The Other McCain

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

Feminist Tumblr and the ‘Tampon Tax’

Posted on | October 9, 2015 | 87 Comments

 

Behold the irrefutable logic of Feminist Tumblr:

Tampons and other ‘feminine hygiene’ products are taxed. Women have to pay taxes just to be able to have our periods.
So if any anti feminist complains about women in regards to money (or anything really) just tell him: “As a female tax payer my tampon taxes go towards things that you benefit from so shut the f–k up“
Just by being born a woman you are born into more financial needs, not wants. I need to buy tampons, pads, monthly pain medicine, underwear(after they are inevitably stained), contraceptions to help with more severe periods and pregnancy prevention in general. Imagine living paycheck to paycheck and having to budget for feminine products in addition to other living essentials. Where as a guy can put that extra $50-75 towards food, rent, etc. There’s really not the option to not buy tampons/pads that month. You can’t go to work bleeding down your legs.

Perhaps the young ladies of Feminist Tumblr don’t realize it, but some societies actually have a system that ensures that males provide for women’s special needs. Under this system, each girl is born with a male assigned to take care of her, and also to take care of her mother. In societies with such a system, this man is called a “father.” This man has the responsibility of providing for the health and safety of one adult woman (who is called a “wife”) as well as any children she bears, including both sons and daughters. Upon reaching adulthood, each female is then assigned another male to provide for her in a similar fashion. In societies with such a system, this man is called a “husband.” This system distributes the economic and social tasks necessary to provide for women’s special needs in such a way that every adult man, by fulfilling his assigned role as “husband” and “father,” helps prevent women from experiencing their special needs as a lonely burden.

Feminists call this system “patriarchy” and call husbands and fathers “oppressors.” Feminists have spent decades trying to destroy patriarchy. A man who tries to persuade them that this destructive project is a bad idea is called a “misogynist.” Feminists demand equality, but we find that the pursuit of equality results in many women experiencing their special needs as a lonely burden. We call these women “Crazy Cat Ladies.”




 

Category: Sex Trouble

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | October 9, 2015 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

The proprietor’s impassive face makes monks seem animated. The bedraggled, alcohol-reeking customer struggles to get the jewelry box from the tote, meaningless baubles spilling over the counter. Exchanges words and money. Leaves. The scene clicks.
I ask, “Weren’t the two of you across the bar from each other last night at the tavern next door?”
Nods.
“Seems a good business model; making money as they liquidate their assets, and as they hydrate the flesh.”
Nods again, replies: “It’s a blight on the soul. But my brother won’t listen until he smacks bottom, dislodging the wax in his ears.”

via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction

NBC’s New Sitcom: ‘Abortion Barbie’?

Posted on | October 9, 2015 | 32 Comments

Hollywood liberalism beyond parody:

Wendy Davis made national headlines in 2013 for filibustering anti-abortion legislation in the Texas Senate. Now the former Democratic state senator is poised for more national attention as the inspiration for a dramedy series in development at NBC.
Written by Jennifer Cecil, the untitled project centers on a female Democratic senator who, after losing the Texas governor’s race, gets her world turned upside down. In the vein of The Good Wife, while she pieces her pride back together, she goes to work in the law firm of her best friend — a black male Republican — and discovers that with no political future to protect, she can unshackle her inner badass.

Why would anyone imagine that this kind of story would be able to attract a national audience? This is further evidence of the extent to which the entertainment industry is run by Democrats whose partisan politics dictate the content of what they produce. Many of the movies and TV shows that emerge from Hollywood are simply unwatchable because so many people in the industry place liberal activism ahead of every other consideration.

(Via Memeorandum.)

 

Category: Hollywood

That Crazy Buck Rogers Stuff

Posted on | October 8, 2015 | 17 Comments

— by Wombat-socho


So, a couple of weeks ago in the comments Goodstuff brought up the topic of Buck Rogers, and I was going to write about that last week in the book post, but I Forgot. Going to remedy that failure right here and now. The original Buck Rogers tale, Armageddon 2419 A.D. is widely available on Kindle and in dead-tree editions, usually packaged with its sequel “The Airlords of Han”. For those of you that missed out, these are the history of the Second American Revolution, in which Anthony “Buck” Rogers, veteran of the First World War, wakes from a state of suspended animation due to radioactive gases and winds up leading the scattered bands of Americans to victory against the Han invaders, who conquered America early in the 22nd century. It’s a fun little pair of stories, and only an SJW would whimper about its roots in the “yellow peril” literature that was popular in the 1920s. It was rebooted by Martin Caidin (author of Cyborg, which became The Six Million Dollar Man) in 1995 as Buck Rogers : A Life in the Future.


Perhaps more interesting are the four sequels written by various authors to an outline by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle: Mordred, by John E. Holmes, in which an aged Anthony Rogers must deal with his half-Han son, who is attempting to reverse his father’s victory; Warriors Blood, by Richard McEnroe, in which it’s revealed that the Han are actually human/alien hybrids, and Rogers himself has been mysteriously rejuvenated by alien technology…but there’s a nasty catch to it. I don’t recall reading the sequel, Warriors World, in which Rogers and the Americans must cope with an even worse threat triggered by their desperate assault on the aliens’ Lunar Base, but if it’s as good as Warrior’s Blood, then at worst, it’s decent brain candy. I haven’t found my copy of John Silbersack’s Rogers Rangers yet, but I definitely recall it being the capstone to the four books, with Rogers leading a motley crew of rebel aliens and human refugees back from a a secret base to liberate Earth from the aliens. As I said, not great books on the order of Ender’s Game or The Mote In God’s Eye, but decent brain candy, and used paperbacks can be had quite cheaply.


Also arriving in the mail this week, the David Drake tribute anthology Onward, Drake!, edited by Mark Van Name. It contains stories by Larry Correia, Sarah Hoyt, Gene Wolfe, Barry Malzberg, John Lambshead and others, as well as tributes from Tom Doherty, Toni Weisskopf, and S.M. Stirling; in addition, the afterwords from the authors and Drake himself are outstanding. Did I mention there’s new Hammer’s Slammers stories, one of them by Drake? Not at all sorry I splashed out and got the limited edition, not at all, but I am sure the Kindle edition reads just as well.


Category: Books

In The Mailbox, 10.08.15

Posted on | October 8, 2015 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox, 10.08.15

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Hillary Clinton’s E-Mails – In The Cloud?
The Camp of the Saints: Ungrateful Little Shi’itehead
Political Hat: Diversity Is Now The Be All End All Of Academia
Michelle Malkin: Gitmo Extended Stay Suites In Colorado? Hell No!
Doug Powers: Global Warming Causes Sierra Club President To Melt Under Ted Cruz’ Questioning
Twitchy: “The Dim Bulb Thing Wasn’t An Act?” Andy Richter Tries His Hand At #GunSense
Shark Tank: Brian Mast – “Syrian Refugees Should Be Taking Up Arms To Fight ISIS”


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Gallup Won’t Do Tracking Polls For 2016 Campaign
American Thinker: Was The Oregon Shooting An Islamist Attempt To Assassinate Alek Skarlatos?
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Buffalo Trail By Jeff Guinn
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin Shares Interview Of “Iconic Drudge”
Don Surber: Dave Weigel Seems To Think WV Will Go For Bernie Sanders
Jammie Wearing Fools: It’s Time To Impeach The IRS Commissioner
Joe For America: McCarthy Out Of Race For Speaker
JustOneMinute: Losing Their Religion
Pamela Geller: Captured ISIS Fighter Has Map Full Of Targets For Berlin Takeover
Protein Wisdom: DiBlasio Threatens NYC Museums And Cultural Institutions Over “Diversity”
Shot In The Dark: Keep Guns Out Of The Hands Of Straw Men
STUMP: What Should Be Taught, Part II – Reactions To Japan Humanities Ban
The Gateway Pundit: Ten-Year-Old Minnesota Girl Raped By Muslim Refugee In Elevator
The Jawa Report: We Gonna Make Them Pay
The Lonely Conservative: Obama Claims Defunding Planned Parenthood Would Wreck The Economy
This Ain’t Hell: Army Postpones SFC Martland’s Discharge
Weasel Zippers: Air Force Hero Who Helped Stop Paris Terror Attack Stabbed In Sacramento, Now In Stable Consition – Two Asian Men Sought
Megan McArdle: Facebook Is Big, But Big Networks Can Fall
Mark Steyn: The Undocumented Branch Of The Electoral College


Introducing Amazon Handmade

Category: Linkagery

America’s Finest Literary Critic Is in Federal Prison, and Rightly So

Posted on | October 8, 2015 | 24 Comments

Damn his atheist soul, but Barrett Brown is an excellent writer. His mistake was to think this qualified him to be an “investigative journalist,” a task for which his heroin addiction probably disqualified him, as if his habit of associating with criminal terrorists were not bad enough. Fortunately for Barrett, he flipped out in September 2012 and threatened an FBI agent in a manic YouTube meltdown. This has provided him the opportunity to write literary criticism, and this week Barrett Brown takes on novelist Jonathan Frantzen:

In Purity, marriages fail one after another in excruciating 50-page flashbacks. No one is particularly likable or even unlikable, though a few do manage to be insufferable. Toward the end we’re treated to one great character, the cynical plutocrat dad of one of the dastardly feminists, but then he disappears from view and promptly dies. The megalomaniacal information activist is admirably complex, but as a megalomaniacal information activist myself, I found him unconvincing. The one murder that serves to kick off the plot is perpetuated against an otherwise minor off-screen character rather than one of the several main characters whom the reader might have much preferred to see murdered. Franzen is also rather hard on the ladies, whereas everyone would have been better served had he instead been harder on himself and maybe put out a better book.
It’s worth reiterating, though, that this sort of subject matter is not my cup of tea to begin with, and I certainly don’t want anyone to refrain from reading a novel that might interest them simply because I said mean things about it. If you’re up for a “moving meditation on marriage and friendship,” then you should probably read Freedom over and over again until your eyes bleed. If divorce and infidelity and guilt and trial separation is your thing, then you’d better get your ass over to the nearest book store and pick up a copy of Purity. You need not worry about what I think. But if you’re curious anyway, what I think is that I hate you.

You can and should read the whole thing, and laugh as you envision Barrett doing hard time in a federal penitentiary, where he is paying his debt to society and writing witty essays.

 

Category: Barrett Brown

‘The Psychology of Female Objectification’

Posted on | October 7, 2015 | 53 Comments

Harvard University sophomore Lily Calcagnini.

“Each time a woman is catcalled, publicly humiliated, and forced to ignore it, the psychology of female objectification becomes evermore seared into the brains of all actors and bystanders involved. We’re already conditioned to look at a woman and see the raw sum of her physical components before we consider her brain. The more we reinforce this subconscious thought process, the more ingrained it becomes in our psychology.”
— Lily Calcagnini, Harvard Crimson, Oct. 6, 2015

“In contrast to young women, whose empowerment can be seen as a process of resistance to male dominated heterosexuality, young, able-bodied, heterosexual men can access power through the language, structures and identities of hegemonic masculinity.”
— Janet Holland, Caroline Ramazanoglu, Sue Sharpe and Rachel Thomson, The Male in the Head: Young People, Heterosexuality and Power (1998)

“The discourses which particularly oppress all of us, lesbians, women, and homosexual men, are those discourses which take for granted that what founds society, any society, is heterosexuality. . . . These discourses of heterosexuality oppress us in the sense that they prevent us from speaking unless we speak in their terms.”
— Monique Wittig, “The Straight Mind,” 1978

The “discourses of heterosexuality” described by French lesbian feminist Monique Wittig are probably not the catcalls described by Lily Calcagnini, but the underlying idea is the same: Male sexual attraction to women is inherently oppressive. The “empowerment” of women requires “resistance to male dominated heterosexuality,” as Professor Holland and her colleagues explained in a book based on feminist gender theory, which regards heterosexuality and male domination as synonymous, two ways of saying the same thing. Heterosexuality reduces a woman to “the raw sum of her physical components,” as Ms. Calcagnini phrases it, and any man who would impose this condition upon her can do so only through the “power . . . of hegemonic masculinity.”

When a college sophomore asserts that we are psychologically “conditioned” to take for granted the “objectification” of women, she thereby invokes a feminist theoretical understanding of sexual behavior that extends far beyond the subject of catcalling. Consider first that Ms. Calcagnini wrote this column in the Harvard Crimson, whose readers are enrolled at arguably the world’s most prestigious institution of higher education. Next consider the sort of behavior she describes:

To the candid man who approached me, rubbing your crotch and murmuring that you could make love to me all day and night, Baby: I could probably call the cops on you at any hour, Buddy.
To the two sirs who, from the safety of your car, hurled cries of Chica, Beautiful Lady, Sexy, Mami, Honey, and Pretty One out of your windows: You made me want to cry.
As you pounded the center of your steering wheel with the palm of your hand, commanding the attention of additional passers-by with each honk of your horn, you encouraged others to join in your objectification game. Powerless, I waited for your traffic light to change, so you would speed away towards the next corner and the next girl.

Are we to believe that these lecherous brutes are Harvard students, so that by writing about their uncouth behavior in the Crimson, Ms. Calcagnini thinks she is addressing the perpetrators directly? Of course not. There might be men at Harvard who occasionally get a bit rowdy, but they are not honking their horns while yelling chica at girls.

In 2015, no man smart enough to go college would ever dare express sexual interest in a female classmate for fear of being accused of “harassment.” Feminists have made university life in the 21st-century a Danger Zone for heterosexual males, who are at risk of expulsion if they even attempt to become intimate with a woman on campus.

She does not need any evidence in order to accuse him of sexual assault. Once accused, a male student will discover he has no due-process rights in the Title IX hearings where accused males are automatically presumed guilty. These accusations may be made long after an alleged incident. A male student may find himself accused of sexually assaulting an ex-girlfriend whom he continued dating (and having consensual sex with) for many months after whatever incident she may claim was non-consensual whenever a desire for post-breakup revenge strikes her. In other words, your freshman-year girlfriend could wait until your senior year to accuse you of having raped her three years earlier, and thereby quite possibly prevent you from graduating. This is “equality” in 2015.

Feminism’s anti-male/anti-heterosexual ideology promotes a sexual paranoia I call “Fear and Loathing of the Penis,” and this in turn has helped incentivize false accusations of rape. At Harvard in 2014, there were 33 reports of sexual assault, of which six were “determined to be ‘unfounded,’ i.e. ‘false or baseless.’” This climate of anti-male fanaticism has led to the enactment of so-called “affirmative consent” policies, with the practical result that is never safe to assume that any sexual activity on campus is legal, as Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner has explained. At an elite school like Harvard, where tuition is $45,278 a year, a male student would be a fool to take the risk of becoming sexually involved with a female classmate, since Harvard women evidently are willing to make “false or baseless” rape accusations.

Analyzing the Harvard sexual assault data, Reason magazine’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown determined that a “worst-case-scenario assumption means that about one in 114 female undergraduates reported rapes at Harvard last year” — a far cry from the 1-in-5 rate of campus sexual assault claimed by radical feminists (a claim promoted by President Obama, among others). If more than 99% of Harvard women are not at risk of rape, however, this doesn’t prevent Ms. Calcagnini from indicting all male heterosexuals as complicit in harassment:

Catcalls are arresting because they decontextualize the language of physical attraction that might be meaningful when exchanged between lovers. I’m flattered to know that someone who cares deeply about me also finds me beautiful, but this is only because I know that they appreciate my personhood more than my biological ability to have sex.
Using the same language, a catcall is vapid. It reduces my worth to that of my appearance. In the public context of the street, coming from the mouth of a stranger, a catcall exploits the verbiage of intimacy and makes me feel both objectified and powerless to rebuke my objectification.
Moreover, there is implicit sexual intent in a catcall by nature of the fact that it is spoken aloud. Since anyone can enjoyably objectify me without my knowing, I must take a man’s brazen expression of arousal to mean that he’s hoping for some favor in return. Hoping that he’s singled out a woman whose self-esteem is low. Hoping that I’ll forget I’m en route to Spanish and will instead fulfill his sexual fantasies in an alley. Hoping that, to quote the gallant young man who followed me around Harvard Square yesterday, I will “suck his d–k.” . . .
Perpetrators of this kind of objectification may not realize how many women they undermine when they insult one. Their comments dismantle the significant, but clearly still inadequate, social progress that feminists have made for all women.

Who was that young man who followed Ms. Calcagnini around Harvard Square, soliciting her to perform oral sex? You could safely wager $100 that he is not a Harvard student, that he does not read the Crimson, and thus is not confronted with her accusation that his crude behavior is dismantling “social progress,” about which he almost certainly does not give a damn. No, this denunciation of catcalling is a signifying gesture which affords Ms. Calcagnini the opportunity to inform Harvard men that “objectification” — a feminist term for normal male appreciation of female beauty — is unacceptable. She describes how men “enjoyably objectify me without my knowing” (i.e., she is aware that men derive pleasure from looking at her), but is offended by any vocal expression of male sexual interest, because this “reduces my worth to that of my appearance.” Rather than this type of interest, she desires instead “someone who cares deeply about me,” and who therefore will “appreciate my personhood more than my biological ability to have sex.”

Did anyone besides me notice that Ms. Calcagnini uses gender-neutral language (“someone who cares deeply about me . . . they appreciate my personhood”) to describe the sort of attention she welcomes whereas, by contrast, it is “a man’s brazen expression of arousal” and “his sexual fantasies” that she makes clear are undermining “social progress that feminists have made”? While there is no specific reason to suspect that Ms. Calcagnini is a lesbian — other than the fact that she attends Harvard and calls herself a feminist — why else would she use the pages of the Crimson to excoriate heterosexual males this way?

Permit me to confess that my wife’s “biological ability to have sex” was so high on the list of qualities that attracted my attention, I could scarcely comprehend her “personhood” otherwise. If I may be allowed to “decontextualize the language of physical attraction” here, exactly how does Ms. Calcagnini suppose a heterosexual man experiences “arousal”? What aspect of her “personhood” does any woman expect a normal man to “appreciate” more than her “biological ability to have sex”? Is this not the sine qua non of heterosexuality?

Civilized men do not yell crude comments from car windows at women on the street, but if we assume that readers of the Harvard Crimson are civilized, what is the point of lecturing them about this? Quite clearly, Ms. Calcagnini’s column had some ulterior purpose, perhaps to guilt-trip any heterosexual male reader who might “enjoyably objectify” her — i.e., look at her and like what he sees — because she is disgusted by the thought that he is aware of her “biological ability to have sex.”

Have I been “conditioned to look at a woman and see the raw sum of her physical components”? If so, who “conditioned” me this way and how, and at such an early age that in kindergarten I developed a crush on Priscilla Yates, a slightly plump brunette with a gap between her front teeth and freckles on her nose? Early and often did I “objectify” girls — Janet Howton, Joanna Richardson and Carol Purdy, to name three objects of my elementary school crushes — before I had even a remote understanding of how “the raw sum of her physical components” related to the “biological ability to have sex.” The idea that male admiration for female beauty is “conditioned” is as ridiculous as the assertion that this entirely natural “objectification” precludes men from being able also to “consider her brain” or appreciate her “personhood.” Are men at Harvard so stupid that they cannot likewise differentiate these concepts? Why does Ms. Calcagnini presume she can accuse the Crimson‘s highly educated male readers of stupidity without anyone answering her insulting imputation? Is it because she knows that no man at Harvard would risk the feminist outrage if he dared publish an answer?

SCANDAL: Man Likes Good-Looking Women;
Expelled by Harvard for ‘Objectification’
‘These Discourses of Heterosexuality Oppress Us!’

Normal male behavior is now a human rights violation. The man who expresses a preference for beautiful women could “dismantle the . . . social progress that feminists have made for all women.”

Used to be, you could get locked up in a lunatic asylum for spewing that kind of deranged gibberish. Now they send you to Harvard.

(Hat-tip: Badger Pundit on Twitter.)





 

Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 10.06.15

Posted on | October 6, 2015 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Da Tech Guy: Unexpectedly – Strange Framing On Israel, Oregon
The Camp of the Saints: #OUTLAW Activity – People In Roseburg Rebel
American Irony: How To Get Democrats To Agree Gun Ownership Is A Right
First Street Journal: Affirmative Action And Voting Patterns Of Asian-Americans, Jews
Political Hat: Feminism – A Totalitarian Movement To Destroy Civilization As We Know It
Conservative Intel: Watch Your Back, Joe Biden
Michelle Malkin: The Baby Butchers And Their Media Butchers
Doug Powers: Live From New York, It’s A Six-Minute Campaign Ad For Hillary!
Twitchy: Twitter Launches Human-Aggregated “Moments” Feature
Shark Tank: Rebecca Negron Struggles With Tax Reform Question


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Obama Not Welcome In Roseburg, Says Local Paper’s Publisher
American Thinker: “Gun Control” Is Actually Conservative Control
BLACKFIVE: Book Review And Interview – Why The World Needs A Powerful America
Conservatives4Palin: Queen Hillary – It’s Beyond The Pale For You Peasants To Question My Corruption
Don Surber: Speaking Of “Disaster” And “Catastrophe”, Charleston Gazette…
Jammie Wearing Fools: Republicans Accuse NY Gov Cuomo Of Using Oregon Tragedy To Promote His Agenda
Joe For America: Want To Know How Russia Handles Terrorists?
JustOneMinute: Gun Violence And Violence To Statistics
Pamela Geller: Swedish Bishop Calls For Church To Remove Crosses, Install Muslim Prayer Space
Protein Wisdom: Chick-Fil-A Opens In NYC, Liberal Heads Explode
Shot In The Dark: Watch Mitch Berg DESTROY This Liberal Hamster’s Argument With This One Weird Trick
STUMP: Illinois Finance – The Ongoing Non-Crisis And The Oncoming Real Crisis
The Gateway Pundit: Thousands Of PEGIDA Supporters Rally In Dresden Against Migrant Invasion
The Jawa Report: Russian War Porn – Raqqa
The Lonely Conservative: Middle Class Americans Worse Off Thanks To Obamacare
This Ain’t Hell: Anti-Gun Nuts
Weasel Zippers: Obama Administration Deports Record Low Number Of Convicted Criminal Illegals
Megan McArdle: Gig Economy is Piecework, But This Isn’t Dickens
Mark Steyn: The Two Faces Of Facebook


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Category: Linkagery
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