Julie Bindel Is Right: Marriage Can Never Be Feminist (So Don’t Marry a Feminist)

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“Marriage is not about equality. It’s about perpetuating male privilege.”
— Julie Bindel, U.K. Guardian, May 25

Julie Bindel is a British feminist notorious for saying that all males should be rounded up and put “in some kind of camp.” She is a radical lesbian who is against heterosexuality, per se. This anti-male ideology is endorsed by many leading feminists, including Professor Charlotte Bunch, Professor Marilyn Frye, Professor Sheila Jeffreys and others. As Professor Susan M. Shaw and Professor Janet Lee declare in their textbook Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions, all women are oppressed by “heteropatriarchy,” a system of “inequality and privilege.”

Quite obviously, therefore, marriage is incompatible with feminism, and Julie Bindel wants to make sure everybody understands this:

Dress it up, subvert it, deny it all you want — marriage is an institution that has curtailed women’s freedom for centuries. But instead of rejecting the patriarchal and outdated tradition, some feminists have decided to “reclaim” it. We may have progressed since the Industrial Revolution, where Mary Wollstonecraft described marriage as “little more than a state of legal prostitution,” but let’s not kid ourselves. Even today, marriage is not about equality. It’s about perpetuating male privilege. Being given away by your father may seem cute and romantic, but it stems from a time when women were seen literally as their father’s, and then their husband’s, property. The majority of brides still opt for a white gown, but the implication that brides should be virgins is both ludicrous and insulting to women. That a female who has had sex is somehow spoiled goods goes against everything feminists claim to stand for. I know feminists who have taken their husband’s name because they say it’s easier. Easier than changing your personal email address, utilities bills and bank account details, I suppose. You’re basically being branded, so anyone who sees your name knows immediately who you belong to. Even if a woman does away with all these traditions, accept it — marriage can never be a feminist act. It has formed the backdrop to women’s oppression for centuries and it continues to do so. Forced marriage, child brides and polygamy all show how human rights of women and girls all too often go hand-in-hand with marriage. It was not until 1991 that rape in marriage was made a criminal offense in England and Wales, and today it is still perfectly legal for a man to rape his wife in 47 countries worldwide. If you want to get marriage, then just get on with it, but please stop pretending that because you’re a feminist, it’s some kind of subversive statement. I love Snoop Dogg despite his woman-hating lyrics, but I don’t pretend that listening to him is a feminist act, and women should stop pretending that marriage is anything other than a tool for their own oppression. Anyway, as the late human rights lawyer Paula Ettelbrick said, “Marriage is a great institution, if you like living in institutions.”

You can argue with Julie Bindel about the details of her anti-marriage rant, if you wish, but I never argue with feminists. All I do is quote them, so that everyone understands what I mean when I say Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It.

Of course, it would be impossible for feminists to be oppressed by marriage, if men did not make the mistake of marrying feminists. Honestly, I can’t imagine why any man would do such a foolish thing:

Never talk to a feminist.
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.

Avoiding feminists, however, does not mean that a man is not oppressing feminists, to whom the very existence of males is oppressive.





 


In The Mailbox, 06.01.16

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— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Guess What Texas Teacher Alexandra Vera Is Wanted By The Law For…
Michelle Malkin: The $16 Billion Tax Credit Black Hole
Twitchy: Poll – Would Dems Want Hillary To Keep Running If Indicted?


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: The Graying Of America’s Homeless
American Thinker: The Myths Of American Slavery
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Five Presidents by Clint Hill and Lisa McCubbin
Da Tech Guy: The Unexpectedly Chronicles – Doug Mataconis Still Defending Hillary After All These Years
Don Surber: Third Parties Are A Joke
Jammie Wearing Fools: Former Granny Clinton Chief Of Staff Blames Benghazi For Her E-Mail Mess
Joe For America: Joe The Plumber Backs Trump All The Way – “Stop Holier-Than-Thou Nonsense”
JustOneMinute: When Cronies Collide
Pamela Geller: Dalai Lama Says “Too Many” Refugees, Europe…Cannot Become An Arab Country
Protein Wisdom: Happy Memorial Day!
Shark Tank: Glenn Beck Suspended By SiriusXM
Shot In The Dark: To The Entire American Media
STUMP: 80% Funding Roundup – New Category Announced
The Jawa Report: Condell – The Moment Of Truth
The Lonely Conservative: Surviving Stone Age Politics
The Political Hat: Being Denied Service For Affirming Reality
The Quinton Report No, Rep. Elijah Cummings Doesn’t Drive For Lyft In DC…
This Ain’t Hell: “Fat Leonard” May Sink 30 Admirals
Weasel Zippers: EPA Still Blocking Its IG From Investigating Wrongdoing At Agency
Megan McArdle: Barbecuing For Vegans – A Survival Guide


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Student Offers to Debate Feminists About the ‘Rape Epidemic’ and Guess What?

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UCSB students protested against rape in 2015.

University of California-Santa Barbara senior Andrew Cavarno decided to challenge the widespread claim that 1-in-5 college females are victims of sexual assault. With the support of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), Carvano scheduled an event called, “Is There a Rape Epidemic? Rape Hysteria, Due Process, and Free Speech.” Here is what happened:

This event was intended to be a panel discussion, with propositions from both sides of the argument. Yet, we have found it incredibly difficult to find anyone who is willing to present the affirmative position — that there is indeed a rape epidemic on college campuses, and that the measures taken by the universities to combat these problems are therefore fair / justified. We have contacted every single feminist studies professor at UCSB… but none are willing to present the affirmative position. In the words of the chair of the Feminist Studies Department, Professor Laury Oaks, “It is important to not have debates.”

In other words, having incited hysteria on university campuses, causing federal officials to impose new policies regulating student sexual behavior, feminists refuse to discuss the facts about this alleged “epidemic” of sexual assault. This unwillingness to talk about rape on campus is a reversal of the situation a year ago, when UCSB feminists led a 13-hour sit-in protest at the offices of university Chancellor Henry Yang. Despite the lack of response from campus feminists, Andrew Cavarno went ahead with his event May 18:

“There is absolutely no evidence of a rape epidemic on college campuses,” Cavarno said. “The word epidemic implies that there’s a sudden wave of sexual violence, or that things are getting worse — this is just not the case.” . . .
Pointing to an empty chair beside him, Cavarno emphasized that no one with an opposing view was present to make the case for the statistic, even after having sent out “hundreds of emails.”
“Why is that chair empty?” Cavarno asked, “If all the evidence is truly on that side, if it is beyond reproach, if there’s no reason to debate this, then why is this chair empty?” . . .
Cavarno argued that the way schools handle sexual assault often ruins the careers and social lives of men by unfairly branding them as rapists. Cavarno then wrapped up his speech saying “feminism teaches the notion that men are not deserving of empathy,” concluding that “schools should not adjudicate sexual assault.”

Carvano was interviewed by Jennifer Kabbany of the College Fix:

Cavarno said he believes feminist professors, student activists and rape advocates are unwilling to participate in a two-sided discussion because they have already achieved complete hegemony over the conversation.
“They have nothing to gain from engaging with the other side,” he said. “They simply portray anyone who disagrees with the victim statistics as a sexist rape apologist, suggesting any skepticism could only be explained through bigotry or ignorance, rather than through genuine disagreement. This prevents people from questioning their narrative, for fear of being demonized as misogynistic or insensitive to rape survivors. This strategy effectively shuts down any meaningful opportunity to have a productive dialogue.”

Carvano is exactly right. Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It and, like all other totalitarians, feminists seek to exempt themselves from criticism by silence their opponents. Because their movement’s anti-male hate propaganda cannot withstand critical scrutiny, feminists engage in character assassination against anyone who questions their claims. The “complete hegemony” of feminists in academia means that no one in the faculty or administration will challenge the “campus rape epidemic” narrative for fear of being branded a “sexist rape apologist.” Only rarely does any student like Andrew Cavarno dare to speak the truth and, in doing so, expose the lies of feminism:  “It is important to not have debates.”

Professor Laura Oaks is paid $98,000 a year not to debate facts.





 


Why Do College Girls Lie About Rape?

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Revenge.

The most obvious motive for falsely accusing someone of a crime is apparent in a case at Brown University, where the former co-captain of the mock trial team alleges that he was the victim of what the College Fix calls “an elaborate revenge plot” by a girl on the team. According to a complaint filed by “John Doe,” he was suspended from Brown after “Ann Roe” claimed that he coerced her into performing oral sex, a false accusation he says was inspired by Ann’s jealousy of John’s interest in “Kay Stiles,” another member of the mock trial team.

More than 100 lawsuits have been 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 where such accusations are judged as disciplinary proceedings. Feminists who claim there is a “campus rape epidemic” have been dismissive of concerns about false accusations and due process. Feminists contend that false accusations of rape are so rare that this possibility can be ignored, and the question of why women sometimes do lie about rape is treated dismissively. After a high-profile claim of gang-rape at the University of Virginia was exposed as a hoax, Janet Bloomfield examined the motives behind such false accusations: “12 Women Who Lied About Being Raped And Why They Did It.” Despite these concerns, however, states have passed laws and universities have implemented policies based on so-called “affirmative consent” doctrine which effectively makes it impossible for an accused student to prove his innocence. The mere accusation of sexual misconduct is now regarded as tantamount to proof of guilt, as the “John Doe” case at Brown University illustrates.

According to the amended complaint filed Tuesday in a Rhode Island state court, “Ann Roe” is an evil little bitch. OK, the phrase “evil little bitch” is not actually used in the court document, but the story it tells is frightening. John had been depressed over his breakup with his “high school sweetheart” after his freshman year at Brown, and returned to campus for his sophomore year in fall 2014 determined to recover from his heartbreak “by actively dating other women.” John tried flirting with “Kay Stiles,” unsuccessfully, but had better luck with “Ann Roe,” who texted him in November that she was “dying for some sort of human contact” because she hadn’t seen her boyfriend in two months. Four days later, John and Ann hooked up:

After John finished digitally penetrating Ann, she told John that it was her turn. She unzipped John’s pants and pulled them down to John’s ankles with his help. She then proceeded to give John oral sex. . . .
As John neared ejaculation, he asked Ann if he could do so in her mouth. Ann agreed.
After John ejaculated, John and Ann sat down, cuddled, and started kissing again.

Allegedly, I hasten to add, because this is simply John Doe’s version of the story — it’s a typical “he said/she said” case — and so I cannot vouch for John’s courtesy in asking permission to ejaculate in Ann’s mouth.

Pardon me for interrupting the narrative, but am I the only one who notices how the hookup culture produces weird protocols of etiquette? What rules apply in a situation like this? What is considered the appropriate way for a girl to perform oral sex on a boy, and what reciprocal obligations does the boy incur in such a transaction? When did universities become the Sex Police with supervisory authority over such encounters, tasked with ensuring that every action which may occur in these private circumstances is entirely consensual? Isn’t it obvious that this task is ultimately impossible? Criminal courts are the appropriate venue to adjudicate a rape charge, but no district attorney would ever go to court with a “he said/she said” case like the one described in John Doe v. Brown University. When rape is treated as a campus disciplinary matter, however, accused students are denied the legal protections any common criminal would have in a court of law. This in turn enables a vindictive liar to destroy any boy who is foolish enough to hook up with her, which is what John Doe alleges happened with Ann Roe.

The complaint describes a series of text messages between Ann and John that began four days after their Nov. 10, 2014, hookup:

The UC-Irvine mock trial event was coming up in California, and John told Ann to “[r]emember to pretend like you didn’t give me a mind blowing b–job.” She replied, “[o]nly if you remember to pretend you’re not imagining f–king the s– out of me” and “no one will suspect how much you want to [orgasm] inside me.” Ann finished by saying “sounds like we’ve got a plan [winking smile].” However, John was better at pretending than Ann expected, and Ann grew impatient.
John’s texts became short and infrequent. On November 15, 2014, Ann contacted John and asked, “whacha been up to stranger?” John responded that he was busy and couldn’t talk. Ann replied, “All righty no problem, we’ll catch up later. Night!”
The next day, Ann texted John about her mock trial performance and stated, “I wish I could see you in action.”
The next day, November 16, Ann texted John and hinted that she would like to get together. However, John replied that he had to get some work done. Ann responded, “All righty . . . Hit me up sometime if you’re bored [winking smile] see ya!”
On November 19, 2014, Ann told John that she was having boyfriend trouble and wanted him to cheer her up over the weekend. Upon information and belief, she had actually broken up with her boyfriend because of her feelings for John. John, however, declined.
Ann told John that she was “not trying to chase” him, but that he was torturing her and driving her “completely insane.” John told Ann that he had feelings for someone else — Kay, one of her best friends.

Oh, my goodness.

However high John Doe’s SAT score may be, he’s not too smart about women. She gives you oral sex and breaks up with her boyfriend and tells you you’re driving her “completely insane” and then you decide to tell her you’ve got the hots for one of her best friends? To compound his stupidity, John then asked Ann to “put in a good word for him with Kay.” Naturally, Ann badmouthed him, telling Kay that John was an “a–hole” and Ann then “began disparaging John to members of the mock trial team.” After months of conducting a personal vendetta against John, in November 2015, “Ann filed a complaint with the Title IX office accusing John of sexual assault.” In her telling of their encounter, Ann only “submitted” to giving John oral sex “out of fear,” feeling she “had no choice to avoid being raped.” Even though John had text messages from Ann that contradicted her version of events — showing that she was actively pursuing him after their hookup — and although witnesses testified that Ann had told them about their hookup in a way that made it sound “sexy and hot,” John was suspended. His lawsuit says that Brown was wrong to retroactively apply a new “affirmative consent” policy, instituted in 2015, to his 2014 encounter with Ann. The new policy makes it an offense to “manipulate” someone into sex, and John had used that term in a text to Ann, so that he in effect “confessed” to sexual assault as Brown now defines it. Yet reading John Doe’s version of events — corroborated with text messages — the far more plausible interpretation is that Ann, desiring a serious romantic relationship with John, became embittered when she realized that he viewed their hookup as strictly casual and that when she learned John had more serious feelings for her friend Kay, this turned Ann’s bitterness to vindictive rage.

There is only one way that college boys can be safe from false accusations: NEVER TALK TO A COLLEGE GIRL! Warn your sons, America.




 

In The Mailbox, 05.31.16

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— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Arlington National Cemetery – Thank You
Da Tech Guy: Pat Austin – State Representative Objects To The Declaration Of Independence
Michelle Malkin: Fallen Marine’s Mom Teaches Powerful Memorial Day Lesson
Twitchy: Spokesman For Candidate Who Never Holds Press Conferences Horrified By Trump Press Conference


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Iraqi Special Forces Launch Ground Attack On Fallujah
American Thinker: It Is Time For Trump To Unify The Party
BLACKFIVE: Memorial Day
Don Surber: Trump’s Map Of The United States Of America
Jammie Wearing Fools: Sausage-Wielding Gang Attacks Vegan Cafe
Joe For America: George Soros Snaps, Says Trump Is Aiding ISIS
JustOneMinute: A Salt On Conventional Wisdom, or, The Science Was Settled, Part Umpty-Bump
Pamela Geller: Half Of Muslims In Massive Idomeni Migrant Camp Go Missing
Protein Wisdom: No, #NeverTrump Can’t “Fail”
Shark Tank: Marco Rubio For Senate In 2016?
Shot In The Dark: “Something’s Wrong With Our Bloody Ships Today”, Part I
STUMP: Rauner Refuses To Kick The Can (And I Announce A New Project)
The Jawa Report: Memorial Day 2016
The Lonely Conservative: Poll Finds Americans Feeling Hopeless About 2016 Election
The Political Hat: Storm Troopers Of Political Correctness
The Quinton Report: Ad Attacks Rep. Renee Ellmers On Abortion
This Ain’t Hell: Every Day Should Be Your Memorial Day
Weasel Zippers: Obama Proclaims June “LGBT Pride Month”, Orders Americans To “Celebrate Diversity”
Megan McArdle: Attention, Media People – Peter Thiel Changes Nothing


A Meep In Manhattan
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Feminism: Hatred as ‘Social Justice’ (or Why @MostlyPregnant Won’t Apologize)

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“How do I say this sensitively. If you are a cis-het white guy your opinion is not as valuable and you should avoid speaking it or writing it.”
— Drew Koshgarian, March 30, 2016

When someone called my attention to that quote, I recognized it as yet another reiteration of feminism as a synonym for “SHUT UP!”

This unseemly desire to silence others, to monopolize public discussion and tell people what to think by controlling what they are allowed to say, is one reason why I keep saying Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It. We can understand (as pure selfishness) Drew Koshgarian’s motive for asserting that, as a female, her opinion is more valuable than any male opinion. Yet she is also white, “cis” (i.e., not transgendered) and heterosexual — married to a white male, in fact — so why her insistence that, for example, a Latina lesbian’s opinion or a Taiwanese transvestite’s opinion is more valuable than her own husband’s opinion? This is all about the hierarchies of “oppression” and “privilege” according to the social justice formula with which young people are indoctrinated in 21st-century academia.

What is the pedagogical purpose of training young people to view the world through the warped lenses of a crypto-Marxist ideology, where all value is determined by the rigid categories of identity politics? Well, we know that university faculty (like the government bureaucrats who run the public school system) are overwhelmingly Democrat, so that there is a partisan payoff to propagating this radical “progressive” worldview. Certainly it is easy to explain why so many young people support the geriatric socialist Bernie Sanders, just as it explains why the bogus “Republican War on Women” narrative helped Barack Obama win re-election in 2012 with the widest “gender gap” ever recorded by Gallup.

The rhetoric of “social justice” becomes hate propaganda, a form of psychological warfare intended to demoralize and intimidate opponents. Theodore Dalrymple observed in a 2005 interview:

Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

You see that political correctness means “people are forced to remain silent” — lest they be accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. — while the Left promotes dishonest propaganda as “journalism,” “entertainment” and “education,” as well as politics. Within the progressive cult, people like Drew Koshgarian reflexively repeat the formulaic social-justice jargon of “privilege” vs. “oppression” and never think critically about the validity of their own worldview.

“I avoid speaking in situations where I am more privileged than who I’m with, [because] changing habits to share better takes efforts.”
— Drew Koshgarian, May 30, 2016

What does this mean? Koshgarian explained “this is not hatred but an effort at redistribution of airspace and import,” and added: “It’s rare to hear a different viewpoint and they ought to be heard.” We are therefore supposed to imagine that Drew Koshgarian has a habit of mute silence in the presence of transgender people, gay people, Asians, Latinos and black people. However, when she encounters a heterosexual white man, Drew Koshgarian expects him to remain silent in her presence. Heterosexual white men have no human value, according to her social-justice mentality. Nothing can justify the “privileged” existence of heterosexual white men, whose opinions therefore are always wrong.

How is this “not hatred,” as Drew Koshgarian insists? Perhaps she would defend herself with the “diversity” rhetoric by which university administrators justify quotas in admissions and hiring. For decades, American universities have systematically discriminated against males, who are now only 43% of undergraduate enrollment. Women receive more than 70% of bachelor degrees in such fields as psychology, education and public administration, and women also get a majority of doctorate degrees, outnumbering males more than 2-to-1 in doctorates awarded in education and health sciences. No one in academia apologizes for this anti-male discrimination, however, and while universities claim to care about “diversity,” the political views of the faculty are a monolith of left-wing ideology. As Thomas Sowell once quipped: “The next time some academics tell you how important ‘diversity’ is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.” Academia has become so intolerant of dissent that university students organize violent disruptions to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus. In fact, after the president of DePaul University defended the right of College Republicans to invite Yiannopoulos to speak there, a sociology professor announced her resignation from DePaul, claiming that the president’s defense of “so-called free speech . . . is delusional.” The university president showed “a lack of moral courage in the disguise of intellectual objectivity and positional neutrality,” Professor Shu-Ju Ada Cheng declared:

The lack of position is a position, and your chosen position is to reinforce the existing inequalities. Shame on you. I am glad I will no longer be part of this institution and be complicit in the institutional practices that support our racist society.

If this is a common view among the faculty of our nation’s universities, are we surprised that young people like Drew Koshgarian believe the opinions  of white heterosexual males should never be heard in public? No, we are not surprised. Our education system is controlled by left-wing ideologues who indoctrinate youth into The Cult of Social Justice, a belief system that authorizes hatred toward those who can be categorized as “privileged,” who must be silenced in order to grant the “oppressed” hegemonic control of public discourse.

“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.”
— William F. Buckley Jr., 1959

Do not expect an apology from Drew Koshgarian, because it is impossible for a social justice cult member to understand how she could be wrong.





 


Surrender Without a Fight?

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“Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. . . . Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. . . . Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.”
— Gen. George S. Patton, 1944

Today, there is encouraging news for Republicans. The latest NBC tracking poll shows Donald Trump closing in on Hillary Clinton:

While Clinton is looking to wrap up the Democratic nomination with a strong performance in the final group of states on June 7, her advantage in a hypothetical matchup against the Republican nominee has dwindled by the week. Over the last seven days, Clinton led Trump 47 percent to 45 percent, with the Manhattan businessman drawing 2 points closer since the last weekly survey.

This is mirrored in the Real Clear Politics poll average, where Clinton led by 10 points six weeks ago in mid-April, but is now just a single point ahead of Trump. This is encouraging news, I say, if you are a Republican who considers it imperative to defeat the Democrats. On the other hand, if you are a disgruntled intellectual like David Frum, Trump’s impressive success is a threat to all that is good and holy:

The television networks that promoted Trump; the primary voters who elevated him; the politicians who eventually surrendered to him; the intellectuals who argued for him, and the donors who, however grudgingly, wrote checks to him—all of them knew, by the time they made their decisions, that Trump lied all the time, about everything. They knew that Trump was ignorant, and coarse, and boastful, and cruel. They knew he habitually sympathized with dictators and kleptocrats—and that his instinct when confronted with criticism of himself was to attack, vilify, and suppress. They knew his disrespect for women, the disabled, and ethnic and religious minorities. They knew that he wished to unravel NATO and other U.S.-led alliances, and that he speculated aloud about partial default on American financial obligations. None of that dissuaded or deterred them.  . . .

You can read the whole thing, if you’re into that kind of totally demoralizing Voice-of-Doom trip. David Frum hates Donald Trump about as much as does former Hillary adviser Alec Ross, who called Trump “a vulgar, demented, pig demon.” There is a bipartisan consensus against Trump among the decadent intellectual elite, while among the electorate — you know, the actual citizens of America who elect presidents — there is a bipartisan consensus that we need to stop listening to the intellectual elite. It seems a substantial segment of the electorate have decided that the “experts” got us into this mess, and so to hell with the experts.

Is it my job to tell the America people they’re wrong? No, because I actually agree with this anti-elite consensus and the fact that the chosen messenger, Donald Trump, is far from ideal in many ways does not alter the basic politica goal, i.e., defeat the Democrat Party.

We must fight the war we are actually in with the army we actually have.

Now is not the time — scarcely five months before Election Day — to sit around bemoaning the accumulated problems of the GOP political apparatus that made it impossible for conservatives to nominate some other candidate that they might have preferred over Trump.

Honestly, a year ago, it seemed to me that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was the man to beat, but he didn’t catch fire in the early debates and was the first candidate to quit the primary race. So much for my own “expert” opinion, I suppose. When he quit the campaign, Walker urged others in the crowded primary field to emulate his example, in order to unite behind a non-Trump candidate. Yet 11 candidates went all the way to the Iowa caucus in February, with eight candidates (Ben Carson, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie and Rick Santorum) divvying up about 25% of the vote, which might otherwise have gone to either Ted Cruz (who narrowly won Iowa) or Marco Rubio, who placed third in the caucuses. How different might the outcome of the primary campaign have been, if Cruz had won Iowa more decisively and Rubio had finished second, with Trump third? I don’t know, but nearly three weeks later, when Trump decisively won the Feb. 20 South Carolina, only five other candidates (Rubio, Cruz, Bush, Kasich and Carson) were still running, and defeat in South Carolina ended the campaigns of Bush and Carson.

Could this winnowing of the GOP field have been done much earlier? Yes, but do you think any of the consultants and campaign operatives on the payrolls of Team Bush — which raised $162 million — were going to tell Jeb that his candidacy was a waste of time and money? Or what about the various political “experts” hired by the campaigns of Carson, Kasich, Christie, Fiorina, Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal who between them raised a combined total of more than $200 million? Wasted money, wasted time, and nothing meaningful to show for it. All in all, about $400 million was squandered on the ultimately futile campaigns of Republican candidates who didn’t make it past South Carolina, and did anyone seriously believe John Kasich’s extended candidacy could help stop Trump in the much-talked-about “brokered convention” scenario?

Well, all that is now decisively over, and Bill Kristol is now publicly fantasizing about a third-party candidate — an idea perhaps slightly less realistic than a teenage boy’s wet dreams about Kate Upton.

Simple question: Do we want to beat Hillary, or not?

It is evident from the polls that Donald Trump can beat Hillary, and if some of our conservative pundit friends can get over their hurt feelings over their failures in the GOP primary campaign, maybe Trump will beat Hillary. But if we wake up the morning after Election Day and find that Hillary Clinton has been elected president because some disgruntled Republican “strategist” types didn’t do all they could to help beat Hillary, there is going to be hell to pay. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans, and a victory for Hillary is a defeat for America.

Let’s win this thing.





 


Johnny Depp, Chump?

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“I’m a lucky man.”
— Johnny Depp, November 2014

“Johnny Depp got used, manipulated, set up and made to look like an a–hole.”
— Doug Stanhope, May 2016

“Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”
— Benjamin Franklin

The Giant Wheel o’ Karma turned against Johnny Depp last week when his wife Amber Heard filed for divorce and then filed for a restraining order, accusing Depp of domestic abuse. Anyone who was surprised by this simply hasn’t been paying attention to the many omens of doom surrounding their relationship. Most obviously, Depp was 49 when he dumped the mother of his two children (French actress Vanessa Paradis, whom he had been with for 14 years) to be with Heard, who was then 26. A move like that is nearly always a mistake. If you can’t make a relationship work with the mother of your children, what makes you think you’re going to have better luck with a woman half your age?

Oh, sure, Depp and Paradis had “grown apart,” their relationship was “on the rocks,” yadda yadda yadda, but if any middle-aged man honestly thinks that the solution to such a problem is to hook up with a 20-something, he should probably consult a psychiatrist.

So, what do we know about Little Miss Homewrecker, Amber Heard?

Heard, who was raised Catholic, subsequently declared herself an atheist after being introduced to the works of Ayn Rand by her then-boyfriend. She has said of Rand, “I’ve read all of her books. Ever since then, I have been obsessed with her ideals. All I’ve ever needed is myself.”

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

Look, I loved Atlas Shrugged as an attack on the liberal welfare-state mentality of the New Deal, but when it reaches the point where Rand rolls out her Nietzsche-influenced anti-Christian philosophy? No, thanks.

The ugly denouement of Rand’s personal life — her affair with Nathaniel Branden, a leader of the weird cult following around Objectivism — was sufficient proof that, whatever else you say about free-market idealism, it is no substitute for sexual morality. If you’re a middle-aged movie star looking for thrills, I suppose hooking up with a young Objectivist could be fun, but marry her? Whoa. Slow your roll, homeslice.

Another thing: Watch out for lapsed Catholics. Hitler was a lapsed Catholic. Yeah, backslid Baptists and apostate Pentecostals have been known to go off the deep end, but when Catholics go bad, they’re likely to go all the way to pure evil. Prostitution, witchcraft, human sacrifice, voting Democrat — there’s no limit to their wickedness.

OK, nice Catholic girl from Texas hooks up with boyfriend who gets her reading Ayn Rand, she becomes an atheist, moves to Hollywood and . . .

 

Actress Amber Heard comes out
as a lesbian at GLAAD event
. . . The 24-year-old stepped out on Friday night for the GLAAD 25th anniversary bash with girlfriend Tasya van Ree. . . .
‘Injustice can never be stood for. It always must be fought against and I just was sick of it being a problem.
And she explained how, by hiding her sexual identity, she felt she was admitting it was a bad thing to be gay.
She says: ‘I personally think that if you deny something or if you hide something, you’re inadvertently admitting it’s wrong.’

Oh, but no labels, please:

“It’s been frustrating as I don’t label myself one way or another — I have had successful relationships with men and now a woman. I love who I love, it’s the person that matters.”

It depends on how you define “successful relationships,” I guess. Maybe her ex-boyfriends would define “successful” differently, but no one’s interviewing them to find out their opinions of Ms. Heard. As for her relationship with Tasya van Ree, who is 10 years older than Ms. Heard, let’s ask: What’s up with this “no labels” idea? Sure, I’ve got a copy of Lisa Diamond’s Sexual Fluidity on my bookshelf, so I’m familiar with this phenomenon at the conceptual level, but in terms of day-to-day life, it makes no sense whatsoever. A person who is either heterosexual or homosexual can narrow the choices down to 50% of the human race, at least, whereas a polymorphous “no labels” sexuality . . .

Well, wouldn’t that be kind of emotionally exhausting after a while? “Maybe I like this . . . No, wait, probably I like that a little better.”

Three words: Borderline personality disorder.

It was my lesbian friend Cynthia Yockey who pointed out the substantial overlap between bisexuality and borderline personality disorder. People with BPD notoriously have “boundary issues.” They can’t stand to be told “no,” and don’t think the rules should apply to them. They love to cause drama, and would rather have negative attention than to be ignored. BPD is “characterized by extreme fear of abandonment; unstable relationships with other people, sense of self, or emotions; feelings of emptiness; frequent dangerous behavior; and self-harm.”

Does that fit Amber Heard? I’m not qualified to offer a clinical diagnosis, but her “no labels” attitude struck me as symptomatic, and it seems as if the “unstable relationships” factor was evident in her marriage to Johnny Depp. There are reports that Ms. Heard never fully let go of her relationship with Tasya van Ree, and that this created problems.

Depp’s friend Doug Stanhope says he never liked Ms. Heard, and accuses her of blackmailing Depp. We cannot know the whole truth of two people’s private relationship, so I’ll reserve judgment as to the details, but let me say this in general: I don’t trust bisexuals.

This wasn’t something I’d spent much time thinking about until I started studying radical feminism, which necessarily requires paying attention to lesbian feminism, and issues surrounding women’s sexuality in general. Once I started examining the Feminist Tumblr phenomenon, I encountered a seemingly interminable war over the boundary between lesbians and bisexual women — and the bisexuals were clearly the aggressors in that conflict. However, in a strange reversal of reality, bisexual women depicted lesbians as the villains in the conflict, asserting that it was “extremist” or “bigoted” for lesbians to exclude from their lives the possibility of relationships with (or attraction to) males.

Now, I can’t say how much this Tumblr quarrel reflects any real-life conflict inside the LGBT coalition, but it did make me think about why (some) guys are so absurdly enthusiastic about the idea of bisexual women, viewing them in terms of a porn-inspired fantasy of threesomes. This kind of fetishistic obsession is unhealthy, to say the least, and pursuing such fantasies can have disastrous consequences.

About 25 or 30 years ago, there were plenty of married guys who thought “swinging” (or polyamory, as it is nowadays called) was an excellent way to “spice up” their sex lives, and they would cajole their reluctant wives into trying it. These guys were typically eager to get their wives to replicate the “hot” girl-on-girl scenes that were so common in porn videos. And, having overcome their initial reluctance, some of these wives discovered they liked other women much better than they liked their porn-addicted weirdo husbands, leading to divorce. Oops.

Once you’ve heard a few sad tales like that, you tend to develop a dim view of the misguided notion that living out one’s wildest fantasies is necessary to self-fulfillment. “Lead us not into temptation,” see?

This brings me back around to my distrust of bisexuals, because here’s the thing: If lesbians don’t trust bisexual women, why should men?

Within the lesbian community, the negative stereotype of bisexual women is that they always end up going back to men. Is that true? Should this be celebrated as a triumph of the heteropatriarchy? I’m not sure. Bisexuality is quite trendy nowadays, and my hunch is that this trend bodes ill for the future because, despite the tendency to disparage bisexuality as “just a phase” or “they’re just doing it for attention,” such women are likely to have difficulty forming durable monogamous relationships. Of course, you’d need a lot of research studies to be able to demonstrate such a correlation in terms of social science, but old-fashioned common sense and anecdotal evidence suggests that the man who thinks it’s a smart idea to marry a bisexual woman may be bitterly disappointed by the result.

Johnny Depp probably wasn’t thinking in terms of statistical probability when he hooked up with Amber Heard. He was a middle-aged guy and she was a 26-year-old blonde — no, a guy in that situation doesn’t calculate the odds rationally. “Thinking with the wrong organ,” as they say, and maybe Amber Heard wasn’t shrewd and cunning, but just emotionally unstable, but either way, Johnny Depp got played for a chump.

Pay attention to those warning signs, guys.
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