The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox, 08.06.15

Posted on | August 6, 2015 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Matt Yglesias Has Issues
Proof Positive: About That Dentist Who Sucker Punched Cecil
Doug Powers: Iran Deal Update – Obama’s Picture Soon To Appear In Dictionary Under “Projection”
Twitchy: “Armed Force Can Be Armed!” TN National Guard Changes Policy On Personal Firearms
Shark Tank: #PPAct Official Admits Abortion Procedures Altered To Meet Demand For Baby Parts


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Thank God For The Atom Bomb
American Thinker: What Mike Royko Knew That Jon Stewart And The Mainstream Media Don’t
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Badlands By C.J. Box
Conservatives4Palin: Senate Report – IRS’ Lerner Also Targeted Bristol Palin
Don Surber: People Today Cannot Eat Cheese Without Government Assistance
Jammie Wearing Fools: Huma Planned Party For Clinton Pal On Taxpayers’ Dime
Joe For America: Governor Jindal Says Sanctuary City Mayors Should Be Arrested
JustOneMinute: Hillary’s Run
Pamela Geller: WaPo Laments Arrest Of Notorious Hate Imam Anjem Choudhury, Attacks Sean Hannity, Fox News, Pamela Geller
Protein Wisdom: Federal Judge Strikes Down Ban On #PPAct Videos On First Amendment Grounds
Shot In The Dark: A Tale Of Two City Papers
STUMP: Puerto Rico Finally Defaults – Now What?
The Gateway Pundit: Conservative Group Announces “Cantor List” Of 105 Wobbly Republicans To Primary Out Of Office
The Jawa Report: The Making Of An SJW Martyr
The Lonely Conservative: It Just Keeps Getting Worse With Planned Parenthood
This Ain’t Hell: “Middle Eastern Males” Approach Military Family Members
Weasel Zippers: Alabama Governor Terminates All State Funding For Planned Parenthood
Megan McArdle: China Hopes To Defy History Of Market Bailouts
Mark Steyn: Bakin’ Baby Syndrome


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Category: Linkagery

The Science Is Settled: It’s a Baby

Posted on | August 6, 2015 | 75 Comments

Kirsten Powers on what we might call “The Sonogram Effect”:

Pope Francis has correctly described the unborn as “the most defenseless and innocent among us.” But in the sordid tale of strategic crushing of the unborn to better harvest their hearts, lungs and livers, many Democrats have incredibly cast an organization with a roughly $1.3 billion annual budget in the role of the innocent and defenseless. Hillary Clinton emerged as Planned Parenthood’s highest profile protector Monday, decrying the “assault” against her allegedly helpless campaign donors.
The Democratic Party shilling for barbarism — whether by politicians, liberal media outlets, union officials or unrestricted abortion advocates — is not likely to be viewed favorably by future generations. These Democrats will be remembered for demonizing the activists who lifted the veil on a previously sanitized process and for seekingrestraining orders to silence truth tellers. They will be remembered for publishing dehumanizing decrees — as The New Republic did — that people stop criticizing Planned Parenthood because as a medical matter, “The term baby … doesn’t apply until birth” (that thing on your sonogram is nothing more than a “product[] of conception.”) And they will be remembered for demanding investigations into citizen journalists for meticulously exposing atrocities in our midst.

Read the whole thing. Science is on the side of life. For more than 30 years now, parents have had the experience of staring at that ultrasound screen and seeing their own children alive in the womb at 10 or 12 weeks gestation. And, because of advances in neo-natal care, there are adults alive today who were born more than three months premature.

Madeline Mann, who was born in 1989 weighing less than 10 ounces, graduated with honors from Augustana College in 2012, and last year got her master’s degree in psychology. She is certified in suicide prevention.

Life deserves a chance.

Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise . . . Well, they’re evil.

The science is settled.

“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil . . . I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”
— Deuteronomy 30:15, 19 (KJV)

PREVIOUSLY:





 

Category: Abortion, Barack Obama, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Planned Parenthood

In The Mailbox: 08.04.15

Posted on | August 4, 2015 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Democrats Taking Trump Seriously
Da Tech Guy: Why Trump Resonates And Why The Left Doesn’t Get It In One Image
Conservative Intel: Rand Paul Gaining In Spite Of Media Attacks
Michelle Malkin: Desperate Democrats Recycle Planned Parenthood’s Mammogram Lie
Twitchy: Fifth Planned Parenthood Video Out – Now Discussing Selling “Whole Bodies Of Babies”
Shark Tank: Sunblock Needed In Florida’s Ongoing Solar War


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Green Nutjobs Push California Gas Restriction Act
American Thinker: Psychopathy In The White House
Conservatives4Palin: Rusty Humphries’ “Man On The Street” Interview With Sarah Palin
Don Surber: New York Times Admits Rush Limbaugh Was Right
Joe For America: Texas Strikes Back Against Islamic Incursion – One Pig Dousing At A Time
JustOneMinute: Reaching For The Wet Blanket
Pamela Geller: Stop Obama’s Flood Of Muslim “Refugees”
Protein Wisdom: Cecil The Lion? Pffft. Robert Mugabe Eats An Entire Zoo For His Birthday
Shot In The Dark: Bend Over, Citizen Part I – Our Ignorant Priests Of Knowledge
STUMP: June/July 80 Percent Funding Hall of Shame (And Heroes!)
The Gateway Pundit: Thanks To Mitch McConnell, Senate Democrats Defeat Bill To Defund Planned Parenthood
The Jawa Report: Muhammad Turns Up On A Toilet Wall In Mali
The Lonely Conservative: Hang Onto Your Wallet – Obama To Unleash Even More Costly Energy Regulations
This Ain’t Hell: Washington Post Sets Its Sights On Lindsey Graham’s Career
Weasel Zippers: Genius Carjacker Tries To Steal Unmarked Police Car – With Two Undercover Police Inside
Megan McArdle: Ex-Im Bank Is A Tiny But Tempting Target
Mark Steyn: Pathway To Codswallop


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Category: Linkagery

Feminists Are Raping Journalism

Posted on | August 4, 2015 | 49 Comments

Rolling Stone‘s UVA rape hoax continues to echo in discussions of the legal and cultural consequences of bad journalism:

Tamara Tabo is a summa cum laude graduate of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the school’s law review. After graduation, she clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She currently heads the Center for Legal Pedagogy at Texas Southern University, an institute applying cognitive science to improvements in legal education.

Ms. Tabo’s impeccable credentials are relevant to her blistering critique of the media’s irresponsible coverage of “rape culture”:

What is surprising is, even after the Rolling Stone debacle, how many dubious beliefs persist about women who allege that they have been sexually assaulted, the men those women accuse, and how the media reports on it. . . .
The folks at Rolling Stone were apparently so afraid of throwing shade on a woman who claims to have been raped that they were tripping over themselves to seem as sensitive as possible, even once her story began to crumble. . . .
When men say that it doesn’t matter whether a woman is telling the truth about a sexual assault because what really matters is the “big issue,” those men have internalized their own oppression too. They’ve adopted the attitude that any harms done by a woman lying about a rape are not important. They’ve bought into the lie that “good guys” continue to focus on the suffering of women, even when facts suggest that a woman has inflicted suffering on men she has falsely accused.
A man blaming “campus rape culture” or “the patriarchy” or whatever instead of blaming an alleged rape victim whose story unravels is no more noble than a woman telling another woman that she must have been “asking for it” if she was raped.
How many false gang-rape allegations need to happen before everybody cultivates some healthy skepticism?

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) The astonishing thing is how, despite the clear evidence that the “campus rape epidemic” is non-existent (i.e., sexual assault has actually declined signifcantly in the past two decades) and despite indications that feminists have created a witch-hunt climate that has produced numerous false accusations, we see lawmakers and university officials acting as if there really is such an “epidemic.”

If there is an epidemic of anything on campus, it’s a Binge Drinking epidemic, which leads to a Bad Sex epidemic, and that in turn has created a Maybe My Bad Drunk Sex Was Rape epidemic. It is ridiculous to expect teenage college kids to responsibly negotiate “affirmative consent” after they’ve been doing tequila shots all night.

In October 2014, before the Rolling Stone hoax, but after Jesse Matthew had been arrested in the murder of UVA student Hanna Graham, the feminist “rape culture” discourse was critiqued by Heather MacDonald. She quoted a Duke University coed who had described to Laura Sessions Stepp the morning-after reaction to a typical drunken hook-up: “You roll over the next morning so horrified at what you find next to you that you scream.” It is this reaction, I believe, which provides the emotional energy behind the “campus rape epidemic” hysteria.

Robert Tracinski has suggested that “the emotional dark side of promiscuity” is a major factor in this phony crisis. I’ve made this point more bluntly: “Why Do Drunk Sluts Get Drunk?” Alcohol can function as moral anesthetia that suppresses the qualms of conscience, enabling people to overcome their inhibitions and do bad things they want to do, but would have difficulty doing if they were sober. When they wake up with a hangover, they are overcome with a sense of shame about their drunken revelry, which they may barely remember.

Given the prevalence of the Bad Drunk Sex phenomenon on our college campuses, how are we to discern the difference between the roll-over-and-scream morning-after remorse reaction and actual incidents of sexual assault? In a he-said/she-said scenario, is there no room for skepticism? Must we cast aside all doubt and embrace policies that effectively void the due process rights of male students who are accused under such circumstances? Is it too much to expect female students to stay sober, keep their britches on and avoid the situations in which these incidents typically occur? We know that feminists don’t give a damn about facts, but must we allow these unscrupulous ideologues to destroy what little credibility still remains in the news media?

PREVIOUSLY:

This is part of the Sex Trouble series, which has been funded by contributions from readers. Your support is deeply appreciated.





 

Category: Journalism, Media Bias, Sex Trouble

Memphis Manhunt for Cop Killer

Posted on | August 3, 2015 | 39 Comments

Shooting suspect Tremaine Wilbourn (left); Officer Sean Bolton (right).

Tremaine Wilbourn Hunted Over Shooting
of Memphis Police Officer Sean Bolton
— NBC News

Police issue warrant in slaying of officer
— Memphis Commercial Appeal

Memphis police officer killed; suspect identified
— CNN

MPD: Tremaine Wilbourn wanted
in shooting of Officer Sean Bolton
— WHBQ-TV, Memphis

Toney Armstrong, director of the Memphis Police Department, gave an emotional press conference after Officer Bolton was murdered:

“As a community we say so often as a theme — black lives matter. And at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves, do all lives matter? Regardless of race, creed, color, economic status, what profession that person holds,” Armstrong said. “All lives matter. And this is just a reminder of how dangerous this job is.”
“One life is too many, but how do you put a value on somebody’s life? How do you say one life is more important than another,” Armstrong said later during the press conference. “So, again, what we need more than anything right now is just your prayers again for this MPD family as well as this officer’s family.” . . .
Bolton’s death is the third police officer death in four years with Armstrong at the helm of the police force, he said during the press conference. In December 2012, Officer Martoiya Lang was killed; Officer Timothy Warren’s life was taken in January 2011.

Wilbourn, 29, had been sentenced to serve 10 years for robbery, but was out on “supervised release.” Officer Bolton, 33, was a veteran of the Marine Corps who served a tour of duty in Iraq. Officer Bolton was killed late Saturday night:

Armstrong said Bolton, a patrolman assigned to the Mt. Moriah station, saw a red 2002 Mercedes-Benz parked illegally on Summerlane. Bolton pulled in front of the car and turned on his spotlight.
As Bolton approached the Mercedes, the passenger got out and a struggle ensued, police said. The passenger then opened fire, hitting Bolton multiple times at close range.
“After inventorying the suspect vehicle, it was found that Officer Bolton apparently interrupted some sort of drug transaction,” Armstrong said, noting that police found a digital scale and 1.7 grams of marijuana. “We’re talking about less than 2 grams of marijuana. We’re talking about a misdemeanor citation. We probably would not have even transported for that.”
That fact particularly outraged Armstrong.
“You gun down, you murder a police officer, for less than 2 grams of marijuana,” he said. “You literally destroy a family. Look at the impact this has had on this department, this community, this city, for less than 2 grams of marijuana.”

This is what cops deal with every day. There are lots of criminals on the streets of America’s cities, criminals like Tremaine Wilbourn turned loose parole or probation, criminals who love violence and hate cops. The cop who goes to work every day never knows when his next traffic stop might cost him his life. When the media irresponsibly demonize the police, portraying criminals as “victims of society,” they send a dangerous message that incites lawless violence.

Since the April riots in Baltimore, violent crime in the city has escalated to unprecedented levels, with 45 murders during the month of July, the most since 1972, when Baltimore had 275,000 more residents. This is a direct result of the anti-cop rhetoric spewed by irresponsible demagogues and promoted by the national media.

You cannot protect innocent citizens by demonizing the police.

 

Category: Crime

Rule 5 Sunday: Moe Windows Mascots? Yes, Please!

Posted on | August 2, 2015 | 7 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

The Japanese penchant for making cute anthropomorphic mascots for all manner of inanimate objects* inevitably came to be applied to computer operating systems. Microsoft Windows, with its plethora of variations over the years starting with 3.1, has inspired an entire family of “OS-tans” in cartoon form, some of which have actually been adopted by Asian branches of Microsoft for marketing. Since cute cartoons inevitably inspire cute girls’ cosplay, we get things like today’s appetizer, a young lady dressed up as Windows 2000 Professional-tan, and very nicely too.

Thank you, Miss Ayaka!

As usual, some of the following links are to pics normally considered NSFW, so be discreet in your clicking.

Randy’s Roundtable leads off this week with Alexina Graham, followed by Ninety Miles from Tyranny with Hot Pick of the Late Night, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns: Walk Softly and Carry A Bazooka. Animal Magnetism has Rule 5 Friday, Rule 5 Friday Bonus – Arguing Against Gun Control? and the Saturday Gingermageddon, while First Street Journal chips in with the ever-popular IDF.

EBL’s herd is swollen this week with Melissa Mayeux, Hannah Bleau,  Hillary Duff, Huma Abedin, #CatLivesMatter, and “Energizer”. Also, Gisele!

Postaldog is back with Mena Suvari, Denise Richards, Britney Spears, Kayleigh Morris, Lindsay Lohan, and Courtney Stodden.

A View from the Beach offers Miss Bum Bum 2014,** “Once in a Very Blue Moon”, Everything About Texas…, This Barely Passes as News, Virginia, Maryland Fight over Crabs, Wednesday Wake up – “It’s Not Easy”, Kate Upton Kicks Bill DeBlasio’s Ass, I Kind of See Their Point, Dueling Theories on American Indian Origins, Mime Through Time, Mime Through Time, and Scientists Continue to Excavate Paleolithic German Porn Stash (cavegirls).

Soylent Siberia has your morning coffee creamer, Monday Motivationer, Tuesday Titillation with Fishnet, Son Of Humpday Hawtness – The Sequel, Fursday Fullness, Corsetation Conglomeration, T-GIF Friday Caress, Weekender Wetness, and Bath Night Auburn Awesome.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Yanet Garcia, his Vintage Babe is Jayne Meadows, and Sex in Advertising is covered by Velvet Orchid. At Dustbury, it’s Rina Aizawa and Rebecca Black.

*You can Google the A-10, er, gal if you want to. Not supplying a link.
**Link will post Monday morning.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox is midnight on Saturday, August 8.


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Category: Rule 5

Feminist Tumblr: Don’t Even Ask

Posted on | August 2, 2015 | 93 Comments

 

Ashley is @sailor_P00N on Twitter, where she advertises herself as “BIG GAY HATE MACHINE . . . I’m the feminist Rush warned you about.”

She has piercings in her right nostril and the middle of her upper lip. She shaves the sides of her head, she wears dramatic eye makeup, and she is obese. Her appearance over the years, Ashley says, has been “an exciting adventure.” Oh, did I mention that Ashley is obese? Because she mentions that a lot, the same way she mentions her lesbianism a lot. Of course, she’s got a Tumblr blog and her profile describes her as a “Fat femme lesbian feminist.” More than an attitude, this is an ideology:

So-called “fat-positive feminism” is a movement that “addresses how misogyny and sexism intersect with sizism and anti-fat bias.”

This movement has been analyzed by Women’s Studies professors who invoke “neo-Gramscian theories of hegemony” to explain how “power hierarchies” contribute to the oppression of fat women:

Problematizing the existence of a singular, oppressive beauty standard has been a useful corrective to monochromatic understandings of gender inequality and oppression. However, the emphasis on feminine beauty and the body as a site of individual meaning and empowering play is prone to a naive self?determinism that assumes that women act completely voluntarily, thus minimizing corporate domination and the “normalizing power of cultural images” . . . The persistence of domination in the realm of beauty ideals raises serious questions for our two cases of beauty rebellion, as well as for the cultural turn in beauty analysis. Can resistance to beauty ideals rely on therapeutic, individually focused strategies, or must activists also target the institutions and material structures that support hegemonic beauty standards?

Feminist theory justifies Ashley’s view of her obesity as resistance to the “normalizing power” of “hegemonic beauty standards.” For feminists, obesity is not a personal problem, but a political issue in the same way that feminism, by a sort of theoretical alchemy, transforms lesbianism from an individual erotic preference to a revolutionary challenge. The lesbian feminist sees herself as a freedom fighter against heterosexuality, which is condemned as “the ideology of male supremacy.”

Feminism reframes psychological maladjustment (an individual’s inability to fit into normal adult life) as a critique of society. It is not the individual’s failure to adjust that is the problem, according to feminist theory. Rather, society’s definition of “normal” is inherently wrong and oppressive. Feminism insists that the misfit minority are justified in rejecting “socially constructed” expectations — the gender binary imposed by the heterosexual matrix, in Professor Judith Butler’s jargon — because the normal majority are beneficiaries of oppressive privilege exercised through Foucauldian discourses of power.

Are these ideas crazy? Well, I’ve been accused of ableism for using the word “crazy” to describe feminists who make a point of discussing their mental health problems. Feminists hurl labels like “ableism” at their critics in the same way Stalin’s enemies in the 1930s were accused of being “Trotskyist saboteurs.” Feminism is a non-falsifiable theory. Anything and everything can be cited as proof of women’s wrongful oppression by a male-dominated society. The correlation between feminism and mental illness (remember that Shulamith Firestone was a paranoid schizophrenic) therefore is construed by feminists as proof that (a) male supremacy inflicts psychological harm on women, or (b) psychiatric treatment is one of the mechanisms the patriarchy uses to control women, or (c) both. Whatever explanation she offers, no feminist is ever personally responsible for her own problems, because somewhere there is always a male scapegoat who deserves blame.

Therefore, when Ashley isn’t posting alluring selfies on her Tumblr, she’s on her “pop culture criticism” blog Pussy Goes Grrr, talking about being in a mental hospital for bipolar depression, an experience she interpreted through a feminist perspective:

I guess it was silly of me to think I’d be safe from sexism in the nut house. Beyond the fact that there’s an long history of institutional sexism in mental health facilities themselves, there’s a simple reason why I should’ve known better: men would be there. Men don’t stop participating in sexism or perpetuating microaggressions just because you’re all sick.
The most overt example was the man who told me how beautiful and sexy I was every chance he got. . . . Gross as his aggressive come-ons were, he was the easiest to deal with. His explicitness made it easy to report him to the techs. I felt his wide eyes moving over me even though he stopped speaking to me. I watched him move on to a patient who was more receptive to his grossness. . . . I was relieved that he’d stopped talking to me.
There were other men who were more difficult to deal with.

So, a man who was hospitalized for mental illness found Ashley “beautiful and sexy.” Ashley was released from the psychiatric ward last year, and yet heterosexual males continue to pose a threat to her:

it doesn’t f–king matter how “nicely” or “respectfully” you ask a lesbian out on a date if you’re a dude. it doesn’t matter how much you clearly express that you don’t have any expectations. that. doesn’t. f–king. matter.
because there is a social expectation and pressure for women to accept relationships with men. so even if you are being “nice” and “respectful” you are still creating a potentially coercive situation even if you are not intending to. there is an inherent power imbalance and when you disregard a lesbian’s sexuality (because i don’t care how respectful you are about it, you are still DISREGARDING their sexuality for your own feelings) you are disrespecting their identity and boundaries.
please understand how compulsory heterosexuality works. it’s not like a cold that you get over and suddenly you’re totally sure in your lesbianism. there is constant social pressure for women to include men in their sexuality and when you ask a lesbian out on a date you are an active participant in that. that is not respectful. That is not nice. there’s is literally no way to do such a thing respectfully.

Lesbianism is not a problem, heterosexuality is — that’s the bottom line of feminist gender theory. To invoke the title of a Women’s Studies textbook, Feminism Is Queer. Women like Ashley are under “constant social pressure . . . to include men in their sexuality,” and any male who expresses interest in any female is “creating a potentially coercive situation” because of society’s “compulsory heterosexuality.” A man who is attracted to Ashley is attempting to coerce her, so don’t even ask.

Men must never talk to Ashley, because there is “literally no way to do such a thing respectfully.” Men are “participating in sexism” simply by being heterosexual and they are “perpetuating microaggressions” if they talk to women. This kind of anti-male hostility (a characteric paranoia, “Fear and Loathing of the Penis”) provides the emotional basis of feminism, which is why it is impossible to debate a feminist.

Facts and logic can never refute emotions like hate, fear, envy and self-pity. It does no good to cite indicators of widespread opportunity for women (e.g., females are 57% of U.S. college students) nor to point to the examples of happy, successful women in society, because evidence cannot change the feminist’s feelings of victimhood.

“Feminist consciousness is consciousness of victimization . . . to come to see oneself as a victim.”
— Sandra Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (1990)

Her “consciousness” enables the feminist to evade responsibility for the problems in her life. Even to suggest that a woman could be responsible for her own unhappiness is to engage in “victim-blaming,” according to feminists. If a college girl gets so drunk that she doesn’t even remember having sex with a guy she met at a party, and her morning-after remorse leads her to claim she was raped, your skepticism — or even your belief that the accused should be entitled to due process — makes you a “rape denialist,” as feminists at Oberlin College branded Christina Hoff Sommers. (“A rape denialist is someone who denies the prevalence of rape and denies known causes of it,” they explained.) Of course, Dr. Sommers was not actually trying to deny anything. She was pointing out that the actual “prevalence of rape” is far lower than the deliberately exaggerated “1-in-5” statistic promoted by feminists. Making such distinctions, however, is not possible in feminist rhetoric, because totalitarians don’t debate their critics, they silence them.

Feminists are always right, because shut up.

Whether they speak the crypto-Marxist dialectic of Catharine MacKinnon or the postmodern babble of Judith Butler, feminists always seek to “win” the argument by silencing opposition, so that feminism becomes the dominant ideology by asserting its authority as the only ideology. Thus, nothing is true unless feminists say it is true, and no analysis is valid unless it is a feminist analysis. This feminist Catch-22 has the effect not only of invalidating anything said by men (because they are men, and therefore, shut up) but also invalidates anything said by a woman who does not share “feminist consciousness.” Feminism becomes an echo chamber crowded with angry chattering lunatics because the voices of sanity are systematically excluded.

“Fat femme lesbian feminist” Ashley is an example of this principle of epistemic closure by which feminists separate themselves from explanations that do not conform to their ideology. Consider something she wrote six years ago when she was 19 and in college:

So, if it’s not obvious, I am an insanely neurotic individual. The kind of neurotic and paranoid that makes me believe that the wholly illogical is actually going to happen to me. Like oh, a pregnancy, despite the fact that I’m on birth control and haven’t had intercourse and haven’t had any semen anywhere near me. . . .
So, I could talk more about my deeply internalized fears of pregnancy and motherhood, the paralyzing terror I experience when faced with the idea of being pregnant and the ridiculous amount of neurosis involved with this (like how I used to be afraid I was pregnant before I was ever even in a relationship) but instead I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about how this has created a bit of a shift in my art.

Click to see her bizarre 2009 drawing “Motherhood.” This “insanely neurotic” phobia of pregnancy is a continuing theme of Ashley’s work, as in her 2011 cartoon series:

That last cartoon begins, “Loving sex while simultaneously being neurotically terrified of pregnancy seems like a conflict of interest,” and features Ashley’s “impressively long list of reasons why I don’t want kids,” including, “I hate kids,” “I would be a horrible mother,” “I’m emotionally unstable,” and “I have no maternal instincts.”

Which is to say, she’s a feminist.

Antipathy toward pregnancy and motherhood has been a core value of feminism for decades. In her 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone declared flatly, “Pregnancy is barbaric” (p. 180) and described motherhood as “a fundamentally oppressive biological condition” (p. 202). Fat lesbian Ashley has turned her persistent nightmares about pregnancy into artwork, but she is certainly not the only feminist who views her own reproductive anatomy as an existential menace.

“I don’t particularly like babies. They are loud and smelly and, above all other things, demanding . . . time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness. . . . I don’t want a baby. . . . Nothing will make me want a baby. . . . This is why, if my birth control fails, I am totally having an abortion.”
— Amanda Marcotte, March 14, 2014

A frenzied horror toward the biological and natural consequences of human sexuality is abnormal. At least fat lesbian Ashley recognizes that she is “an insanely neurotic individual” for feeling that way, whereas Amanda Marcotte has no such self-awareness.

Are there men who find feminists attractive? Yes, and the scary thing is not all of those men are locked up in mental institutions.

P.S.: Ashley wants you to sign up for a contest to win a free vibrator, otherwise known as the “Hitachi Feminist Boyfriend.”

The Sex Trouble project has been supported by contributions from readers. The first edition of Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the War on Human Nature is available from Amazon.com, $11.96 in paperback or $1.99 in Kindle ebook format.





 

Category: Sex Trouble

Hugo Awards and Other Stuff

Posted on | August 2, 2015 | 23 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

The deadline for voting on the 2015 Hugo Awards was midnight on Friday, and I got my votes in. The CHORFs and their allies tried to get in some last-minute shots, notably the Grauniad, only to be met with derision and an excellent fisking by the International Lord of Hate.* Also worth noting was the triumphant tweet by Mary Robinette Kowal that they’d succeeded in handing out seventy supporting memberships. Seventy out of over three thousand supporting memberships? Great job there, guys, we’re just shaking in our boots. Oh, wait, no we’re not.

The Empress protects! 🙂

So what did I do with my ballot? Well, for one thing, I read pretty much all the fiction in the voter packet Sasquan sent out, with the exception of samples (screw you, Orbit) and one short story from The Baen Big Book of Monsters, which was an oversight on my part. And this is how I rolled:

BEST NOVEL

  1. 1. Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
  2.  The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison
  3.  Skin Game, by Jim Butcher

BEST NOVELLA

  1.  Big Boys Don’t Cry, by Tom Kratman
  2. One Bright Star to Guide Them, John C. Wright
  3. The Plural of Helen of Troy, ditto
  4. Flow, Arlan Andrews
  5. Pale Realms of Shade, John C. Wright

BEST NOVELETTE

  1.  The Journeyman: In the Stone House, Michael F. Flynn
  2.  Ashes to Ashes Dust to Dust Earth to Alluvium, by Gray Rinehart
  3.  The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale, by Rajnar Vajra
  4.  Championship B’tok, Edward Lerner

BEST SHORT STORY

  1.  Totaled, Kary English
  2.  Turncoat, Steve Rzasa
  3.  The Parliament of Beasts and Birds, John C. Wright

BEST RELATED WORK

  1.  Wisdom from My Internet, Michael Z. Williamson
  2.  Transhuman and Subhuman, John C. Wright
  3.  The Hot Equations, Ken Burnside
  4.  Why Science Is Never Settled, Tedd Roberts

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION (LONG)

  1.  Edge of Tomorrow
  2.  Interstellar
  3.  Guardians of the Galaxy
  4.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier
  5.  The Lego Movie

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION (SHORT)

  1.  Game of Thrones, “The Mountain and the Viper”
  2.  Orphan Black, “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried”

BEST PROFESSIONAL EDITOR (SHORT)

  1.  Vox Day
  2.  Mike Resnick

BEST PROFESSIONAL EDITOR (LONG)

  1.  Toni Weisskopf
  2.  Vox Day

…and you can take it as given that I voted No Award in the rest of the categories or (in the case of Best Fanzine) only voted for one (Tim Bolgeo’s The Revenge of Hump Day). Hopefully there’ll be enough fans like me who want to recapture the Hugos for people who want them to mean something entertaining and good again, so we don’t have to do as Wendell the Manatee suggests:

“Yes, Wendell!”


Aside from all that, I did read some other stuff. James Pylant’s In Morticia’s Shadow: The Life & Career of Carolyn Jones is a very, very detailed biography of the actress most famous for playing Morticia Addams on the original “Addams Family” TV series, but it would have benefited greatly from an editor who would have made sure the photographs didn’t slide off the bottoms of the pages. Pylant obviously did his homework, interviewing a lot of people who worked with Miss Jones throughout her career, and I doubt there’s anything he missed.


I am into the third volume of the Winston Churchill biography, Winston S. Churchill: The Challenge of War, 1914-1916, which is the one uniquely done by both Randolph Churchill and Martin Gilbert, as Randolph died while this volume was in process. It covers WSC’s tenure as First Lord of the Admiralty in the opening years of World War I and his downfall, which was not solely rooted in the Gallipoli disaster – that hadn’t yet turned sour – but rather in vile partisan politics and the treacherous, erratic personality of Admiral “Jackie” Fisher, who Churchill had summoned out of retirement to serve as First Sea Lord. An excellent, excellent book.


Later this week I’ll have something to say about Stanley Payne and Jesus Palacios’ biography of Franco and William Forstchen’s One Second After, both of which were kindly purchased from my wish list by Loyal Commenters.

*Correia and Torgerson really need to collect their essays and fisks into a book. They could call it The Peoples’ History of the Sad Puppy Revolution; wouldn’t it be great to see them and Mad Mike win Best Related Work back to back? 🙂


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