The Other McCain

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

Moving the Goalposts: What Feminist ‘Rape Culture’ Discourse Is About

Posted on | October 11, 2015 | 60 Comments

“But the hatred of women is a source of sexual pleasure for men in its own right. Intercourse appears to be the expression of that contempt in pure form, in the form of a sexed hierarchy; it requires no passion or heart because it is power without invention articulating the arrogance of those who do the f–king. Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men’s contempt for women . . .”
— Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse, 1987

“Male power is systemic. Coercive, legitimated, and epistemic, it is the regime.”
— Catharine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989)

“There are politics in sexual relationships because they occur in the context of a society that assigns power based on gender and other systems of inequality and privilege. . . . [T]he interconnections of systems are reflected in the concept of heteropatriarchy, the dominance associated with a gender binary system that presumes heterosexuality as a social norm. . . .
“As many feminists have pointed out, heterosexuality is organized in such a way that the power men have in society gets carried into relationships and can encourage women’s subservience, sexually and emotionally.”
— Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions (fifth edition, 2012)

“Ultimately, there was a disenchantment with the ‘No means no’ framework — by requiring women to say no, we reinforce the idea that sex is something women, by definition, have, which men are trying to get, and of which women must be the moral guardians.”
— Jill Filipovic, “America, pop culture and tackling sexual assault,” Oct. 10, 2015

You probably have to read a lot of feminist theory (and I’ve been immersed in it for months) to understand that feminist rhetoric about a “campus rape epidemic” isn’t actually about rape. There has been no such “epidemic” on America’s university and college campuses, or anywhere else for that matter. Statistics from the Justice Department show a remarkable decline in the incidence of sexual assault in recent decades, which may be explained by a number of factors, including legislation (e.g., sex-offender registries) and technological advances in law enforcement, including DNA testing and widespread video surveillance. Sexual predators are less likely to get away with their crimes, and more likely to be locked away for long sentences when apprehended, preventing them from becoming repeat offenders.

American women are now less at risk of rape than at any time in the past 40 years, and the emergence of a frantic hysteria about “rape culture” on college campuses therefore seems contradictory — unless you understand how feminist theory “problematizes” heterosexuality.

To those who have read my book Sex Trouble, or followed the continuing discussion here, it is unnecessary for me to explain that feminist theory views heterosexuality as practically synonymous with male supremacy. Andrea Dworkin’s 1979 declaration that “the essence of so-called romance . . . is rape embellished with meaningful looks” was perhaps the most vivid expression of this view, but radical theory has been so widely promulgated within academic feminism (particularly within university Women’s Studies programs) that it is taken for granted.

Anyone who has read Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State recognizes that what Jill Filipovic is calling into question — “the idea that sex is something women, by definition, have, which men are trying to get” — is simply normal human heterosexual behavior. The dynamics inherent to the testosterone-fueled male sexual drive as a biological force of nature, and the social customs necessary to restraining this unruly force, are not really controversial, except in feminist theory, which emphatically denies that there is any such thing as “human nature.” Because social customs surrounding sexual behavior have traditionally required certain female responsibilities (i.e., placing women in the role of “moral guardians,” as Filipovic says), feminists have sought not merely to destroy these customs (thus to absolve themselves of responsibility, moral or otherwise) but have attacked as “sexist” our basic understanding of normal sexual behavior.

What Filipovic describes as feminist “disenchantment with the ‘No means no’ framework” amounts to an admission that the recent rhetorical fury about “rape culture” is actually an attempt to move the goalposts, in such a way as to criminalize normal male sexual behavior. The confusion created by so-called “affirmative consent” policies (also known as “yes means yes”) is understandable because most people would be shocked senseless if they stopped to consider what it actually means. Under the rules of “affirmative consent,” any attempt by a male to initiate sexual activity with a female, under any circumstances, is presumed to be sexual assault if she says it was. If a man and a woman have any sexual contact whatsoever — a kiss, a hug, anything — and she subsequently claims this contact was “unwanted,” “unwelcome” or “coerced,” then he is presumed guilty of sexual assault.

The ‘Regret Equals Rape’ Standard

We have seen this scenario made explicit by numerous recent lawsuits filed by male students protesting the denial of due-process rights in university “sexual misconduct” cases. An official at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, for example, reportedly told students that “regret equals rape,” which the plaintiff said led to his girlfriend claiming he had raped her. In other cases, notably the “Mattress Girl” episode at Columbia University, it appears that accusations of sexual assault were acts of revenge by women who felt spurned after a sexual hookup did not lead to a romantic relationship. Obviously, the kind of “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” situation outlined in the Nungesser v. Columbia complaint should alarm any parent who has a son attending college, or hoping to do so in the future. Any male student could be subjected to this kind of heinous treatment if he has any interaction with a female classmate which she subsequently regrets. Indeed, hysterical claims about a “campus rape epidemic” seem to have inspired some female students to invent sexual assaults by fictitious assailants, as in the infamous Rolling Stone hoax at the University of Virginia. In the UVA case, evidence suggests that the student “Jackie” so desired to be accepted as a member of the sexual assault “survivor” community on campus that she created the character “Haven Monahan” from whole cloth, and made up a tale about a gang rape that never happened, an imaginative tale perhaps inspired by narratives of previous assaults she had heard about through her involvement in anti-rape activism.

Because “normal human interaction is now being redefined as sexual assault,” as Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner has explained of the current climate on campus, male students “need to stop viewing sex merely as pleasure or as an expression of affection or love, and begin seeing it as a potentially life-ruining moment.” Stripped of due-process rights in Title IX procedures, so that he has no protection against false accusations, any male who is sexually active on campus exposes himself to destruction, as Schow writes:

The situation has gotten so bad that one parents’ group has begun distributing flyers on California campuses warning students of how easy it is to be accused and expelled.
The reality of it is this: There is little trust anymore between the sexes. Women are being told that men, especially men they believe are their friends, are waiting to get them drunk and rape them. This in turn is leading men to believe that women are going to accuse them of sexual assault for just about any reason, even for consensual sexual encounters.

How did we get here? The origins of feminism’s “rape culture” discourse can be traced back to the Women’s Liberation movement of the late 1960s and ’70s. Treatises like “Rape: The All-American Crime” (Susan Griffin, 1971) and Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (Susan Brownmiller, 1975) depicted rape as an exercise of male power that was inherent in, and necessary to, the system of male supremacy. Brownmiller described rapists as “front-line masculine shock troops, terrorist guerrillas” who served to keep women captive and subjugated under a regime of pervasive sexual fear. This feminist concept of rape as an instrument of political power gained currency within a movement that was, at that time, beginning to call into question the legitimacy of heterosexuality. Radical feminists denied that heterosexual behavior was “natural.” There was no biological “urge” or “instinct” involved in the observable patterns of male and female sexual behavior, feminists insisted. Instead, all of this was “socially constructed” by an oppressive male-dominated system that proponents of feminist gender theory now call heteronormative patriarchy. Viewing sexual behavior in this political context of systemic and collective male power, it is impossible for feminists to view any sexual behavior as private or personal. No man or woman is merely an individual in feminist theory, but each is viewed as acting within a system where men (as a collective group) exercise power to unjustly oppress women (as a collective group).

The most notorious expression of this view was arguably Andrea Dworkin’s 1987 book Intercourse — which condemned heterosexual intercourse as an expression of male “contempt” for women — but if Dworkin was more flamboyantly outspoken than some of her feminist comrades, she was not an isolated “extremist,” as some have claimed. Women’s Studies professors embraced this ideology.

At a 1980 meeting of the National Women’s Studies Association, Michigan State University Professor Marilyn Frye declared her belief “that most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.” This idea of heterosexuality as “imposed” on women was incorporated into an all-encompassing theoretical analysis in Heterosexuality: A Feminism & Psychology Reader (edited by Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger, 1993) which cited Dworkin six times (pp. 76, 77, 78, 128, 208, 231-2) and Frye five times (pp. 20, 23, 175, 199, 211). Similarly, in Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence and Women’s Lives (Dee L.R. Graham, 1994) we find Dworkin cited nine times (pp. 87, 93, 116, 123, 162, 2000, 206, 275, 276) and Frye also cited nine times (pp. 100, 109, 110, 112, 113, 115, 209, 214, 243). In her book, Dee Graham, a professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Cincinnati, described female heterosexuality as resulting from emotional trauma similar to “Stockholm Syndrome.” In Chapter 4 of Loving to Survive, she argues that “women’s fear of male violence” inspires homophobia and is correlated with “support of heterosexism and male-female roles”:

Men’s violence against women encourages women to bond with “kind” men for protection against other men, setting the stage for men’s one-on-one oppression of women (Brownmiller 1975; Dworkin 1983) and the institutionalization of heterosexuality. This violence is mystified as normal under the guise of the masculine sex role. . . .
If love of men arises from terror brought on by male threat to female survival, women have to defend against any feelings that might challenge our love for men. Is this one of the reasons that most women vehemently deny their own lesbian feelings? . . .
Because of the coercive conditions under which heterosexual love arises, it has a regressive quality for women. . . . However, as a survival strategy, heterosexual love may be safer for women in the short run than any other alternative short of collective action (such as that offered by the feminist movement) by women against male violence and tyranny.

This idea of women’s heterosexuality as a pathology, symptomatic of a mental illness or the result of patriarchal indoctrination, is quite commonly accepted in academic feminism. A student in an “Introduction to Feminist Theory” class declares, “every time I walk out of this class I just become more sexually confused!” The student who reported this explains how, being in a university Gender Studies program, “the more I seem to learn, the more I question how the person I am today seems to be merely product of socialization.”

The ‘I-Didn’t-Think-It-Was-Rape’ Problem

If there is nothing natural about sexual behavior — if biology is irrelevant and “socialization” is all-powerful — then it follows logically that “men’s one-on-one oppression of women” within the “coercive conditions” of heterosexuality, to quote Professor Graham, can be abolished by changing the “gender binary system that presumes heterosexuality as a social norm,” to quote Professors Lee and Shaw. Thus, after a long detour into feminist theory, we return to Jill Filipovic’s “disenchantment with the ‘No means no’ framework.” Filipovic describes how the Internet functioned as a sort of digital “consciousness-raising” session:

The early 2000s birthed the first generation of feminist blogs, and sexual violence was high on the To Blog About list. Blogs quickly developed their own rules of engagement and their own vernacular, with writers adding “trigger warnings” to content about sexual assault, commenters debating the utility of standard sexual-assault prevention tips, and women writing openly, if sometimes pseudonymously, about their own rapes and their I-didn’t-think-it-was-rape rapes and all the other assaults on women’s physical autonomy and right to bodily safety that add up to a bigger thing called “rape culture”.
That most women are raped by someone they know, often in their late teens or early twenties, was not news. Neither was the fact that many of them didn’t identify what happened as rape, exactly, since it didn’t fit that stranger-in-the-bushes scenario that so many women are raised to fear. But many women still carried anger and, sometimes, shame or sadness or confusion, and feminist spaces online offered women from many different backgrounds — although disproportionately college-educated and middle- or upper-middle class — the chance to talk about it or, at least, read about it, with a large like-minded audience. That connectivity and the domino “Aha!” moments the conversations sparked — moments of, “Why are we telling young women it’s their responsibility to drink less to avoid getting raped?” and “Why do we think acquaintance rape is some sort of misunderstanding?” and “Why should sexual consent focus on women assenting or refusing, rather than both parties wanting it?” — in such great numbers across so many of the barriers of race and class and age and location, that was new.

What we see Jill Filipovic developing here are two related ideas:

  1. Women are never responsible for sexual activity — Indeed, it is “rape culture” to say, for example, that women should be careful not to get so drunk that they might engage in sexual activity they regret when they sober up the next day.
  2. Men routinely coerce women into having sex when women don’t really want it — This is what Filipovic means in referencing the “I-didn’t-think-it-was-rape” scenario. The guy wants to have sex, the girl acquiesces to his desire, but she later feels that it wasn’t really something she should have agreed to do, and that the guy unfairly pressured her into this.

The problem should be obvious, when you’re talking about enforcing a policy with a bunch of drunk, horny teenagers — the typical “I-didn’t-think-it-was-rape” scenario, involving college freshmen and sophomores. We can acknowledge that this is very bad for the girls involved in these situations, on the one hand, while on the other hand we must acknowledge the near-impossibility of proving rape happened in this kind of “he-said/she-said” case.

The normal way sex happens, where men are the pursuers whose interest initiates the encounter, with women either rejecting or acquiescing to the male’s advances, is unacceptable from the feminist perspective. Any male effort to persuade a woman to engage in sexual activity is offensive and degrading. Sexual activity should never occur except when the female “enthusiastically” solicits such activity. What is most disturbing to me in this is the way feminists have exploited the “campus rape epidemic” (a phony crisis manufactured by the use of Statistical Voodoo and Elastic Definitions) as an excuse to delegitimize the normal pattern of heterosexual behavior. Jill Filipovic writes:

Instead of the push-pull of sexual pressure and rebuff, feminists largely said sex should be entered into mutually, with both parties enthusiastically consenting. The question shouldn’t be whether a woman said no — and if she failed to appropriately lock her theoretical chastity belt, well, too bad — the question should be whether she wanted sex and therefore said yes to it. Anything less isn’t just crappy sex — it’s a violation. . . .
Today’s college freshmen were just entering adolescence when [the 2007 anthology] Yes Means Yes! was published. The college students of the past several years came of age at a time when feminism was increasingly cool, and had unfettered access to feminist content online that is significantly more radical and diverse than just about anything on the internet a decade ago. It’s no surprise that those same young women brought a kind of feminist entitlement to their campuses: the simple belief that sex is something they get to choose to enter into, no matter what.
Unfortunately, as many of those same young women are now learning, that view isn’t as widely held off the feminist internet. The idea of sex as a battle, one party cajoling and the other assenting or rejecting, runs deep in the American psyche, to the point where a whole lot of people have a difficult time imagining a different social model, let alone a legal one.

You can read the whole thing. Filipovic’s suggestion of “a different social model” as the basis for a legal standard where men are deemed guilty of rape if a woman later says she did not consent “enthusiastically” raises the question of how such a standard could be enforced. Preventing rape is a laudable goal, but that’s not Filipovic’s goal. Her goal is to make men responsible for women’s post-coital regret.

“Dubious claims about ‘rape culture’ are an attempt to create an all-purpose scapegoat for the emotional dark side of promiscuity,” Robert Tracinski wrote in February 2015:

College campuses have long since been taken over by a culture in which casual sex with acquaintances is considered normal and where slightly outré sexual experimentation is strongly encouraged, all of it spurred on by alcohol, which figures prominently in most of these cases. But it’s clear that some young women are not psychologically prepared for this. They have casual relationships and hookups, but then feel regret and emotional trauma when the experience ends up being emotionally unsatisfying or disturbing. Then they are encouraged, by the feminists and “rape culture” activists, to reinterpret the experience as all the fault of an evil man who must have coerced them.
It’s a system which systematically preys on and exploits the emotional vulnerability of young women in order to use them as publicity fodder for an ideological agenda.

Don’t let your sons or daughters become part of this problem — drunken hookups that turn into “he-said/she-said” dramas — but beware of the “ideological agenda” of feminism. They are moving the goalposts, attempting to redefine sexuality and reorganize society, as part of a radical War Against Human Nature.

UPDATE: Linked at Blazing Cat Fur and a sidebar headline at Ace of Spades HQ and welcome, Instapundit readers! Meanwhile . . .

Campus Feminists and the Rape Shortage

It never ends, you see.




 

 

Category: Sex Trouble

FMJRA 2.0: Four! Four Days Before The Deadline!

Posted on | October 10, 2015 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Rule 5 Sunday: Time For The Professionals
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles from Tyranny
A View from the Beach
Proof Positive
Batshit Crazy News

FMJRA 2.0: Sold Me Down The River
The Pirate’s Cove
A View from the Beach
Batshit Crazy News

The #AmberRoseSlutWalk: Feminism as Public Celebration of Inchoate Rage
The Camp of the Saints
Living in Anglo-America
Regular Right Guy
Batshit Crazy News

The Glory Game and Other Oldies But Goodies
Batshit Crazy News

The Intersectional Oppression Derby
Political Hat
The Pirate’s Cove
The Daley Gator
Batshit Crazy News

Anti-Asian Discrimination: The Hidden Secret of Elite Educational ‘Diversity’
First Street Journal
Batshit Crazy News

When Excellence Is Expected
Dark Brightness
Batshit Crazy News

In The Mailbox: 10.06.15
Proof Positive
Batshit Crazy News

Harvard Feminists Lie About Rape
Living in Anglo-America
Batshit Crazy News

‘The Psychology of Female Objectification’
Living in Anglo-America
Batshit Crazy News

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

In The Mailbox, 10.08.15
A View from the Beach
Proof Positive
Batshit Crazy News

That Crazy Buck Rogers Stuff
Batshit Crazy News

NBC’s New Sitcom: ‘Abortion Barbie’?
The Camp of the Saints
Batshit Crazy News

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge
Batshit Crazy News

Feminist Tumblr and the ‘Tampon Tax’
A View from the Beach
Batshit Crazy News

A Bizarre Blast From the Feminist Past
A View from the Beach
Batshit Crazy News

Top linkers this week:

  1. Batshit Crazy News (17)
  2. A View from the Beach (5)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!


The Martian – Only $2.99 for Kindle!

Category: FMJRA Award

A Bizarre Blast From the Feminist Past

Posted on | October 9, 2015 | 48 Comments

Researching radical feminism has led me to many strange sources, few of them stranger than For Lesbians Only: A Separatist Anthology, edited by Sarah Lucia Hoagland and Julia Penelope, a 596-page compendium of lunacy published in 1988. Weird ideas leap forth from every page, as if the inmates of a mental health facility had been issued typewriters instead of thorazine. Feminist Tumblr carries on this tradition in the digital age, but it is instructive to go back and read what was being published back in the day when Ronald Reagan was president and feminist literature was circulated via a network of Womyn’s Bookstores in cities across the land. “Womyn,” “womon,” “wimmin” — such irregular spellings proliferated among feminists who believed that they were victimized simply by a word (“woman”) that seemed to connect them linguistically to those evil male oppressors from whose cruel slavery they sought liberation. For Lesbians Only includes these irregularities, as well as occasional OUTBURSTS IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS just to remind the reader (a) these women are crazy, and (b) crazy women are angry.

On pages 248-259 of For Lesbians Only, we find “Interview with A Separatist, January 23, 1983.” This interview is between a woman calling herself Sidney Spinster and another who calls herself “iandras moontree” — no capital letters in her name, you see. Neither does she capitalize the first-person singular subjective pronoun “I,” although she always capitalizes “Lesbian,” so “iandras moontree” reads like this:

My deepest desire is to live in a world with other Lesbians, where murderous patriarchal oppression is unknown. i first got a glimpse of what it might be like to live in such a world when i attended the Michigan Wimmin’s Music Festival. For once, i was somewhere where i could walk at night (and day) and not be afraid of attack or rape by a male. It felt wonderful to be in a space with all wimmin. i had freedom to peel away layers of protection. i had the opportunity to observe the various ways that wimmin relate to one another whem males are not present, when we are in a predominantly Lesbian space.

This sample is offered so that the reader may appreciate the difficulties of quoting anything written this way. Nearly everything written by Mary Daly suffers from a similar problem. At some point in the early 1970s, Daly either overdosed on powerful hallucinogenic drugs or else suffered a schizophrenic breakdown, and thereafter everything she wrote was full of stylistic eccentricities typical of psychotic “word salad.”

Being a member of the “murderous patriarchal oppression” and reading For Lesbians Only is quite an experience, and quoting “iandra moontree” as written is made difficult by these stylistic quirks. Nevertheless, I will try. She believes that “males are a genetic mutation, who biologically possess the traits that make them violent and death-oriented.” In order to “bring about patriarchy’s downfall,” she urges women’s “withdrawal from patriarchy (making ourselves inaccessible to males)”:

Withdrawing our energy from patriarchy and creating new options must be a primary objective. . . .
Sabotage is a technique that we can use strategically to undermine their system. We can organize ourselves and become a strong force against male institutions.

This was included in an anthology co-edited by Sarah Lucia Hoagland, a professor of Women’s Studies at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, presumably one of those “male institutions” whose destruction by sabotage was advocated in For Lesbians Only.

Reading “iandra moontree,” we get a thumbnail biography of her. Originally from Wyoming and born circa 1953, she grew up in an abusive home with “a battering, alcoholic mother”:

From the time i was a little girl, i rebelled against frilly dresses, baby dolls and polite girl-like behavior.
During my childhood and preteen years, my fantasies were always of having an important relationship with another womon. i would fantasize meeting the womon of my dreams and spending the rest of my life vacationing with her. i always had crushes on girlfriends and teachers.

When she was 16, her mother threatened to have her committed to a mental institution, so at 17, she married at man. That marriage ended in divorce seven months later and in 1971, at age 18, she became a “bar-dyke” living in the Midwest. Later, however, she became aware of feminism and heard about the lesbian separatist movement. She saved up $600 in cash, packed all her belongings into duffle bags and moved to a tiny cabin in rural Kentucky, thus to escape the male oppression:

i believe that one of the main ways that males have maintained a powerful control over wimmin is limiting the information we have on any given topic. They virtually control written records. This is a powerful propaganda tool for them.

Yes! That’s it! We control information to such a high degree that, with the aid of Amazon.com, I obtained a copy of For Lesbians Only and am using the “powerful propaganda tool” of my blog to quote this Reagan-era lesbian separatist screed by “iandras moontree.”

And then the thought crossed my mind: Whatever happened to her?

Iandras Moontree, An Artist
with a Unique Blend of Talent
I call Louisville, KY home, drawn here in the early 80s because of the beauty of the Commonwealth’s natural settings. I have always been creative in my approach to life, studying art in school, but I’ve received no formal training.
I began painting acrylics on canvas 15 years ago, creating a wide variety of scenes from themes involving nature and food, as well as abstracts and pet portraits in vivid colors. I have experimented over the years with different methods in painting and have won awards for my unique blend of mixing reality with fantasy.
Fascinated by the way colors can be intoxicating to a viewer, I have also taken my art to children to help them express their inner selves. I have worked with children and adults with mental and physical challenges, coaching them to feel free in their expression and encouraging them to experiment outside the lines. In addition, I have also taught art to elementary children in after school programs.

What a long, strange trip it’s been, eh?





 

Category: Sex Trouble

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


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