., and Sunday Morning with Samantha Hoopes.

At Soylent Siberia, it’s the finger lickin’ good Sunday Brunch, Monday Musical Blue, Tuesday Titillation, Humpday Hawt Prima Ballerina, Falconsword Fursday Classic Jennifer, Corset Friday Fondlings, T-GIF Friday with Leonard, and Weekender Pencil Mustache.

The DaleyGator’s DaleyBabes this week were Lyndsy Fonseca, Brandy Castellanos, Aya Hazuki, Ashley Zee, Minori Inudo, Natsumi Kamatta, and Bonus Babe Sasha Banks.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Jennifer Carpenter, his Vintage Babe is Misty Ayers, and Sex in Advertising has the best beer ad ever. At Dustbury, it’s Taylor Swift and Sarah Jessica Parker.

Thanks to everyone for all the linkagery, especially the FMJRA links, which would have normally been enough for last week’s Rule 5 to reign supreme –  but who could have predicted the advent of Kazika the Mad Jap? Deadline to submit links for next week’s Rule 5 roundup to the
Rule 5 Wombat mailbox is midnight on Sunday, April 2; links for the FMJRA need to hit the Wombat-socho mailbox by noon.


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Category: Rule 5

Gender Theory, Gender Practice

Posted on | March 29, 2016 | 24 Comments

 

“Human nature cannot be eradicated by ideology,” as I explain in my book Sex Trouble. The stubborn reality of human nature is likely to produce results that are unexpected by those who are attempting to turn feminist gender theory — the social construction of the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix — into public policy. Controversy over a North Carolina law regarding public restrooms has become an LGBT cause célèbre. However, no intelligent person should be deceived by liberals who claim they can usher in the utopia of androgynous equality if only they can overcome the prejudices of Republicans, rednecks and Bible-thumpers. The world cannot be remade to fit a utopian theory, and no amount of regulation (or suppression of dissent) can alter the fundamental facts of human biology. Here is some relevant news from that bastion of hillbilly bigotry, New York City:

A transgender woman was raped inside a bathroom at the historic gay bar Stonewall Inn this weekend, according to police.
The incident happened around 11:40 p.m. Saturday night when the 25-year-old victim was inside a single-occupancy unisex bathroom at the bar on Christopher Street. She told police that a man came into the bathroom claiming he only needed to wash his hands, then proceeded to grope and rape her.
The man fled the scene, and the victim also left the bar after the incident. She returned about an hour later, and called 911. She was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital for treatment.

Maybe the suspect didn’t get the memo about the rules of decorum in this historic site where the revolution for LGBT equality began. Feminists have assured us that “heterosexuality is the structure that keeps sexist oppression in place,” and so whatever happened in that restroom at the Stonewall Inn — a place where there is no such “structure” — it wasn’t “sexist oppression.” Perhaps this will be some comfort to the victim.

Probably not, however. Meanwhile, in North Carolina:

A federal lawsuit was filed Monday against the North Carolina governor and other state officials over a new law that blocks transgender individuals from using public bathrooms that match their gender identity and stops cities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances to protect gay and transgender people.
Two transgender men, a lesbian, the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina and Equality North Carolina want a judge to declare the state law, House Bill 2, unconstitutional and a violation of federal laws banning sex discrimination. . . .
The suit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. The defendants are Gov. Pat McCrory, state Attorney General Roy Cooper III, the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina and board Chairman W. Louis Bissette Jr. Two of the plaintiffs are university system employees, and one is a university student.

Whatever the federal courts may decide, water will still be wet, the sky will still be blue, men will be men and women will be women. The legal abolition of male/female distinctions has obvious consequences, but biology is never going to be legislated out of existence.





 

Category: Sex Trouble

Her Husband ‘Seemed Sensitive, Kind, Intelligent, Liberal, and Feminist . . .’

Posted on | March 28, 2016 | 67 Comments

Oh, that was a very bad omen, really. It is difficult for me to imagine what a “feminist” husband would be, considering that for more than four decades, feminists have argued against marriage, per se.

Exactly why would a feminist want a husband? This is the great riddle.

Fish don’t need bicycles and feminists don’t need men. Such was the doctrine proclaimed by Gloria Steinem, anyway, but nevertheless some women ignore these contradictions and thus, sadly, we have the phenomenon of The Feminist Man. These seem so rare they may be entirely mythical — unicorns, minotaurs, mermaids, Feminist Men.

In theory, a relationship based on a radical egalitarian ideology seems possible. However, feminism’s doctrinaire belief that men and women are fundamentally the same (androgynous) and that there are no natural distinctions between them, inevitably raises the question, “Why”?

That is to say, if men do not possess any specifically masculine traits or characteristics that she admires, why does she associate with him? What purpose does The Feminist Man fulfill? What is his value to her?

According to feminist theory, masculinity is an artificial product of patriarchy, socially constructed by the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix. The male has no essential raison d’être in the feminist scheme of things. He is entirely useless and irrelevant and it is impossible to imagine how a woman who finds males attractive — desirable and perhaps even necessary — could call herself a “feminist.”

Nevertheless, despite these ideological contradictions, The Feminist Man is alleged to exist, and here is the tale of a woman who married one:

I lived happily — blissfully unaware how happily — for 14 years with a man who seemed sensitive, kind, intelligent, liberal, and feminist. We were deeply in love and the kind of couple people looked up to. My marriage was permanent; it defined my future. Two years ago, I would have told you we were unshakable. I couldn’t imagine a scenario that could break us up. My husband was also, to all outward appearances, happy. He enjoyed life and was uniquely easygoing and content. Those qualities made him a joy to chat with, to vacation with, and to live with.
Then my husband woke up one day feeling a little “gender-fluid.” Within three months he developed the conviction that he was a woman and he “came out” to everyone he knew. . . .
He cried because someone “misgendered” him. He cried because his shoulders were too broad for his new dress. He cried because he couldn’t completely eradicate the stubble on his face. He cried because his new habit of flipping his hair back with a limp wrist had gotten him mistaken for a gay man. . . .
He got counseling and joined support groups, where he “learned” that he was “literally” a woman, and not just someone who identified as one. He announced to all comers that he’d found his “true self” and had become “happy” for the first time in his life. His alleged happiness didn’t stop him from spiraling into an even deeper despair. He became suicidal. He was prescribed antidepressants. He adopted bizarre beliefs and became hysterical if anyone questioned them.
All interests were abandoned for endless monologues about transgender rights and his “gender identity.”

Yeah, she married The Feminist Man, and when he turned out to be not actually a man at all — well, she was deeply hurt by this. She searched online forums of other women who had gone through a similar trauma:

This is just the transgender experience. Narcissism, sexual dysfunction, partner neglect, childishness, temper tantrums, lack of impulse control. Tell me again why this is a normal human variation?
It didn’t matter that I thought my marriage was stronger than most, that I thought that my husband was smarter and kinder than most. This was my inevitable trajectory.

Inevitable? Well, if you find The Feminist Man attractive — so “sensitive”! so “kind”! so “liberal”! — what do you really expect? Somewhere behind that “easygoing” façade, your husband was slowly losing his mind as he gazed into the abyss of existential despair. To repeat: The male has no essential raison d’être in the feminist scheme of things.

Feminism is a philosophy that declares men to be utterly useless. It is astonishing how so many women are eager to advocate “equality” — i.e., the eradication of all social distinctions between male and female — and yet do not follow this argument to its logical conclusion.

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools . . .”
— Romans 1:22 (KJV)

Once a society embraces certain ideas — syncretistic paganism, for example — the descent into madness is really just a matter of time.

 

Category: Sex Trouble

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Posted on | March 28, 2016 | 20 Comments

Eric Owens at the Daily Caller:

The National Endowment for the Humanities announced this year’s recipients of $21.1 million in federally-funded grants earlier this month.
A chunk of the agency’s taxpayer cash will go toward a study of the recent “history of French lesbian activism,” reports The Washington Free Beacon.
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign history and women’s studies professor Tamara Chaplin will conduct the groundbreaking research . . . “Postwar French Media, and the Struggle for Gay Rights,” “a book-length study of the history of French lesbian activism since World War II.”
Presumably, the $6,000 taxpayer-funded stipend will be in addition to Chaplin’s annual taxpayer-funded salary of $86,607.04.

This is the kind of “culture” the federal government promotes, created by the kind of “educators” who are employed at taxpayer expense. Maybe the National Institutes for Mental Health could fund a study of exactly when and why America went completely crazy.

 

Category: Sex Trouble

Transgender Controversy as Gay Group Rescinds Book Award Nomination

Posted on | March 28, 2016 | 28 Comments

 

Pressure from transgender activists caused a gay literary organization to rescind its nomination for a former Northwestern University professor’s book, saying it is “inconsistent with . . . affirming LGBTQ lives.”

Alice Dreger’s book Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science had been nominated for the 28th annual “Lammie” awards, given by the Lambda Literary Foundation (LLF). Last week, however, the foundation’s executive director Tony Valenzuela sent an email to Ms. Dreger informing her that the book’s nomination had been rescinded. Ms. Dreger says LLF yielded to pressure from transgender activists who disliked her book’s treatment of a decade-old scandal involving Northwestern University Professor Michael Bailey’s controversial sex research. Bailey was condemned by transgender activists for endorsing the diagnosis of “autogynephilia,” a type of fetish in which men become sexually aroused by imagining themselves as women. Bailey was accused of ethics violations, including the charge that he had a sexual affair with a transgender patient who had sought his assistance in helping secure approval for sex-reassignment surgery (SRS).

Ms. Dreger’s book Galileo’s Middle Finger was acclaimed “one of the most important social-science books of 2015” by Jesse Singal of New York Magazine, who praised her account of how political correctness “collides” with research “when science makes a claim that doesn’t fit into an activist community’s accepted worldview.” Describing how Ms. Dreger’s book deals with the Bailey controversy, Singal wrote:

[W]hat’s key to keep in mind is that some transgender people and activists hold very dear the idea that they have simply been born in the wrong type of body, that transitioning allows them to effectively fix a mistake that nature made. The notion that there might be a cultural component to the decision to transition, or that sexuality, rather than a hardwired gender identity, could be a factor, complicates this gender-identity-only narrative. It also brings sexuality back into a conversation that some trans activists have been trying to make solely about gender identity . . .
But as Dreger explains, Bailey, being someone with a penchant for poking mischievously at political correctness, wasn’t too concerned about the political dimension of what he was arguing in his book. From a scientific perspective, he explicitly viewed the idea that “everybody is truly and easily assignable to one of two gender identities” as an oversimplification; part of his motivation for writing [his 2003 book] The Man Who Would Be Queen was to try to blow it up, to argue that transsexuality is more complicated than that. So it shouldn’t be surprising that some trans activists and allies didn’t appreciate the book’s argument — and they obviously have every right to disagree with Bailey and [“autogynephilia” theorist Dr. Ray] Blanchard’s views. What is surprising is just how big an explosion The Man Who Would Be Queen sparked, and how underhanded the campaign against Bailey subsequently got.

Ms. Dreger had previously written about the Bailey controversy at her personal blog in 2006, as well as in a 2008 article published by the academic journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. According to Ms. Dreger, the same activists who condemned Bailey for his views on transgenderism were responsible for pressuring LLF to rescind her book’s nomination as a finalist for the “Lammie” awards. In an email to the foundation’s director, Ms. Dreger noted that in 2003, LLF had been pressured into denying recognition to Bailey’s book, The Man Who Would Be Queen:

As I and Dr. Anne Lawrence (a transgender woman) have explained, the real “problem” was that Bailey’s book put forth ideas about women like [transgender activists Deirdre] McCloskey, [Lynn] Conway, and [Andrea] James that they didn’t want disseminated. They wanted to kill the book to stifle the ideas and stories in it, presumably also to stop others from talking about autogynephilia.
At the time of this mess, writer Victoria Brownworth, who was on the [LLF awards] committee, said she saw the withdrawal as akin to censorship. But facing increasing harassment, the committee voted a third time, one vote flipped, and Bailey’s book had its finalist status withdrawn.
Naturally, given the [conflicts] I’ve been in with Bailey’s detractors since I showed in excruciating detail what they did to try to shut him up with a host of patently false charges, I had been assuming my book would never be named a finalist for the same award. Why would the Lambda Literary Foundation take that risk, particularly given that Andrea James had relentlessly harassed [former LLF official] Jim Marks online even long after it was all over?
But it was true: my book was named a finalist in the non-fiction category. . . .
Not too surprisingly, Conway and James soon launched a campaign against my book’s finalist status, but I pretty much ignored this. I figured the Foundation knew this would happen and was prepared to weather the storm.
But no. You caved. And quickly—much more quickly than the Foundation did under Marks in 2003. In spite of all the LGBT people who have actively praised my book, who have thanked me for the work, you quickly caved to a small group of bullies who have proven time and time again that they will do anything they can to get attention and to force everyone to adhere to their singular account of transgenderism, even when it negates the reported childhoods of gay and lesbian people, even when it denies the reality of many transgender people and attempts to force them into closets because of their sexual orientations.

Many conservatives and libertarians have sided with Ms. Dreger in this dispute, particularly because some of her angriest critics, including Sarah Nyberg, are among the SJWs (“social justice warriors”) who made themselves obnoxious by their attempts to impose their politically correct ideas on the videogame industry. However, the dispute over Bailey’s research is not a clear-cut matter of left/right politics. The supporters of Bailey’s “autogynephilia” theory include lesbian feminists like Professor Sheila Jeffreys, whom transgender activists denounce as TERFs (trans-exclusive radical feminists), while one of Bailey’s harshest critics, Deirdre McCloskey, is a libertarian and retired economics professor.

Criticism of Bailey’s work has also called attention to the way in which federal agencies spend taxpayer dollars on controversial sex research. As I reported in 2002, Republicans in Congress criticized the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for awarding a research grant to fund Bailey’s project of studying women’s responses to viewing pornography:

A federally funded study has paid women as much as $75 to watch pornographic videos to determine “what types of audiovisual erotica women find sexually arousing.”
Women participating in the $147,000 study at Northwestern University — funded through the federal National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD] — were paid to “watch a series of commercially available film clips, some of which will be sexually explicit, while we monitor your body’s sexual arousal,” according to a flyer seeking volunteers for the study. . . .
The two-year study began in September 2001 and is intended to “assess the subjective and genital arousal of 180 lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women as they watch erotic video clips of lesbian, gay, or heterosexual interactions,” primary researcher J. Michael Bailey explained in a description of the project.
“We have some really great results on it, and I think it’s going to make a big splash,” Mr. Bailey said of the research, which he said he hopes to publish soon. . . .
Previous studies have shown that male sexual arousal is “target specific” — that is, that heterosexual males respond to depictions of females, while homosexual men respond to images of males, Mr. Bailey said.
“There has been inadequate attention to the question of whether female sexual orientation is target specific,” Mr. Bailey wrote in a grant proposal. “However, some research . . . including our own preliminary data, suggests that target specificity is much weaker for women than for men.” . . .
Rep. Dave Weldon, Florida Republican, cited the Northwestern study as an example of misplaced research priorities . . .
“The NIH couldn’t find the money to look into this relationship between kids with regressive autism and the mandatory MMR vaccine, but they can pay people $150,000 to watch pornography,” Mr. Weldon said. . . .
Reports of Northwestern’s video sex research have prompted some ridicule, landing the study a spot in the nationally syndicated “News of the Weird” feature, but Mr. Bailey said it’s no laughing matter.
“I think it’s extremely important research, and I think it’s pathetic how skittish the government is about funding research about sex,” Mr. Bailey said.

Because I reported extensively on the Bailey controversy more than a dozen years ago, I am familiar with Conway’s activism. From my perspective, the major problem is that federal agencies, in funding such research, lend the authority of government to an “official” theory which may bias public opinion and also tends to preclude funding for research that challenges the “official” theory. Particularly alarming, to anyone familiar with the original Bailey controversy, were accusations that Bailey’s work was slanted by his own personal sexual preferences. Some of Bailey’s critics perceived in his research the typical attitude of so-called “tranny chasers,” i.e., men who have a perverse obsession with transsexuals. Whether or not these suspicions were fair, the history of “scientific” research into sexual behavior is crowded with examples of bias, fraud and methodological error. Anyone who has studied the careers of Wilhelm Reich, Alfred Kinsey and John Money knows how often dubious theories and findings have been presented as “science” by men who concealed their profound biases behind pretenses of objectivity.


 

While on the one hand, I despise the political correctness that treats Alice Dreger as guilty of ThoughtCrime (“transphobia”) for siding with Michael Bailey against his critics, on the other hand, I do not believe that the interests of U.S. taxpayers are served by spending their money to pay for Bailey to show porn videos to women to find out what turns them on.

Was this why heroic patriots fought the American Revolution? Was this why soldiers bled to death on battlefields? Was our constitutional republic — established at Philadelphia, ratified by the states, and defended against its enemies at such an enormous cost in human lives for more than two centuries — intended for such purposes as represented by the $147,000 grant to fund Bailey’s research? Does anyone suppose that General Washington, and his hungry troops who shivered in the snow at Valley Forge, ever imagined they were fighting to create a government that would squander money on such “scientific” absurdities?

It is one thing to say that Michael Bailey should have the liberty to show porn videos to women, if that’s his idea of “science.” It is another thing entirely, however, to claim that Michael Bailey has a right to have his idea of “science” funded at taxpayer expense. When we consider how the federal government has helped create The Higher Education Bubble, when we furthermore consider that tuition at Northwestern University is $49,047 a year, when we take a close look at the kind of deviant lunatics who get psychology degrees from Northwestern, and finally when we are aware that the national debt is now approaching $20 trillion, isn’t it about time we start taking a hard look at what kind of “science” and “education” is being billed to the account of the U.S. taxpayer?

People need to wake the hell up.




 


Category: Gays, Sex Trouble
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