The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 12.18.15

Posted on | December 18, 2015 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Mistrial – Hung Jury
Da Tech Guy: The GOP Isn’t The Cowboy In The Western, It’s The Broken-Down Horse
The Political Hat: Arbitrary & Capricious Elimination Of A Fundamental Civil Right By Unelected Bureaucrats Coming To Nevada
Michelle Malkin: Open-Borders Money Backs Marco Rubio
Twitchy: Obama Calls Speaker Ryan To Thank Him For “Making Government Work”


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Senator Jeff Sessions Says Omnibus Spending Bill A Betrayal
American Thinker: Sanctuary City Policy Finally Challenged In Court
Conservatives4Palin: Congress’ Half-Trillion Dollar Spending Binge
Don Surber: Lessons Trump Learned From H. Ross Perot
Jammie Wearing Fools: NYT Stealth Edits Story To Omit Embarrassing Obama Admission
Joe For America: Islamic Sex Traffickers In UK Protected By Liberals
JustOneMinute: Cry Me A River
Pamela Geller: Minnesota Students To Sing “Allahu Akbar” At High School Christmas Concert
Protein Wisdom: Princess Barry’s Not Worried…
Shot In The Dark: He Wins All The Internets Today
The Gateway Pundit: Grab Your Popcorn – Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Threatens To Sue The DNC
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – Everything Is Cancelled Today, We Swear!
The Lonely Conservative: Lawmakers, Terrorists And Criminals Want Gun Control Because Of This
This Ain’t Hell: “Red Line”, Eh?
Weasel Zippers: St. Paul Teachers Scared As “White Privilege” Discipline Policies Create Chaos
Megan McArdle: California Puts Driverless Cars Into Reverse
Mark Steyn: When The Arab Spring Blooms In Paris And San Bernardino…


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Category: Linkagery

Quota-Mongers, Gender Nihilism and the Insane Logic of Radical Feminist Theory

Posted on | December 18, 2015 | 53 Comments

 

Ashe Schow at the Washington Examiner reports:

For further evidence that outrage feminists believe gender trumps all else, a new report from the Women’s Media Center bemoans the fact that more articles about campus sexual assault in major newspapers were written by men than by women.
Forget the content of those articles — women should write about rape, and men should write about whatever the modern feminists tell them they can write about. . . .

(Actually, feminists want men to shut up.)

WMC claimed that the gender of the writer skews the content.
“Furthermore, our research shows that the gender of the writer had a significant impact on how stories were covered, with women journalists not only interviewing the alleged victims more often than male journalists, but also writing more about the impact of the alleged attacks on alleged victims,” WMC wrote.
“A higher share of women journalists covered university policies and the prevalence of rape on campus, while a higher share of male journalists focused on campus proceedings and sports culture on campus,” they added.

You can read the whole thing. Feminists want to control who is allowed to write about rape as a means of controlling the narrative. Remember that feminism is a totalitarian movement to destroy civilization as we know it. Totalitarians rely not only on propaganda to promote their own ideology, but also seek to suppress dissent and silence opposition. Feminists have succeeded in effectively prohibiting criticism of their ideology on university campuses, and now seek to extend their hegemonic dominance throughout the culture. What feminism cannot withstand is the kind of sustained critical scrutiny that points out the fundamental absurdity of the feminist movement.

New Deadline for Submissions (May 15th, 2016):
F–k Your Gender Neutral Prison!
A Nihilist Insurrection Against Gender
Due to strong and intensified interest in the anthology, and to the increasing attention being given to Gender Nihilism and other critiques of Western Feminism and Transgender politics, it has been decided to push the deadline to May 15th. This is the new deadline for submissions.
When originally this anthology sought submissions this was a fairly new set of ideas, that mostly existed in online communities and did not have a lot of crossover appeal. Over the months these ideas have exploded and expanded into infinite directions of critique, expansion, and interpretation. It is because of this that I am expanding the anthology and pushing back the deadline.
There is a ‘crisis’ in Western Feminism and Transgender politics: the crisis of the female subject, transmisogyny, homonationalist imperialism and the (settler) coloniality of gender. Lost, driven out, abused, alienated and isolated — we are the victims of a regime of boundaries and definitions, a panoptic gaze of disciplinary behaviors and the ever-shifting goalposts of authenticity. We are the sacrificial lamb at the altar of respectability and profit. The ontological notions of gender and the essentialist politics of every gender based community, even ‘radical’ ones, has pushed us to this. We, much like those before us, call for the Death of the Female Subject and an opposition to trans identity politics of every form.
We cannot allow ourselves to be destroyed through what others call “liberation.” Our close friends call for an infinite expansion of gendered ontologies, new essentialisms, and new identity markers they wish would become intelligible in the eyes of others. Our distant friends see imperialist warfare as the highest form of gay and trans justice. They wish only to be murderers wrapped in a rainbow flag and the military insignia of their nationalist home. Our enemies hold on with their last breath the sex essentialism and gender ontologies of men and doctors – believing they know the real truth.
In every case, we see nothing as the only alternative to their reforms and reactionary essentialisms. We are declaring war. This war will not be fought with rainbow flags and military inclusion, hate crime legislation or prison construction, gentrification or settler-colonization, state recognition or ‘visibility’ politics. This war will be fought against the alienation of daily gendered life.
Inspired by Baedan: The Journal of Queer Nihilism this anthology would focus on the false ontology of gender and essentialism, radical trans politics, transmisogyny, the coloniality of gender, homonationalism, queer nihilism and more.

This is at once both manifestly insane and entirely logical as a consequence of feminist gender theory — the social construction of the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix. — which denies the reality of human nature.

Translating academic jargon to plain English, feminists believe that equality between men and women can only be achieved by eliminating all differences between men and women. Feminist theory is premised on the denial that there are any meaningful natural differences between men and women; all apparent differences are a result of the artificial influences of a male-dominated society and culture (“patriarchy”). Feminists believe that the traits we think of as human nature — the masculinity of men and the femininity of women — are a coercive imposition of male power, which maintains the patriarchal order through systematic violence against women that Dee Graham called “sexual terror.” The key institution of patriarchy, according to feminist theory, is what Adrienne Rich called “compulsory heterosexuality.”

“All women are prisoners and hostages to men’s world. . . .
Each man is a threat. We can’t escape men.”

 

Anyone who wishes to make sense of feminism must begin at the beginning, tracing this ideology to its origin in the radical Women’s Liberation Movement of the late 1960s and ’70s. Arguably the most important early statement of the movement’s beliefs and objectives is the 1969 Redstockings manifesto:

Women are an oppressed class. Our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives. . . .
We identify the agents of our oppression as men. . . . They have used their power to keep women in an inferior position. . . . All men have oppressed women. . . .
We regard our personal experience, and our feelings about that experience, as the basis for an analysis of our common situation. We cannot rely on existing ideologies as they are all products of male supremacist culture. . . .
Our chief task at present is to develop female class consciousness through sharing experience and publicly exposing the sexist foundation of all our institutions.

What is crucial about the highlighted passage is the assertion that only women are able to understand their condition of oppression, and that only their “feelings” are “the basis for an analysis.”

Male experience and male feelings are irrelevant. Nothing any man says has any validity to feminists, who assert that their subjective “feelings” about their “personal experience” are a form of knowledge superior to whatever any man can ever claim to know, dismissing in a single phrase (“products of male supremacist culture”) everything that Aristotle, Aquinas, Shakespeare, Locke, Burke, Marx, Freud or any other man has ever said about the human condition. Males know nothing, and this negation of male knowledge is essential to understanding feminism as a totalitarian ideology based on a belief in female supremacy.

This is what confuses people who naively accept feminist claims that their movement is about achieving “equality.” Disregarding all evidence and logic to the contrary, feminists insist that women are still as much “an oppressed class” in 2015 as the Redstockings said they were in 1969. (Never mind, of course, the many articulate critics of feminism who denied that such “oppression” actually existed. Steven Goldberg’s 1973 book The Inevitability of Patriarchy was the classic refutation of that claim, but there is no need to repeat Professor Goldberg’s arguments here.) A careful examination of feminist arguments reveals that what they assert is not the equality of men and women, but rather the intellectual and moral inferiority of males. After all, if men were virtuous and intelligent, we would not need constant lectures from feminists about how stupid, wrong and evil we are. Rebecca Solnit’s recent 2014 bestseller Men Explain Things to Me is a shrewd distillation of this feminist worldview. Although she is careful to insert disclaimers of the “not all men” variety into her arguments, the astute reader perceives that Solnit never met a man whom she considered her equal, and condescends to tolerate males only insofar as they acknowledge her infinite superiority to them. She has no faults or weaknesses; she is omniscient in her wisdom, incapable of failure or error. To disagree with Rebecca Solnit is to be not merely wrong, but also evil. Therefore, no man can speak in her presence except to praise her.

Feminist ideology justifies and rationalizes this narcissistic perspective, and raises the question of how any man can be expected to love a woman who regards him with complete contempt. Supposing that Rebecca Solnit is actually desirous of any romantic involvement with males, on what terms would such a relationship be acceptable to Her Majesty? This question expresses the mystery that has perplexed critics of feminism for more than four decades. Stipulating that everyone is free to arrange their domestic life as it pleases them, where are the men who will agree to serve as subjects under feminist dictatorship? What sort of sadomasochistic psychology could possibly be a basis of mutual attraction? Encountering a woman who never speaks of males except to scorn them as her inferiors, only a man with a depraved appetite for humiliation could desire her companionship.

This is the obverse, incidentally, of what is wrong with “pickup artist” (PUA) discourse. Men who proclaim that they consider sex to be a sport, and view all women as natural prey in their game, thereby disqualify themselves as desirable companions. Would any self-respecting woman wish to add herself as just another number in the long roster of the PUA’s conquests? If he disparages all his previous partners in this manner — just so many pretty fools he has “played” — why should any woman imagine that she would be an exception to the otherwise universal rule? PUAs and feminists mirror each other in their narcissistic selfishness and derogation of the opposite sex. It would be an interesting experiment to see what would occur if the notorious Daryush (“Roosh V”) Valizadeh were to gather a half-dozen or so of his most adept young PUA disciples and infiltrate the next National Young Feminist Leadership Conference. Could the habitual womanizers and implacable man-haters find love together? Certainly, they deserve each other, but I digress . . .

Feminism’s function as a rationalization of selfishness makes it impossible that any feminist could ever justify or defend the normal roles of men and women as husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. Marriage requires cooperation and parenthood requires sacrifice, and feminism encourages women to adopt an attitude of extreme selfishness that is incompatible with any sense of conjugal or maternal duties.

Feminism condemns marriage and motherhood as oppressive “institutions” by which “male power” is used to “keep women in an inferior position,” to quote the Redstockings manifesto. The co-founder of the Redstockings collective, Shulamith Firestone, was emphatic on this subject in her 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex: “Pregnancy is barbaric,” (p. 180), and women are “the slave class” (p. 184), because “marriage in its very definition . . . was organized around, and reinforces, a fundamentally oppressive biological condition” (p. 202).

 

Accepting these assertions as the premises of the feminist syllogism, we cannot reject the obvious conclusion of the argument. Here we may quote Rebecca Solnit’s book (p. 62), where she says “feminism made same-sex marriage possible”:

Because a marriage between two people of the same gender is inherently egalitarian — one partner may happen to have more power in any number of ways, but for the most part it’s a relationship between people who have equal standing and so are free to define their roles themselves.

“The personal is political,” radical feminist Carol Hanisch famously proclaimed, but Rebecca Solnit makes no disclosures in Men Explain Things to Me that could help us understand whatever personal stake she might have in the same-sex marriage issue. Has she ever married? Does she have children? If she made any mention of either a husband or offspring in her book, I missed it, and spending more than an hour skimming through online profile features about her divulged no evidence that she has ever married or given birth. A life of unmarried childlessness is entirely common among feminists, of course. There is a long roster, from Shulamith Firestone to Amanda Marcotte, of women who condemned men, marriage and motherhood from the perspective of the barren spinster. Given the fact of Rebecca Solnit’s enthusiasm for same-sex marriage, and that she has lived almost her entire adult life in San Francisco, some might suspect she has followed the feminist syllogism to its obvious conclusion. Avoiding mere speculation, however, we may cite many other authorities on this subject. For example, in 1978, Professor Linda Gordon wrote an essay, “The Struggle for Reproductive Freedom: Three Stages of Feminism,” that was included the anthology Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, edited by Zillah Eisenstein. Professor Gordon wrote:

“The lesbian liberation movement has made possibly the most important contribution to a future sexual liberation. . . . What the women’s liberation movement did create was a homosexual liberation movement that politically challenged male supremacy in one of its most deeply institutionalized aspects — the tyranny of heterosexuality. The political power of lesbianism is a power that can be shared by all women who chose to recognize and use it: the power of an alternative, a possibility that makes male sexual tyranny escapable, rejectable — possibly even doomed.”

This article was quoted in Feminist Politics and Human Nature (1988) by Professor Allison Jaggar, who commented:

“The abolition of compulsory heterosexuality would have an enormous impact on the system of male dominance. . . . The abandonment of compulsory heterosexuality would reshape the sexuality of both girls and boys and, if psychoanalysis is correct, would have tremendous consequences for the structure of the unconscious and for people’s sense of their own gender identity.”

Let us stipulate that both Professor Gordon and Professor Jaggar are correct in their analyses. However much I dislike seeing heterosexuality described as “male sexual tyranny,” we must remember that feminism requires the negation of the male perspective. The man’s experience, and his feelings about that experience, are entirely invalid in feminist discourse. He must remain silent, because only feminists have any basis for analyzing their oppression. Because it is impossible for any man to dispute what Professor Gordon and Professor Jaggar say, I am compelled to agree: Feminism and the “lesbian liberation movement” are essentially one and the same. Heterosexuality and feminism are fundamentally incompatible, and therefore the success of feminism means that the “male sexual tyranny” of heterosexuality is “doomed.”

 

Once you accept the premise of feminist theory — “Women are an oppressed class. Our oppression is total. . . . All men have oppressed women.” — it is impossible to reach any other conclusion. Feminism aims to destroy “the system of male dominance,” as Professor Jaggar calls it, and this requires employing what Professor Gordon calls the “political power of lesbianism” to destroy “the tyranny of heterosexuality.” If you disagree with this conclusion, your argument is not with me, but rather with these eminent professors. Disagreeing with feminists, however, is now considered a hate crime. This was made clear in June 2014:

Efforts are underway to stop the anti-woman group “A Voice for Men” from holding its first international conference in Detroit the last weekend in June. This “Men’s Rights Advocates” group, based in Houston, promotes male supremacy, sexism and sexual violence against women. It was designated a hate group in 2012 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes against oppressed people in the U.S.
Hundreds opposed to the conference rallied and marched through downtown Detroit on June 7. Organized largely through social media, the diverse and mainly youthful crowd rallied at Grand Circus Park where speakers denounced the misogynist, hate-based terrorism of MRAs and their anti-woman agenda. Some spoke about surviving sexual assault. Several raised the group’s anti-lesbian-gay-bi-trans-queer agenda and racist nature of MRAs. The LGBTQ community was well represented in the crowd, and Motor City Pride weekend started later that day. . . .
UNITE HERE Local 24 representatives passed out signs to “Boycott Doubletree” and denounced the hotel for hosting the conference of bigots. The union is waging a struggle for union recognition, decent wages and dignity for hotel industry workers, many of whom are women and people of color.
Unafraid and undeterred by male supremacist threats and possible MRA spectators, the protesters marched right up to the Doubletree Hotel and held the street in front of it. . . .
The crowd chanted “Hey, Doubletree, what do you say, would you host the KKK?!” and “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, MRAs go away!” as hotel management refused to accept more than 3,000 petition signatures demanding Doubletree cancel its reservations for the “men’s rights” conference.

Heterosexual males are the KKK, and anyone who speaks a word in favor of men must be part of an “anti-woman . . . hate group.”




 

Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 12.17.15

Posted on | December 17, 2015 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Is Vladimir Putin A Vampire?
Louder With Crowder: SJW Wars – Political Correctness Awakens
American Irony: A New Species Of Parasite In DC? Well, Not Really
The Political Hat: There Is No God But Gaia And Climate Scientists Are Her Prophets
Michelle Malkin: Vetting Obama’s Witless Vetters At Homeland Security
Twitchy: Regret This Tweet Yet? Cosmo Thinks Buying Guns Should Be As Difficult As Getting An Abortion


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: The Mystery Of Missing Inflation
American Thinker: Can Cruz Win The General? Yes He Can!
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Sarah Palin On Trump Vs. Cruz – “A Great Problem To Have”
Don Surber: Well Played, @RealJamesWoods
Jammie Wearing Fools: As Lawmakers Clash Over Refugees, Syrian Immigration Quietly Tops 100,000 Since 2012
Joe For America: Ten Most Dangerous Jobs In The U.S. – You’ll Be Surprised By What’s Not Listed
JustOneMinute: El Rushbo, Melting Down On Rubio v. Cruz v. Reality, Backs Cruz
Pamela Geller: Muslims Desecrate Polish Cemetery With Islamic Graffiti
Shot In The Dark: Just A Hint
The Gateway Pundit: Speaker Fail – Paul Ryan Loads Budget With Liberal Goodies, Will Pass With Dem Majority
The Jawa Report: Anjem Choudhary Really Needs 15,000 Pounds
The Lonely Conservative: So Much For The Power Of The Purse
This Ain’t Hell: Air Force Won’t Provide Volley Salute For Funerals Any More
Weasel Zippers: Michael Moore Holds “We Are All Muslims” Sign Outside Trump Tower, Gets Trolled Hard By Miss Puerto Rico
Megan McArdle: There’s No Miracle Cure For Healthcare Costs
Mark Steyn: The Hundred Million Dollar Bush League


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Fear and Loathing: An Oberlin Feminist on Men, Republicans and Heterosexuality

Posted on | December 17, 2015 | 217 Comments

“I hope men realize that we (women) actually fear for our safety every time we walk by you on the street.”
— Kaela Elias, Aug. 4

“when i was younger, i thought i was straight because society makes you think that. it’s sad.”
— Kaela Elias, Aug. 9

“. . . luckily i have parents who accept me for whatever i am and i live in berkeley and have plenty of friends who aren’t straight so it’s not that big of a deal. but sexuality is something that changes a lot, so i guess i’ve accepted that it’ll keep changing as i get older and it’ll never stop being confusing.”
— Kaela Elias, Sept. 19

“So many cishet white boys make misogynistic comments around me purposefully because they know I’ll react, but don’t worry everyone!! It’s okay because it’s just a joke 🙂 saying offensive things to a girl that make her uncomfortable is A+ humor, 10/10.”
— Kaela Elias, Nov. 18

“I recently learned that the guy who lives next to me and literally never even makes eye contact with me is a REPUBLICAN. I am scared.”
— Kaela Elias, Dec. 14

Kaela Elias attends Oberlin College (annual tuition $50,586) and describes herself on Tumblr as “a queer introverted feminist” whose “blog is a space for me to unapologetically love myself.” Being from Berkeley, California, where so many of her friends “aren’t straight” and her parents are “accepting” of her “confusing” sexuality, Kaela’s feminism is inspired by her “fear” of males, especially “cishet” males. As incredible as this may seem, some male students at Oberlin College are actually Republican, so she’s “scared.” Feminist Tumblr is full of frightened young women like Kaela Elias, and we must ask whether:

A. Tumblr is an effect, and this easy-to-use blogging platform more or less accidentally became popular with a certain type of feminist;
or
B. Tumblr is a cause, and this hive of LGBT activism actually facilitates the adolescent sexual confusion that so often accompanies the self-described “feminist” identity.

There is a certain type of brainy, socially awkward girl, of which Kaela Elias is an excellent example, whose tendency to overthink everything makes them vulnerable to the kind of “bisexuality” she describes as “confusing.” While I don’t want to play amateur psychoanalyst here, anyone who has read my series of posts about Feminist Tumblr knows how often the same set of factors overlap.

What we might call Feminist Tumblr Syndrome is manifested by a cluster of symptoms that typically include depression and/or anxiety, an inability to form stable romantic relationships, an irrational fear or hostility toward males, and the expression of a non-heterosexual orientation as a basis of personal and/or political identity.

Excessive involvement in online social media, to the detriment of real-life interaction with people, can be seen as both cause and effect of Feminist Tumblr Syndrome. The more she isolates herself alone in her room with her laptop, the more she identifies with the like-minded feminists she encounters online, and the less she is able to relate to ordinary people around her, especially heterosexual males, who are constantly the object of scornful denunciation on Feminist Tumblr.

Kaela Elias uses “bossy-feminist” as her Tumblr URL and calls her blog “Professional Killjoy.” Here is what she wrote in answer to someone who asked her if she “hates” men:

I hate male entitlement; I hate the things men are expected to do and think; I hate how much space men take up and that they don’t even realize it; I hate the way men oppress others and create violence and the fact that it’s often unintentional; I hate that I often don’t feel safe around men but still feel pressure to seek their approval.

So, she doesn’t “hate” men, she just hates everything they do or say. She hates men for being so . . . well, masculine, basically.

Men “oppress others and create violence” — even at an elite liberal arts school like Oberlin College, where Kaela Elias encounters “cishet white boys” who say “offensive things to a girl that make her uncomfortable.”

Kaela Elias is “scared” of the Republican guy who “literally never even makes eye contact with me,” but can you imagine the terror she would experience if he did make eye contact? My hunch is that the Republican guy never makes eye contact with any female student at Oberlin because he knows they’re all paranoid feminists who would accuse him of “objectification” and “harassment” if he ever so much as looked at them. (Smart boys avoid unnecessary interaction with women who exhibit an attitude of hostile suspicion, as crazy feminists usually do.)

Is feminism a political movement or a personality disorder? Feminist Tumblr is an environment where it is impossible to draw an clear line between ideology and mental illness. Kaela Elias’ parents in California are rich enough to send her to a private college in Ohio where tuition is $50,586 a year, yet she has a weird fixation with “oppression”:

friendly reminder that it’s not the job of an oppressed person to educate someone who’s privileged. if someone who’s oppressed feels comfortable to inform a privileged person about that system of oppression, the privilege person should be eternally grateful and also not expect the oppressed person to be 100% polite. systems of oppression are literal shit, and if the privileged person did something to perpetuate that system, they shouldn’t expect the oppressed person to calmly sit down with them and explain way they’re offended. It’s not their job, and if they are kind enough to do that, the privileged person should be thankful rather than defensive.

But wait! There’s more:

Privileged people need to stop criticizing the way marginalized people react to their oppression. If you’re an oppressor, it is never your job to criticize the way others react to oppression that you perpetuate.

What inspired these particular bursts of jargon? She doesn’t say. She also doesn’t say what made her choose to attend Oberlin, rather than staying home to attend UC-Berkeley, where in-state tuition is only $13,432 a year. When you’re spending Daddy’s money, the sky’s the limit, so Kaela Elias locks herself away in her dorm at Oberlin, scared of that Republican guy next door, blogging about how “privileged” people should never criticize “marginalized” people about their “oppression.”

Perhaps you have noticed something about Kaela Elias:

people telling me I’m looking for a reason to be angry is ridiculous considering how many things in the world are worth being furious about. If you’re not mad, you’re not thinking critically. anger and productivity go together, and frustration makes me passionate, which motivates me to combat injustice. why is anger negative? anger is necessary. anger is a justified response to oppression.

Men have a problem with Kaela Elias:

I’m done trying to reassure men that the feminist movement benefits them. It absolutely does help men, but if the only reason you support a movement is because it directly affects you, then we have a problem.

Kaela Elias has a problem with men:

I have such low expectations for men, but 90% of them still don’t meet them

Men get defensive with a feminist like Kaela Elias:

if a woman expresses her opinion about the patriarchy, men freak the fuck out and get incredibly defensive, yet women are the ones who supposedly overreact about everything?

Other feminists need political advice from Kaela Elias:

Regardless of how problematic Hillary’s policies are, she’s a CONSIDERABLY better candidate than any republican running. If you think you’re protesting her policies by not voting or by voting for an obscure third party candidate, understand that you’re just making it more likely for us to have a republican president.

Despite her willingness to publish her angry rants on Tumblr for all the world to see, Kaela Elias is shy and awkward:

i want to get to know so many people but i’m too shy to talk to them

Again:

so many people to meet at my school, why must i be so shy?

And again:

i hate being shy. i hate feeling awkward or not knowing what to say because then people think i’m boring, but in reality there’s a lot going on in my head i just choose not to share it. i’m usually quiet around people whose opinions i care about and loud around people whose opinions don’t matter to me. so people who i don’t particularly like tend to like me, while people i like don’t always like me. it’s a constant cycle i wish i could stop.

Tempting as it is to recommend Wild Turkey and cocaine — a miracle cure, according to the famed expert Dr. Hunter S. Thompson — I’m not sure Kaela Elias could handle such strong medicine. Who knows how an introverted queer feminist would react to the gonzo treatment? Case studies indicate the effects can be unpredictable.

As I recall, back in the ’70s, a college girl with a steady supply of Daddy’s money could get herself into all kinds of trouble while trying to overcome her shyness. That was before the Internet, however, and now all the shy girls are on Tumblr ranting about “oppression” instead of partying with rock-and-roll outlaws. But I digress . . .

Feminist Tumblr is narcissism masquerading as political activism. Ranting inside an echo chamber about “cishet white boys” doesn’t persuade anyone or accomplish anything in terms of ending the “oppression” under which Kaela Elias imagines she is suffering. Rather than admit that she is the problem — she is privileged, not oppressed, and her shyness and insecurities are the real source of her own unhappiness — instead she uses politics as a rationalization, a defense mechanism that protects her damaged ego by externalizing blame. Her unhappiness is not her fault. She blames “society” for making her think she was heterosexual when she was younger and blames men for the irrational fear she feels toward them, even while she feels “pressure to seek their approval.”

Because she can never accept responsibility for her own problems, Kaela Elias needs a scapegoat and feminist ideology offers her “the patriarchy,” a “system of oppression” of which she may imagine herself a victim. Never mind all those poor people who can’t afford $50,586 a year to attend Oberlin — none of them are oppressed the way Kaela Elias is. They are “not thinking critically” like her. They are not full of the “frustration” that makes Kaela Elias “passionate . . . to combat injustice.”

And as for men, she has “low expectations” for them that 90% are unable to meet. Who could blame Kaela Elias for hating men, considering how they “oppress others and create violence”? In fact, she may considers it violent oppression for me to quote her blog. I just hope she doesn’t “freak the fuck out and get incredibly defensive.”

Merry Christmas, Kaela Elias.




 

Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 12.16.15

Posted on | December 16, 2015 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: No Fly Zone
Proof Positive: Awaken A Sleeping Giant, Fill Him With A Terrible Resolve
Doug Powers: Securing From Behind – DHS Working On Plan To Look At Visa Applicants’ Social Media
Twitchy: Did Twitter Seriously Lock Out Adam Baldwin For This?


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: The Bleak Reality Driving Trump’s Rise
American Thinker: Biggest Liar Of 2015 – The Washington Post And Its Pinocchios
BLACKFIVE: Operation Toy Drop 2015
Conservatives4Palin: Trump Cruz’n Away With Lead In Latest WaPo/ABC Poll
Don Surber: Enough With The Debates
Jammie Wearing Fools: Confused Senior Citizen Baffled Why “Climate Change” Wasn’t Discussed At GOP Debate
Joe For America: Obama Says It’s Okay To Die On Line At The VA, But You Can’t Say Merry Christmas
JustOneMinute: Somebody Won!
Pamela Geller: Meanwhile In Virginia, Students Learn Calligraphy By Writing “There Is No God But Allah”
Protein Wisdom: “I’ve Reached That Point In Life Where I Don’t Have To Do Anything That Isn’t Fun”
Shot In The Dark: It’s Mandatory, Dammit!
STUMP: Wassa Matta, Rahm? Anything Getting You Down?
The Gateway Pundit: ISIS Smuggled Sarin Gas Through Turkey – Terrorists Captured With Nerve Agent In Switzerland
The Jawa Report: Debate Fevah II
The Lonely Conservative: Another GOP Debate
This Ain’t Hell: Wednesday Morning Feel Good Stories
Weasel Zippers: CAIR Demands Republicans Sign Pledge Denouncing Islamophobia
Megan McArdle: Trump Disproves Liberal And Conservative Myths
Mark Steyn: Welfare For The World


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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox, 12.15.15

Posted on | December 15, 2015 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox, 12.15.15

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Liberal Hipsters With Guns
Louder With Crowder: Not Normal – 52-Year Old Man Claims He’s 6-Year-Old Girl, Abandons Family
The Political Hat: One Person, One Vote – But Some Votes Are More Equal Than Others
Doug Powers: Producer Looks Forward To Telling Story Of Ted Kennedy’s Hellish Ordeal After Leaving Woman To Drown At Chappaquiddick
Twitchy: Judge Who Struck Down D.C. Gun Regulations “Wasn’t Authorized To Hear Case”


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: From Decadence To Destruction In California
American Thinker: Barack Obama And The End Of Western Civilization
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Bone Labyrinth By James Rollins
Conservatives4Palin: Political “Word Association” With Governor Sarah Palin
Don Surber: I’m A Bad Influence, According To NPR
Jammie Wearing Fools: Sanity Wins – School Tosses Principal’s Ban On Santa, Pledge Of Allegiance
Joe For America: ACLU Board Member – “Shoot Trump Supporters Before Election Day”
JustOneMinute: Health Care Is Complicated
Pamela Geller: First Photos Of The ISIS Sex Slave Dungeons
Protein Wisdom: How Big Should Government Be?
Shot In The Dark: The Chucklehead Horde
STUMP: Amassing Predictions For 2016
The Gateway Pundit: Parents Protest After Catholic High School Creates “Sacred” Muslim Prayer Room
The Jawa Report: All That Matters!
The Lonely Conservative: Government Watchdog Says EPA Broke Law By Promoting Water Rule
This Ain’t Hell: Did Someone Say “YGBSM”? Unfortunately, They’re Not
Weasel Zippers: Obama Speaking Today To Battle “Hateful Talk” About Muslims
Megan McArdle: Sorry, Kids. This Columnist Won’t Write Your Essay For You.
Mark Steyn: Celebrating A Deserter In The Rose Garden


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Category: Linkagery

Further Thoughts on ‘Diversity’ and the Ritual Suicide of American Culture

Posted on | December 15, 2015 | 35 Comments

The previous post about Sam’s Club CEO Rosalind Brewer’s comments on corporate “diversity” was 900 words, which is but the tip of a vast iceberg of what I could say on this subject. Diversity is one of those “glittering generalities” — like Equality and Progress and Science — that function in public discourse as a sort of intellectual anesthesia, inducing a trance-like state in which we can be argued into accepting bad policy because any opposition could be characterized as a sin against these vague concepts. Rhetorical invocations of abstract ideals are a sort of counterfeit currency, a substitute for sound logic and sturdy facts, when we are talking about matters of policy that affect the real lives of flesh-and-blood people in a world where the potential consequences of foolish naïveté include War, Famine, Disease and Death.

 

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will be only too happy to ride in shouting slogans of diversity and social justice, much the same way as Hitler took advantage of the slogan of peace. “Peace for our time,” as Neville Chamberlain called it after betraying Czechoslovakia at Munich, lasted less than a year before the Stuka bombers and Panzer divisions were unleashed against Poland. From the day on which Chamberlain proclaimed “peace for our time,” it took less than 21 months before the British army found itself surrounded at Dunkirk. Two weeks after that debacle, the Battle of Britain began, and soon bombs from Heinkels and Junkers were falling on England. “Peace for our time,” indeed.

You might think the lessons of history would teach people to be skeptical toward slogans as a substitute for sound policy, but the teaching of history has been hijacked and corrupted by ideologues in much the way journalism has been similarly hijacked and corrupted. The moral of history, as taught in American schools and universities, is the same as the moral of every story in the major news media: Vote Democrat.

What shall we say, then, of “diversity”? First, we must recognize that it is merely a slogan, which can be used to justify damned near anything in terms of public policy. About 20 years ago, a friend of mine remarked that liberals believe in diversity through homogenization, so that they will not be satisfied until we are all identical and interchangeable. It seems to be the goal of liberal policy to create “diversity” by eradicating every existing difference between individuals, thus to reduce us all to Standardized Human Units. This is their long-term plan, but in the short term, liberals insist that every institution and organization in society must be equally “diverse.” The perfect example of this idea, I think, was the 1996 Supreme Court ruling that decided that the all-male enrollment policy of Virginia Military Institute was unconstitutional. Somehow, it seems, the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment has swallowed the entire Constitution, and this strange logic — which views the achievement of equality as the whole purpose of government — can be traced forward from the 1996 VMI decision to this year’s Obergefell decision making same-sex marriage the law of the land.

 

Once we accept slogans like “diversity” as a substitute for facts and logic, it becomes impossible to argue that all-male institutions serve a legitimate purpose, just as it becomes impossible to argue against same-sex marriage. Merely invoke the right slogans — Equality! Progress! Science! — and every possible objection is silenced, as critics are instantly stigmatized: Racist! Sexist! Homophobe!

Why is it, really, that we should care who is CEO of Sam’s Club? This is a private corporation, whose policies and personnel answer to a corporate board which, in turn, answers to stockholders whose capital is at stake in the business. One might say the customers of Sam’s Club should be considered, but the consideration of what the customers want is the job of the company’s employees, and of no concern to anyone else. You see, if the customers don’t like shopping at Sam’s Club, they can shop at Costco, and if they don’t like Costco, they can shop online via my Amazon Associates links (and I encourage them to do, as this generates revenue for me, the Greedy Capitalist Blogger).

Is my blog “diverse”? No, because I can’t afford the luxury of hiring the necessary quota of gay black men, Latina lesbians and transgender Asians to pass muster with the Supreme Court. Let’s face it, my existence violates the 14th Amendment — I’m a one-man system of discriminatory oppression — and it’s probably just a matter of time until I’m shut down by the Department of Home Security or some kind of United Nations tribunal. So you better start shopping those Amazon links while it’s still legal. How long will it be before we’re forbidden to commit such a Thought Crime as questioning the logic of “diversity”?

In practice, “diversity” is often a very different thing than the idealistic abstraction its intellectual proponents demand. Intellectuals inhabit places where profit is not a motive and where the normal supply-and-demand forces of economics are skewed by non-market incentives such as the government subsidies to colleges and universties that keep the Higher Education Bubble inflated. Consider the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale University:

Drawing on history, literature, cultural studies, social science, and science, it offers interdisciplinary perspectives from which to study the diversity of human experience. Gender — the social meaning of the distinction between the sexes — and sexuality — sexual identities, discourses, and institutions — are studied as they intersect with class, race, ethnicity, nationality, and transnational movements.

What, if anything, does this actually mean? Why do students at Yale (annual tuition $47,600) pursue these “interdisciplinary perspectives”? Consider the chairwoman of this department at Yale:

Margaret Homans has practiced feminist (and, more recently, queer) literary criticism in fields ranging from Romantic poetry to the contemporary novel. Her goal has been to mediate between sometimes polarized views of human identity: is gender the core or essence of any human subject, or is gender mutable and socially and culturally constituted? In her courses and publications on Victorian, modern, and contemporary literature, she has focused on women writers who explore questions of gender, sexuality, power, and identity. Her current research is on narratives about adoption, which raises questions about what constitutes the human in the contexts of race, ethnicity, nationality, and class as well as gender and sexuality.

So the practice of “feminist (and, more recently, queer) literary criticism” has qualified Dr. Homans not merely to teach at Yale (where the average professor’s salary is reportedly $198,365) but to be chairwoman of an entire department devoted to studying the ways in which “gender” and “sexuality . . . intersect with class, race, ethnicity, nationality, and transnational movements.” Most students at Yale are there to study something useful (law, medicine, economics, etc.) and one supposes that few of them pay any attention to queer feminist literary criticism, yet the resources of Yale are so vast (the university’s endowment is valued at nearly $24 billion) that they can afford to employ Professor Homans to teach utter nonsense to whatever small number of Yale students might enroll in her courses. This is what “diversity” means in elite academia, where the faculty and administration exist in a surreal Through the Looking-Glass environment where the normal rigors of human existence never intrude.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”

Margaret Homans is the author of such lively books as Women Writers and Poetic Identity: Dorothy Wordsworth, Emily Bronte and Emily Dickinson and Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing which you can purchase by clicking those Amazon links. Alternatively, you could purchase a samurai sword ($53.95) and the book Seppuku: A History of Samurai Suicide ($18.81), because disemboweling yourself in a harakiri ritual would probably be more enjoyable than reading feminist literary criticism by a Yale University professor. The choice is yours, really.

Comparing “diversity” to ritual seppuku might be an interesting thesis, considering how American society has spent decades disemboweling itself, so to speak, to comply with the fanatical devotion to Equality that is a quasi-religious faith among the liberal elite in the same way bushido inspired the ancient samurai. No practical consideration can be permitted to interfere with the process of conforming society to fit the intellectual abstractions — Equality! Progress! Science! — that are the idols worshipped in the Temple Cult of Social Justice.

“Diversity is our strength,” Bill Clinton said during one of those rare moments of his presidency when he was not too busy having sex with White House interns. It is an easy thing for politicians to invoke such slogans, just as it is easy for Yale University to provide full-time employment for a queer feminist literary critic, but the ordinary American’s experience of “diversity” is likely to be different than the experience of the political and intellectual elite who promote these ideas.

When ordinary Americans see Yale student Jerelyn Luther screaming obscenities at a faculty member, we don’t necessarily sympathize with the target of her tantrum. Certainly, there is no one on the Yale faculty whom I think worthy of respect, for I consider Yale University to be a corrupt enterprise with which no honest person would associate himself. America’s cultural elite is decadent and depraved, and everyone employed by Yale University — and Harvard University, and Columbia University, and Brown University, etc. — is part of the problem. Ivy League universities are evil places where wicked people are paid to poison the minds and destroy the souls of young people. That parents would pay $47,600 a year to send their children to Yale is astonishing. As I said of the Yale-educated feminist Alana Massey:

No Christian would dare go near such an ivy-covered Temple of Satanic Wickedness, except perhaps to deliver a prophecy of its imminent doom, then fleeing in haste before Jehovah sends fire and brimstone showering down to incinerate the foul stench of that latter-day Gomorrah.

The truth about “diversity” and other such slogans is that they substitute not only for facts and logic, but also for morality. If the standard by which people are judged is how their identity contributes to “diversity,” then no white male heterosexual Christian can have any value at all. Yale will pay $198,365 a year to employ a queer feminist professor like Margaret Homans, but under no circumstance would Yale University hire a white male heterosexual Christian, much less promote him to the chairmanship of a department. If there is even one Christian on the Yale campus, this represents a failure of Yale’s policy, as the university is nowadays dedicated to the abolition of Christianity. Of course, the admissions office and the faculty hiring committees have not yet perfected the application-screening process by which Yale detects and excludes Christians from campus. Not every student who graduates from Yale is a homosexual atheist — but they’re working on it.

This brings us back to Sam’s Club CEO Rosalind Brewer, who complained that she “met with a supplier and the entire other side of the table was all Caucasian males.” Why do you think this was? My theory is that the elite universities are so eager to recruit every smart and ambitious woman or member of a non-white minority group in America, that they have produced a shortage of female and minority talent in the private sector. If Yale University will pay a woman $198,365 a year to teach queer feminist literary criticism, after all, why should she even bother looking for a job in the private sector? University administrators promote “diversity” by doing everything possible to discourage men from attending — why do you think females are now 57% of college students nationwide? — and white guys are seeking opportunity outside academia. Ask yourself, would Yale ever hire a white male professor if there was a qualified female or minority applicant for the job? Of course not.

“To hell with Yale,” say the white guys, “let’s start a business.”

Everyone at Yale University shares Rosalind Brewer’s contempt for white men, who lack the one quality — “diversity” — that our decadent elite consider more important than anything else. Neither the CEO of Sam’s Club not anyone at Yale gives a damn how smart you are or how hard you work. If you are a white man, they consider you utterly without value. And if you are not only white and male but also heterosexual, every university is teaching their students to fear you as a rapist.

“Diversity,” on closer examination, is a slogan that is part of a propaganda of hatred, intended to benefit the Democrat Party. It’s like Progress, a slogan liberals use to imply that opponents of liberalism are old-fashioned. It’s like Science, a slogan liberals use to imply that opponents of liberalism are ignorant, superstitious bigots. And, of course, “diversity” is the handmaiden of Equality, the summum bonum of liberal belief, the raison d’être of the Democrat Party. Strange to say, electing more Democrats and enacting more liberal policies have failed to bring about the Utopia of Equality the Democrat Party has been promising voters for decades, any more than did Neville Chamberlain deliver on his promise of “peace for our time.”

Well, you can shop Amazon and buy a 1/32 scale model kit for a Stuka bomber or maybe a Panzer IV tank. Don’t forget to order paints — one set in military colors and another set for regular colors — some model glue, some brushes and other tools. These are some fine holiday gift suggestions for a young boy and maybe Dad, too. You can have fun together, and maybe explain to your son how it was back in the old days, when the leaders of America believed in waging war against our nation’s enemies, before we started electing our nation’s enemies as leaders, so that they can destroy America in the name of “diversity.”

The problem with liberals is that it is impossible to hate them as much as they hate America. Hitler never hated America as much as Barack Obama hates America, and as for Hillary . . .

Well, what difference at this point does it make?

I used to think Democrats were merely ignorant and incompetent, but if they were destroying America through bumbling stupidity, they might occasionally do something right by accident. Instead, we see that everything they do is bad for the country, and this record of 100% wrongness — their consistent pursuit of policies that hurt our nation — cannot be explained except by concluding that Democrats are evil and they are wrecking America on purpose.




 

Category: Culture, Education, Intellectuals, Racism

The ‘Diversity’ Hustle

Posted on | December 15, 2015 | 55 Comments

 

Sam’s Club CEO Rosalind Brewer “is being accused of discriminating against white men following a CNN interview where she discussed the importance of workforce diversity”:

Brewer was asked by the interviewer how she promotes diversity within her company.
“It has to start with top leadership,” Brewer said. “My executive team is very diverse and I make that a priority. I demand it within my team.”
She said she mentors women inside and outside of her company, as well, and also encourages Sam’s Club’s partners to hire a more diverse workforce. . . .
“Just today we met with a supplier and the entire other side of the table was all Caucasian males. That was interesting. I decided not to talk about it directly with [the supplier’s] folks in the room because there were actually no female, like, levels down. So I’m going to place a call to him.”
Critics are claiming that Brewer’s remarks are evidence that she advocates against employing and hiring white men — even though four of the eight people on her executive team are white men. Some customers are now accusing Brewer of being “racist” toward white men and are threatening to boycott Sam’s Club.

You can read the whole thing, and you can also read Steve Berman’s commentary at Red State, which begins: “Nobody argues against the fact that there needs to be diversity at the top of large companies, but . . .”

Uh, what?

Is it a “fact” that “diversity at the top” is a “need”? I am skeptical. Why should anyone care whether the executive suite is “diverse”? Are the Japanese executives at Toyota worried? And why does Steve Berman limit this “diversity” requirement to “large companies”?

How large does a company have to be before the “need” for “diversity at the top” becomes a “fact”? If a family of Mexican immigrants opens a taco stand, should they be required to hire a Korean assistant manager for the sake of “diversity”? Does anyone complain there are “too many” Italians working at the pizza restaurant?

Businesses exist for exactly one reason, to make profit. Anything that contributes to the goal of making profit is good, and anything that distracts from that goal is bad. Period.

Companies do not exist for the sake for the employees. Nobody has a “right” to a job at any company, because if the company does not make profit, the company will go bankrupt and then everybody will be unemployed. Your employment is therefore a function of your daily contributions to the goal of making profit.

Where do people get these crazy ideas that business should have some other goal beyond profit? It’s “democracy,” stupid.

People believe that, because we live under a democratic form of government, everything should be democratic. American parents sometimes encourage this foolish belief, kowtowing to the whims of toddlers and allowing their children to question parental authority. Do the kids want whole-grain cereal and juice for breakfast, or Pop-Tarts and chocolate milk? Let’s have a referendum!

Our education system is also increasingly “democratic” this way, as demonstrated by the puerile tantrums of overgrown toddlers at Yale University and other campuses run by mobs rule.

Democracy becomes anarchy, a free-for-all where everything is up for grabs, because the basis of authority is always uncertain, and people believe they are entitled to have a vote about everything, and believe they are “oppressed” if anything — whether it’s their job, their school or their marriage — doesn’t perfectly fit their own plans and wishes.

Where legitimate authority is uncertain or disputed, we find what Hobbes called bellum omnium contra omnes (“the war of all against all”), and the identity-politics mentality of “diversity” is symptomatic of this societal drift toward anarchy. Why should anyone care that the CEO of Sam’s Club is a black woman? And why should she care whether the suppliers are white males? Sam’s Club exists to make profit, as do the companies that manufacture the products that are sold at Sam’s Club, and as long as everybody is making profit, so what? The people who are calling for a boycott of Sam’s Club are reflecting the same mentality as those who want to boycott Donald Trump’s businesses because they don’t like Trump’s opinions on immigration. The idea that everything is political — that everything should always be up for a vote or otherwise subject to political influence — and that we are victims of “social injustice” if things don’t go our way, must ultimately lead to anarchy and civil war. Permit me to remind readers of a valuable lesson:

Life is often unfair. People wrongly suffer harm through no fault of their own, and if we allow ourselves to sulk over the harms we’ve suffered, we will never accomplish anything useful in life. Some people go through life reacting to every failure by saying, “It’s not my fault,” and blaming others for their problems. We call these people losers or, if they convert their self-pity to political ideology, we call them “activists.” Life is unfair, says the loser, and this unfairness is social injustice, and therefore we must rearrange the world to make life better for the losers.

Don’t be a loser. Don’t be the kind of grievance-mongering “activist” who devotes your life to the political ideology of self-pity. And don’t let your kids vote on what to have for breakfast.

P.S.: Shop our Amazon links for Christmas deals because . . . profit!




 

Category: Racism
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