The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 09.01.15

Posted on | September 1, 2015 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: The Mystery of ISIS and Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy
Da Tech Guy: Ted Cruz in Hollis, NH
Doug Powers: Obama’s Mixed Messages Contributing To Climate Change, Mass Confusion
Twitchy: “This Is Why America Hates Us In DC” – Ron Fournier Calls Out Paul Begala For “But Bush!” Hackery
Conservative Intel: Hillary – Kill Joe!
Shark Tank: “Wassermann Schultz Should Go To The Ovens” (Video)


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Migrant Crackdown Sows Chaos In Europe
American Thinker: Officers’ Letter To Congress On Iran Deal Not A One Day Story
Conservatives4Palin: Obama’s DOJ Continues To Stonewall Investigation Into IRS Corruption
Don Surber: Ben Carson Wins WV Straw Poll
Jammie Wearing Fools: Not A Peep From Obama On Execution Of Houston Police Officer, but Plenty Of Climate Change Psychobabble
Joe For America: Ted Cruz Puts Blame For Cop’s Death Where It Belongs – On Obama
JustOneMinute: Progressive Banking
Pamela Geller: Scholars Catch Up To Robert Spencer, Realize Ancient Quran Challenges Islam’s Origins
Protein Wisdom: “No Fiction Is Worth Reading Except For Entertainment”
Shot In The Dark: Our Underachieving Cro-Magnon Governor
STUMP: Pension Quicktakes – How About That Stock Market? And Red Light Cameras?
The Gateway Pundit: #BlackLivesMatter Radio Show Calls For Race War – “Kill Whites And Cops”
The Jawa Report:
The Lonely Conservative: Washington State Professors Will Punish Students Who Use The Wrong Words
This Ain’t Hell: Rest In Peace, Forgotten Angel
Weasel Zippers: Moonbats Lose In Montana – Appeals Court Cites First Amendment, Okays Jesus Statue On Big Mountain
Megan McArdle: Printing Money Goes Haywire In Venezuela
Mark Steyn: Sewers And Servers


Out today! S.M. Stirling’s The Desert and the Blade

Category: Linkagery

‘Hit-It-and-Quit-It on Tinder’

Posted on | August 31, 2015 | 184 Comments

Online dating apps are fueling an “apocalypse” of hook-up culture, Nancy Jo Sales reports in a frightening Vanity Fair feature:

[Alex] says that he himself has slept with five different women he met on Tinder — “Tinderellas,” the guys call them — in the last eight days. Dan and Marty, also Alex’s roommates in a shiny high-rise apartment building near Wall Street, can vouch for that. In fact, they can remember whom Alex has slept with in the past week more readily than he can.
“Brittany, Morgan, Amber,” Marty says, counting on his fingers. “Oh, and the Russian — Ukrainian?”
“Ukrainian,” Alex confirms. “She works at—” He says the name of a high-end art auction house. Asked what these women are like, he shrugs. “I could offer a résumé, but that’s about it … Works at J. Crew; senior at Parsons; junior at Pace; works in finance … ”
“We don’t know what the girls are like,” Marty says.
“And they don’t know us,” says Alex.

Hey, guys, let’s add a word to your vocabulary: Herpes.

Did you know that herpes is incurable, and that condoms don’t protect against herpes? You could ask Ella Dawson to explain this to you. Ms. Dawson was a student at Wesleyan University (annual tuition $47,972) who said she “never had unprotected sex,” but experienced a “tidal wave of shame” when she was diagnosed with a herpes infection. (Ms. Dawson graduated in 2014 with a bachelor of arts in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, “theorizing the feminist possibilities of erotica,” so I guess that makes her an expert of sorts.) A 2010 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the herpes rate “was nearly twice as high among women (21%) as men (11%), and more than three times higher among African-Americans (39%) than whites (12%). The infection rate among African-American women was 48%.” For obvious reasons, promiscuity increases the risk of infection, and the CDC found that about 27% of those who reported 10 or more partners are infected with herpes.

So while Alex is congratulating himself on hooking up with five “Tinderellas” in the span of eight days, he should perhaps be thinking in terms of epidemiology. Yet the herpes virus may ultimately be less harmful than the emotional damage inflicted by mindless promiscuity:

Marty, who prefers Hinge to Tinder (“Hinge is my thing”), is no slouch at “racking up girls.” He says he’s slept with 30 to 40 women in the last year: “I sort of play that I could be a boyfriend kind of guy,” in order to win them over, “but then they start wanting me to care more … and I just don’t.”

See? Marty understands the game he’s playing. Pretend that you’re emotionally available — “a boyfriend kind of guy” — and “racking up girls” via online hook-up sites is not difficult nowadays for any reasonably attractive young man. The more a guy succeeds at that cynical game, however, the lower his estimation of women in general, because each “win” for him just proves how easily girls can be deceived. No amount of feminist “consciousness raising” can change the fundamental reality of human nature. Casual sex is a game in which guys have a decisive advantage, and therefore any girl who plays that game is a fool. When so many young women are willing to play this foolish game, however, it produces a culture shift that hurts women:

“It’s rare for a woman of our generation to meet a man who treats her like a priority instead of an option,” wrote Erica Gordon on the Gen Y Web site Elite Daily, in 2014.
It is the very abundance of options provided by online dating which may be making men less inclined to treat any particular woman as a “priority,” according to David Buss, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in the evolution of human sexuality. “Apps like Tinder and OkCupid give people the impression that there are thousands or millions of potential mates out there,” Buss says. “One dimension of this is the impact it has on men’s psychology. When there is a surplus of women, or a perceived surplus of women, the whole mating system tends to shift towards short-term dating. Marriages become unstable. Divorces increase. Men don’t have to commit, so they pursue a short-term mating strategy. Men are making that shift, and women are forced to go along with it in order to mate at all.”
“For young women the problem in navigating sexuality and relationships is still gender inequality,” says Elizabeth Armstrong, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan who specializes in sexuality and gender. “Young women complain that young men still have the power to decide when something is going to be serious and when something is not — they can go, ‘She’s girlfriend material, she’s hookup material.’ … There is still a pervasive double standard. We need to puzzle out why women have made more strides in the public arena than in the private arena.”

Will feminists ever wake up and realize that human nature is an immutable reality impervious to ideology? Viewing sexual problems as a quasi-Marxist struggle between two classes — men and women as collective groups — does not necessarily help any individual woman and may arguably make her life more difficult. Strategies recommended by feminist ideology may seem to “work” for lesbian sociology professors who view all males as hostile and dangerous, but political rhetoric about “gender inequality” doesn’t help the college girl trying to negotiate personal relationships. Are we to believe that Professor Armstrong (author of the 2002 book Forging Gay Identities) is best qualified to advise young heterosexual women on how to find a guy who will treat her right? Nancy Jo Sales reports the anecdotal evidence:

At a table in the front, six young women have met up for an after-work drink. They’re seniors from Boston College, all in New York for summer internships, ranging from work in a medical-research lab to a luxury department store. They’re attractive and fashionable, with bright eyes highlighted with dark eyeliner wings. None of them are in relationships, they say. I ask them how they’re finding New York dating.
“New York guys, from our experience, they’re not really looking for girlfriends,” says the blonde named Reese. “They’re just looking for hit-it-and-quit-it on Tinder.”
“People send really creepy s–t on it,” says Jane, the serious one.
“I think that iPhones and dating apps have really changed the way that dating happens for our generation,” says Stephanie, the one with an arm full of bracelets.
“There is no dating. There’s no relationships,” says Amanda, the tall elegant one. “They’re rare. You can have a fling that could last like seven, eight months and you could never actually call someone your ‘boyfriend.’ [Hooking up] is a lot easier. No one gets hurt — well, not on the surface.” . . .
They say they think their own anxiety about intimacy comes from having “grown up on social media,” so “we don’t know how to talk to each other face-to-face.” . . .
“It seems like the girls don’t have any control over the situation, and it should not be like that at all,” Fallon says.
“It’s a contest to see who cares less, and guys win a lot at caring less,” Amanda says.
“Sex should stem from emotional intimacy, and it’s the opposite with us right now, and I think it really is kind of destroying females’ self-images,” says Fallon.
“It’s body first, personality second,” says Stephanie.
“Honestly, I feel like the body doesn’t even matter to them as long as you’re willing,” says Reese. “It’s that bad.”
“But if you say any of this out loud, it’s like you’re weak, you’re not independent, you somehow missed the whole memo about third-wave feminism,” says Amanda.

No, ma’am. You got the memo. It’s just that you seem to be smart enough to realize that the memo was completely wrong. What feminist ideology tells young women they should do — being sexually “empowered” and expecting this empowerment to lead to “equality” in their relationships — is the exact opposite of what common sense based on an actual knowledge of human nature would advise them to do.

The accumulated wisdom of centuries still holds true. If you want to be loved, be lovable, and if you want to be respected, be respectable. As I tell young women, don’t just “play hard to get,” be hard to get. A girl who acts like trash thereby forfeits the right to complain that guys treat her like trash. One of the worst things feminism has done is to attack the sexual “double standard” by encouraging women to lower their standards, to screw around heedlessly and to view short-term “relationships” as an acceptable substitute for actual commitment.

This strategy of “equality” doesn’t work to women’s advantage. It has never worked and will never work, and any girl who plays that game is a fool. Yet feminism teaches women to blame men for taking advantage of the foolishness that feminists themselves encourage. If millions of women are on Tinder offering themselves as hook-up partners, how are men to blame if they react to “a perceived surplus of women” by playing that game? “Hit it and quit it.”

Certainly, I would never advise my kids to play that game. No decent parent would ever want their daughter to be offering herself to random strangers online, and decent parents would be horrified if their son brought home a woman he’d picked up that way. “Tinder trash” for a daughter-in-law? No, son. Leave those trashy women alone.

Remember that herpes is incurable, 21% of women are infected, and I’ll bet the rate of herpes infection is even higher on Tinder.

(Hat-tip: Donald Douglas on Twitter.)





 

Category: Sex Trouble

Rule 5 Sunday: Hot Babes In Space

Posted on | August 30, 2015 | 9 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I don’t know why I didn’t do this last weekend, considering it was Worldcon weekend…oh, right. Anyway, I want to kick off this week’s Rule 5 post with a Kelly Freas cover from the March 1974 Analog, for Jerry Pournelle’s “High Justice”, because Kelly was an awesome artist and a fine human being besides.

From sfcovers.net, which you really ought to check out.

Kicking off this week’s roundup is Goodstuff with (appropriately enough) Sigourney Weaver, Godzilla, Heroes and Science! Next up is Ninety Miles from Tyranny with Hot Pick of the Late Night, Morning Mistress – Double Trouble, and Girls With Guns; Animal Magnetism chips in with Rule 5 Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon, while First Street Journal continues paying tribute to our women in the military with Training.

EBL’s herd this week includes Tunisia, Sorority Girls Gone Wild, Biden and the Ladies, Come Fly With Me, Notorious, and Southie Dancers.

A View from the Beach has Another Good Thing From Sweden – Elsa Hosk, Chesapeake Shad Have Worst Year Since Whenever, “Muskrat Love”, Humor is Truly Dead and Buried, Nudes in the News, Clinton.com Catchup, “I’m Back”, Cruz Takes on the Lesbian Mafia, and Monday Morning – How About a Cute Kitten Post?

At Soylent Siberia, it’s your AM Alpine Coffee Creamer, Monday Motivationer Fair Game, Tuesday Titillation, Humpday Hawt Dream Catcher, Fursday Formal, Corset Friday With Steampunk and Tats, T-GIF Friday Lesbians, Weekender Luxury Model, and Bath Night Pitcher This.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Emily Didonato, his Vintage Babe is Margaret Colin, Sex in Advertising is all about Giving Your Boyfriend Wood, and it’s time for the obligatory (preseason) 49ers cheerleader! At Dustbury, it’s Amy Macdonald and Lucero.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox for the Rule 5 Sunday Labor Day Weekend Edition is midnight on Saturday, September 5.


High Justice
Frank Kelly Freas: The Art of Science Fiction
Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop

Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: For The Strength Of The Wolf Is The Pack…

Posted on | August 29, 2015 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

War Against Human Nature: Radical Feminism’s Anti-Maternal Rage
Trevor Loudon
Noisy Room
The Right Planet
Nice Deb
VA Right
Grumpy Opinions
Watcher of Weasels
Political Hat
The Camp of the Saints
Maggie’s Notebook
Viewpoints of a Sagittarian
Batshit Crazy News

Rule 5 Sunday: RIP Batgirl, Viva Jeannie!
Animal Magnetism
Batshit Crazy News
Proof Positive
A View from the Beach
Ninety Miles from Tyranny

Radical Feminism and the ‘Equality’ Trap
The Pirate’s Cove
Political Hat
Batshit Crazy News
A View from the Beach

FMJRA 2.0: God Bless Saturday
The Pirate’s Cove
Blur Brain
Batshit Crazy News

Solomonic Wisdom Needed
Regular Right Guy
Batshit Crazy News

‘No More Fun of Any Kind!’
Constantinople Not Istanbul
Batshit Crazy News
A View from the Beach

In The Mailbox, 08.25.15
Batshit Crazy News
Proof Positive

Immolation for the Hugos
Batshit Crazy News

Feds Raid ‘Rentboy’ Site
Constantinople Not Istanbul
Batshit Crazy News

Gunman Blames Racism After He Kills Two Young Journalists on Live TV
UPDATE: Charleston Church Shooting ‘Sent Me Over the Top,’ Killer Claims
Constantinople Not Istanbul
Batshit Crazy News
A View from the Beach

University Student Raped, Police Say; Another Crime Feminists Will Ignore
Constantinople Not Istanbul
Batshit Crazy News

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge
Batshit Crazy News

War on Women? Feminist Blames the Patriarchy for Roanoke Killings
Constantinople Not Istanbul
Batshit Crazy News
A View from the Beach

A Reminder for ‘Male Feminists’
Lonely Conservative
Living In Anglo-America
Constantinople Not Istanbul
Batshit Crazy News

In The Mailbox: 08.28.15
Batshit Crazy News

Romans Had Slavery, So I Guess The Roman Alphabet Requires Replacement
First Street Journal
Batshit Crazy News

Top linkers this week:

  1.  Batshit Crazy News (15)
  2.  Constantinople Not Istanbul (6)
  3.  A View from the Beach (5)

Special thanks to the Watchers’ Council, who voted War Against Human Nature: Radical Feminism’s Anti-Maternal Rage into fifth place among non-Council posts for the week, and to Nice Deb, who nominated it. Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!


SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police

Category: FMJRA Award

Dear Feminists: You Think Too Much

Posted on | August 29, 2015 | 75 Comments

Not everything has meaning. Not everything requires critical analysis. Not everything is in need of a theory to explain it.

Some things are really simple. They are what they are, and the temptation to intellectualize everything should be resisted. Consider, for example, a New York Times column by Emily Witt:

Who could be cynical about the rise of friendship? In recent movies, female friends have banded together to shoot guns from trucks (“Mad Max: Fury Road”) and sing a cappella (“Pitch Perfect”). On TV, they have spooned in Greenpoint (“Girls”) and found common ground in prison (“Orange Is the New Black”). Their stoner antics (“Broad City”) have liberated us from the slob dads of sitcoms. Once limited to sassy supporting roles, female friends are now the primary source of romantic tension themselves: making passive-aggressive phone calls, taking baths together, serving as sugar daddies, lying to each other, busting ghosts. Unlike traditional romance, friendship doesn’t force us into archaic gender roles or complicate our professional or sexual independence. It’s now the boyfriends who are vestigial, appearing only in bit parts like “timid suitor” or “obnoxious co-worker.”

(This is because feminist bloggers now instantly attack any movie that doesn’t pass the lesbian-approved “Bechdel Test,” and everybody in Hollywood is scared to death of feminist bloggers. In order to satisfy blogger demands, males can never be heroic in movies, nor can any woman be cast in the role of “hero’s girlfriend,” let alone “damsel in distress.” Third-wave feminism requires that males be “vestigial,” because women must be so “empowered” that men are either peripheral characters — clowns and tagalongs — or else sinister villains representing the Oppressive Patriarchy.)

Running parallel to this artistic phenomenon, however, is an anthropological one. Lately, we’ve been inundated with images of real-life best friends, triumphantly displayed. It’s difficult to get through a day on the Internet without looking at photos of women flaunting the depth of their intimacy by posing over dinner or watching television together in matching pajamas. We now flick through images not of celebrity couples but of celebrity friends: Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj eating hamburgers in matching varsity jackets; Taylor Swift with Karlie Kloss, Lorde, Selena Gomez, Ellie Goulding, Lena Dunham, her cat Olivia, the entire runway lineup of a Victoria’s Secret show; the U.S. women’s soccer team. The meme factories have responded to the popularity of pictures of best friends with maximum output, harvesting groups of women posing on beaches and in limos from celebrity Instagram feeds and presenting them in slide shows . . . and labeling these images as “#friendspiration” and “#squadgoals.”

(Note the use of the authorial “we” here. Who is “we”? Why does Emily Witt presume that everyone is plugged into the same Internet feeds, so that they are “inundated with images” and it is “difficult to get through a day” without seeing the phenomenon she describes?)

Picture-perfect groups of friends on Instagram make me wonder whether Bridget Jones’s idea of “smug marrieds” could also apply to “squads” and why “The Stepford Wives” hasn’t been re-envisioned with a friendship plot. The portraits seem to be asking a lot of impolite questions: Do you have as many friends as we do? How did you celebrate your birthday? Do you regularly drink prosecco over plates of fruit at Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar? Have you betrayed your gender by preferring the company of men? You don’t have a friend with whom you publicly exchange photographs of your manicures? What’s wrong with you? If female friendship is so uplifting, then why do these photos make us feel the opposite — unbalanced and unsure?

(Again with the authorial first-person plural. Emily Witt presumes to know how “these photos make us feel,” when she’s actually describing how they make her feel, i.e., envious of the lives of the celebrities whose photos she sees while obsessively checking the online feed that inundates her with these images. Clearly, “we” need to log off Instagram, get outside more often and, perhaps, ask “our” therapist to adjust the Prozac dosage.)

I used to think that friendship as performed for an audience would end with middle school, but the past 10 years of technology have changed that expectation.

(Obviously, she’s one of those unhappy-childhood types who are forever reliving their middle-school identity crises.)

In social media, friendship gets fixed and mounted. It loses its dramatic tension. It becomes a presentation of happiness, an advertisement for friendship rather than an actual portrayal of it. Sometimes, scrolling through photos of women I know looking carefully hungover in front of a perfectly composed brunch, or lying on a blanket in a park in crop tops, or posting screenshots of their exuberant text messages, I’m reminded of something Marnie once said on “Girls”: “I thought that this would be a good opportunity to have fun together and prove to everyone via Instagram that we can still have fun as a group.”

(If you ever find yourself thinking about life in terms of lines from a Lena Dunham HBO series, it’s time to have that talk with your therapist about the appropriate Prozac dosage.)

Mimicking the advertiser’s strategy, these pictures of delightful fun inevitably provoke a feeling of lack or longing in the consumer of the image.
When I think of depictions of friendships that have moved me, I find myself thinking mostly of books — of those passages in novels that illuminate friendship by its moments of thorniness, by the heartbreak it can cause.

(Of course! It’s about characters in novels. People who read too much fiction think everything is about characters in novels, in the same way people who spend too much time on Instagram think everything is about people on Instagram.)

Real friendship is complex. It’s the sadness of Elizabeth Bennet when her friend Charlotte Lucas marries the odious Mr. Collins in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s Leah and Natalie’s complicated dance of haughtiness and need in Zadie Smith’s “NW.” It’s the once-a-week limit Vivian Gornick has with her friend Leonard in “The Odd Woman and the City” (because men can be friends too). The best works of art about friendship resonate by showing how our closest friends have a way of ruining our attempts to present ourselves as perfect; how those picturesque moments are belied by other truths.

(My friendships have never been “complex.” Never once in my life have I engaged in a “complicated dance of haughtiness and need,” probably because I don’t sit around reading novels, filled with a bittersweet nostalgia for middle school or obsessively staring at pictures of Taylor Swift on Instagram. Seriously, lady, you need to have that discussion with your therapist about your Prozac dosage.)

Friendship stories might have replaced tales of romantic love, but the best ones stop themselves from purveying easy clichés of their own — whether clichés about feminist solidarity or about mean girls (sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two). Close friendships are worth celebrating — but it is how they look at their least photogenic moments that proves their veracity.

And so concludes this New York Times mini-essay. Emily Witt is to Instagram selfies what Hannah Arendt was to Adolf Eichmann.

Curious as to who wrote this bizarre column, I found her online bio:

Emily Witt . . . has degrees from Brown, Columbia, and Cambridge, and was a Fulbright scholar in Mozambique.

Oh, that explains it. Those of us who went to state universities didn’t sit around reading novels or having “complex” friendships that were a “complicated dance of haughtiness and need.” Nor do our daily lives as adults consist of scrolling through celebrity Instagram photos, wishing we could hang out with Lena Dunham and her friends.

Only if your Daddy can afford to send you to elite universities (annual tuition at Brown, $46,408), followed by several more years of postgraduate education, can you indulge in that kind of stuff and then get paid by the New York Times to share your thoughts about it using first-person plural pronouns so that you presume to speak for a “we” who share your peculiar obsessions. Speaking of peculiar obsessions, Emily Witt (who got her bachelor’s degree at Brown in 2003, majoring in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and Art Semiotics) wrote an 800-word article for the New York Times with the headline, “In Praise of Sensible Panties,” which included sentences like these:

“Good design is as little design as possible” is one of the famed German industrial designer Dieter Rams’s Ten Principles for Good Design, and in the underwear from Swiss brands like Zimmerli and Hanro, as in a Braun appliance from the 1960s, Rams’s mandate for elegant minimalism finds fulfillment. . . . .
A country’s underwear preferences say a lot about its ideas of the erotic. . . .
Ultimately, what intrigued me about the underwear I saw in Germany had something to do with its directness — the way it resisted gendered ornamentation of the body.

You see? Even your underwear must be subjected to critical theory, if you’re an intellectual with degrees from three elite universities.

You really have to feel sorry for her Dad. Just imagine Mr. Witt’s conversations with his golf buddies.

“How’s your daughter?”
“Fluent in Portugese and resisting gendered ornamentation.”

This is why you should keep your kids as far away from the Ivy League as possible. Even if you could afford the tuition, you’ll still have to pay for a lifetime of therapy and Prozac.





 

Category: Feminism, Intellectuals, New York Times

Romans Had Slavery, So I Guess The Roman Alphabet Requires Replacement

Posted on | August 28, 2015 | 20 Comments

by Smitty

Via Instapundit, it sounds like some people at his university may be smoking mother nature:

University of Tennessee tells staff and students to stop using ‘he’ and ‘she’ – and switch to ‘xe’, ‘zir’ and ‘xyr’ instead

What’s blatantly obvious to even the most casual observer is that a certain “gay rights official at the university” needs to stop being such a conservative reactionary, like the author of this post.
A truly “new language regime” that “will make the university ‘welcoming and inclusive'” should scuttle the archaic alphabet that has “people feeling ‘marginalized'”. Why not replace it with alternating sequences of LOLcats, LOLdogs, and other equal vivacious creatures? Such an alphabet could be rotated weekly, and impossible to compose via traditional scribing instruments, to be more even-handed toward those who are not even handed.
This blog doubles down on its strident call for pushing technology and societal communications right off the cliff, in order to save both from the millennia of testosterone-driven oppression. Let us enable the logic-free future we deserve. Or, to quote Andrew Klavan:

Update: once again, trigger warnings start with the character set.

Category: Culture, Instapundit

In The Mailbox: 08.28.15

Posted on | August 28, 2015 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out To Dry
Louder With Crowder: Buzzfeed Caught Blatantly Lying While Trying To Defend Planned Parenthood
Proof Positive: Return With Us Now To Those Thrilling Days Of Yesteryear…
Michelle Malkin: What Is Obama’s Top Population Control Freak Hiding?
Twitchy: FBI “A-Team” Investigating Hillary For Possible Violation Of The Espionage Act
Shark Tank: Border Patrol Sued For Hitting Illegal Aliens’ Boat
According To Hoyt: Fauxtrage


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Ronda Rousey For Cinnamon Swirl French Toast Breakfast Sandwich From Carl’s Jr.
American Thinker: The Left Always Tells Us Who They Fear – Carly Fiorina
Conservatives4Palin: Gov. Palin – “Lamestream Media! Stay Out Of My Bible!”
Don Surber: Thank You, Jorge Ramos, For Pointing Out Why We Need A Closed Border
Jammie Wearing Fools: Insane David Brock Group Blames Koch Brothers For Flooding New Orleans After Katrina
Joe For America: Taking Back America And Europe – Anti-Islam Pushback Ratchets Up
JustOneMinute: Hillary Time
Pamela Geller: Canadian “Hate Speech” Proposal Threatens Free Speech
Protein Wisdom: Virginia Shooting – Time To Ban The Rainbow Flag
Shot In The Dark: Scope Creep
STUMP: Public Pensions Watch – California, There Ya Go
The Gateway Pundit: Donald Trump Can Absolutely Win The GOP Nomination, And Here’s How
The Jawa Report: Ann And Trump
The Lonely Conservative: Judge Blocks EPA Water Rule, EPA Imposes It Anyway
This Ain’t Hell: DNC Mistakes Polish Vets For American Vets
Weasel Zippers: When Will ABC Release The Whole Vester Flanagan Manifesto?
Megan McArdle: Micromanaging Cops? #blacklivesmatter Can Try
Mark Steyn: Anchor Baby, Slip A Passport Under The Tree For Me


Don’t forget! The deadline to submit links for inclusion in the FMJRA is tomorrow at noon, and the deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox for Rule 5 Sunday is midnight tomorrow. Thanks in advance for your contributions!


The Desert and the Blade

Category: Linkagery

University Student Raped, Police Say; Another Crime Feminists Will Ignore

Posted on | August 28, 2015 | 15 Comments

Rape suspect Sakhone Phianemanh.

The new school year has barely begun and there are already reports of sexual assault on campus. A 20-year-old Chico State University student said she was abducted while walking home from a party:

An Olivehurst man who allegedly drugged and raped a college student who became separated from her friends after a Chico party faces 30 years to life in prison.
Sakhone Phienemanh, 28, pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Yuba County Superior Court to four felony counts for two separate acts of sexual assault, including rape and oral copulation by force and of a person too intoxicated to consent.
Judge Julia Scrogin set bail at $500,000 and issued a criminal protective order for the suspect to stay out of Chico and to not contact the woman.
A second suspect remained at large and a multi-agency investigation is underway.
On Saturday, a 20-year-old Chico State University student told deputies she did not consent to getting into a vehicle and traveling to Olivehurst, and she was forced into sexual acts after refusing to participate, according to a declaration for probable cause for arrest filed with the court.
She had become separated from her friends on Friday night after they all left a party to get something to eat, Yuba County Undersheriff Jerry Read said. She remembered being very drunk and recalled some details of fading in and out of consciousness as two men sexually assaulted her in an abandoned home. Deputy District Attorney Shiloh Sorbello said there is evidence that the suspects forced her to ingest cocaine while she was in their control.
She told suspects several times she wanted to leave and eventually fled the house and found a nearby civilian between Second and Third avenues around 6:30 a.m., at which point she called 9-1-1.

Have any feminist bloggers commented on this crime? No, because this is not the kind of rape feminists care about. Sakhone Phienemanh is not himself a university student. He is not white, he is not “privileged,” and his arrest therefore does not merit attention from feminists, because Sakhone Phienemanh does not symbolize the “phallocentric social order” of “male power” that feminist theory identifies as “rape culture.”

Feminist ideology requires that privileged white males be punished for their privilege, which is why a non-existent “campus rape epidemic” has been manufactured by activists, politicians and media. Female students are being encouraged to accuse male students of sexual assault, and university administrators are under pressure to expel male students after disciplinary hearings where the accused student is denied the due-process rights that any ordinary criminal could have in a court trial.

Using federal law (Title IX) as a weapon against male students, campus activists are indoctrinating female students to believe that they are victims of rape if they have any sexual encounter they later regret. This “regret equals rape” formula was exposed in a lawsuit against Washington and Lee University:

Judge Norman K. Moon denied W&L’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, allowing John Doe — as he is referred to in the claim — to continue to seek damages resulting from his expulsion from the university. John believes he was wrongly accused of sexual misconduct, and Moon appears to agree.
On Feb. 8, 2014, John and his eventual accuser, Jane Doe, met at an off-campus party. The two danced, talked and kissed.
The two eventually went back to John’s residence and talked for awhile. Jane then walked over to John and allegedly told him, “I usually don’t have sex with someone I meet on the first night, but you are a really interesting guy.” Jane then began kissing John and the two had sex.
The next morning, John drove Jane home and the two exchanged cellphone numbers. Shortly after the encounter, the two became friends on Facebook. The two exchanged friendly messages.
During the summer of 2014, Jane worked at a women’s clinic that handled sexual assault issues. After speaking to people there about her encounter with John, she began reclassifying the encounter as sexual assault.
When she returned to campus in the fall, Jane claimed on a study abroad application that she had been sexually assaulted. She also attended a presentation by W&L’s Title IX officer Lauren Kozak. Kozak claimed that “regret equals rape,” and introduced the concept as a new idea people were now supporting.
Once Jane learned that John had been accepted into the study abroad program, she filed a sexual assault claim, now eight months after the encounter.

What seemed to be an ordinary hook-up in February was thus reinterpreted as rape in October, and John Doe discovered that male students have no rights on the 21st-century campus:

Kozak conducted the investigation. John alleges in his lawsuit that he was given six hours notice to meet with the investigators but was not told why. When John met with Kozak and learned of the allegations against him, he was not shown a copy of Jane’s complaint.
John was denied legal representation, and when he tried to postpone a meeting with Kozak, she allegedly told him: “That’s fine. We’ll just submit the investigation report without your side of the story.”
With this, John was forced to give his side of the story and provide Kozak with a list of potential witnesses. Only two of the four names given were interviewed because, as Kozak would later tell him, she had enough facts.

Even though multiple witnesses contradicted Jane Doe’s account of events, John Doe was expelled from the university, and his lawsuit alleges that he was a victim of illegal gender bias.

A similar dynamic of regret-equals-rape was apparent in another John Doe case, this one involving students at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). Two students engaged in consensual sexual activity in February 2014, but the female student later felt “personal regret for engaging in sexual activity beyond her boundaries,” according to a ruling by Judge Joel Pressman. This led to the typical Title IX process, in which the accused male student was the victim of “fundamental unfairness,” Judge Pressman ruled, because of an inaccurate investigation report presented at a disciplinary hearing where the accused student was prohibited from challenging the the contents of the report. When the student subsequently appealed his suspension, UCSD officials retaliated by increasing the length of his suspension. Mark Hathaway, an attorney for the student, issued a statement after Judge Pressman ruled against UCSD in July:

“It’s encouraging to see courts recognizing that sexual misconduct complaints on campus cannot be resolved at the expense of Constitutional rights and fundamental fairness. . . . Colleges and universities must treat all students fairly, regardless of gender. All too often the male student is just presumed responsible and given no access to any campus resources. Hopefully Judge Pressman’s ruling will help correct the imbalance.”

Feminists deride any concern for “fundamental fairness” to male students facing such accusations, claiming that false accusations are rare and that most rapists go unpunished. Basing their logic on the “1-in-5” statistic — survey data suggesting 19% of female college students are victims of sexual assault — feminists promote the belief that male students are routinely getting away with rape. Therefore, according to the logic of this feminist argument, whatever the risk that any particular male student could be falsely accused, this is outweighed by the risk that a guilty student will never be accused because his victim is intimidated by a “rape culture” that feminists claim protects “male power” on campus. An increase in the number of rape accusations thus becomes a goal unto itself in a feminist crusade which seeks to ensure that an accusation alone is sufficient to guarantee the expulsion of the accused male student.

This is why feminists ignore cases like the reported abduction and rape of the Chico State student. Random criminals can prey on college girls without lending credence to the feminist claims of a “campus rape epidemic,” which is exclusively concerned with punishing male students for engaging in heterosexual activity. Feminists never accuse gay students of “rape culture,” nor can any female student ever be punished for her sexual activity. The punitive force of Title IX is aimed entirely at heterosexual males, who are treated as a suspect class whose mere presence in the university environment poses a menace to women.

 

By fomenting anti-male paranoia — Fear and Loathing of the Penis! — feminists inspire college girls to resent any expression of sexual interest from their male classmates. Lectures about sexual assault are now mandatory in freshman orientation, and students are also warned against “harassment,” a category of offense so broadly defined that any male student could be at risk of an accusation if he so much as speaks to a female on campus. A pervasive climate of hostility and suspicion between the sexes seems to be the goal of feminist activism on the 21st-century campus, where policies increasingly convey the message that men are unwelcome intruders in the higher education system. Males are already a minority (43%) of U.S. undergraduate enrollment, but this number is apparently still too high to satisfy feminists who are certain that college boys, protected by “male privilege,” routinely perpetrate sexual assault on campus and go unpunished for their crimes.

This punitive attitude toward male students, who are presumed guilty as soon as they are accused, explains why the campus rape cases that make headlines are so often doubtful in nature. In June, Radley Balko asked the obvious question, “Why do high-profile campus rape stories keep falling apart?” Citing several of the most prominent cases — including the rape hoax that Rolling Stone perpetrated at the University of Virginia — Balko wrote:

Each time a new high-profile story falls apart, a larger portion of the public becomes less likely to believe the next one. . . . The anti-campus rape activists often claim that false accusations of sexual assault are practically nonexistent. . . . But that so many of the accusations that they themselves have chosen as emblems of the cause have been proved false or debatable suggests that they’re either wrong about the frequency of false accusations or that the movement itself has had some extraordinarily bad luck.

It is not bad luck that explains this, however, but rather the feminist insistence that accusation should always result in punishment. Activists keep highlighting cases like Emma Sulkowicz’s (the Columbia University student whose protests earned her the derisive nickname “Mattress Girl”) because these were cases in which the accusation did not lead to punishment. Exploiting sympathy for rape victims, and claiming that female students are re-victimized when their accusations are not believed, feminists seized on the Sulkowicz case as proof that “male privilege” protects rapists at elite schools like Columbia. However, when the accused student, Paul Nungesser, made his case in a lawsuit against the university, it was obvious why Nungesser had not been punished. There was exculpatory evidence, in the form of Sulkowicz’s online communications with Nungesser, supporting his claim that Sulkowicz was “a woman scorned” who accused him of rape in an act of revenge for his failing to reciprocate her desire for a continuing romantic relationship. Of course, it is ultimately impossible to know for a fact what transpired privately between Nungesser and Sulkowicz on the night of August 27, 2012, but there was certainly not enough evidence to judge him guilty of rape, and the argument presented in his lawsuit convinced many people that Sulkowicz was simply a vindictive liar.

Feminists continued to celebrate Sulkowicz as a victim even after Nungesser filed his lawsuit, however, because this is practically a religious requirement for the feminist faith: Always believe the victim, no matter how much evidence may indicate she is not a victim at all. In the feminist ideological scheme, all women (collectively) are victims of injustice and oppression for which all men (collectively) share blame. When feminists are pursuing “social justice,” no man is ever completely innocent, and yet some men are more guilty than others. Because abolishing “male power” is feminism’s revolutionary goal, destroying the reputation and career prospects of an Ivy League university student like Paul Nungesser is obvously more important than prosecuting a two-bit street hoodlum who rapes a college girl.

Feminists ignore stories about rape when the perpetrators are common criminals, no matter how horrific their crimes against women may be, because the purpose of feminist rhetoric about rape is not to increase women’s safety, but rather to attack the prestige of successful men. Rape accusations against male students at elite universities serve that feminist purpose in a way that the prosecution of a common criminal does not. Some rape victims therefore don’t really matter to feminists, which is why you have probably never heard of Monika Korra.

In December 2009, Korra was a 20-year-old sophomore at Southern Methodist University. A native of Norway and a member of the SMU women’s cross-country team, Korra attended a party hosted by the school’s soccer team. She and three friends were walking to their car about 1:30 a.m. when three men in an SUV abducted Korra at gunpoint. “Before I knew it, I just had someone grabbing me from behind and I had a gun to my head,” Korra said in an interview with WFAA-TV. “They raped me one at a time, two at a time, three at a time.”

Korra was stripped naked, blindfolded with duct tape and, after being brutally assaulted for more than a hour, was dumped by the side of the road. Korra survived to write a book about her ordeal, but you have never heard of her until now. Why?

Left to right: Arturo Arevalo, Alfonso Zuniga, Luis Zuniga.

The three men who kidnapped and raped Monika Korra — Arturo Arevalo, 29, Alfonso Armendariz Zuniga, 29, and Luis Fernando Zuniga, 27 — were not college students. All three are Mexican citizens, and all of them were believed to be in the U.S. illegally. Arevalo had been deported to Mexico after being arrested on a theft charge in 2001. Arevelo is related by marriage to the other two perpetrators, who are cousins. All three men were arrested within days of their crime (one of them was caught with Korra’s stolen cellphone) and Korra testified at the trials of both Arturo Arevalo and Alfonso Zuniga, who received life sentences, while Luis Zuniga pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Unless you live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, you probably never heard of this crime, and no feminist will ever mention it, because feminists do not care about college girls who are gang-raped at gunpoint by illegal immigrants. No, the only reason feminists pretend to care about female students being raped is because the phony “campus rape epidemic” provides a pretext for demonizing male college students, a justification for “activism” that (not coincidentally) gives feminists more money and political influence. Whatever else feminism is, it is always a cynical hustle, a scam perpetrated by selfish women who will tell whatever lies are necessary to enhance their own lucrative careers, and who will ignore any facts that do not serve their purpose.





 

Category: Sex Trouble
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