The Other McCain

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

Rule 5 Sunday: Hot Times In Houston

Posted on | May 31, 2015 | 11 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

It’s hot and wet here in Baytown, but not in a good way, so the best thing to do is stay inside in the air conditioning, work on beating back the ever-rising wave of spam, and in the fullness of time, whip out our weekly tribute to the beauty of the female form. This week’s appetizer is Andrea of the Houston Texans.

Check out those Texas elbows!

As usual, exercise discretion in your clicking, since some or all of the following links may be to pictures normally considered NSFW. You is been warned.

Randy’s Roundtable returns to kick this week off with Hanna Davis, followed by Goodstuff and Natalie “that smirking whore from Highgarden” Dormer. Ninety Miles from Tyranny is up next with Hot Pick of the Late Night, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns; Animal Magnetism wraps up the first round with Rule 5 Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL’s herd of heifers this week includes Game of Thrones “The Gift”, Elizabeth Banks, and The Clinton Crime Family.

A View from the Beach serves up Audrina Patridge – Long Lived Queen of the Hills, Old Fuddy Duddy Thinks Modern Singers are Sluts, “Oh My God”, Model Cries Wolf, “Standing in My Shoes”, and The Naked News.

Meanwhile, at Soylent Siberia, it’s your morning coffee creamer, Monday Motivationer Apres Ski, Tuesday Titillation Auburn Awesome, Humpday Hawtness Country Girl, Fursday Infatuation, Corset Morsels, T-GIF Friday – Lunchtime Lesbians for Leonard, Overnighty Harry Palmer, Weekender Garden Of Earthly Delights, and Bath Night – Got Snooch?

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Abigail Ratchford, his Vintage Babe is Diana Dors, and Sex in Advertising is covered this week by Versace. At Dustbury, it’s Pam Grier and Idina Menzel.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox for next week’s Rule 5 roundup is midnight on Saturday, June 6.

Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop

Category: Rule 5

The Feminist-Industrial Complex: Fat Lesbians vs. the ‘Heteronormative Gaze’

Posted on | May 31, 2015 | 138 Comments

Does the “fat acceptance” movement “destabilize the heteronormative gaze”? Can women overcome “gender inequality” by a “radical rejection of beauty as feminine aspiration”? Those possibilities are suggested by two Canadian sociologists in an article, included in a leading Women’s Studies textbook, that compared Dove’s “Real Beauty” advertising campaign to a protest by lesbian activists in Toronto.

Feminist Frontiers is a Women’s Studies textbook described by its publisher, McGraw-Hill, as the “most widely used anthology of feminist writings.,” Now in its ninth edition, Feminist Frontiers is edited by three lesbians: Professor Verta Taylor and Professor Leila Rupp, on the faculty of the University of California-Santa Barbara (where they are known as “the professors of lesbian love”), and Smith College Professor Nancy Whittier (whose wife Kate Weigand is the author of Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation).

Because this textbook is so influential in academia, I obtained a copy of Feminist Frontiers via Amazon.com for my research in the “Sex Trouble” series on radical feminism. As I explain in the introduction to the first edition of Sex Trouble:

Those who would attempt to separate “mainstream” feminism from the more radical aspects of its ideology cannot avoid the problem that the faculty and curricula of university Women’s Studies programs — where feminism wields the authority of an official philosophy — are disproportionately dominated by radical lesbians. This hegemonic influence is not merely manifested in the fact that outspoken lesbian activists are employed as directors and professors in Women’s Studies programs everywhere, but also plainly evident in the textbooks and readings assigned in their classrooms.

It should be noted that, according to federal research, 2.3% of the U.S. population (about 1-in-40 American adults) is either gay or bisexual. Yet lesbianism is vastly overrepresented in the faculty and curricula of Women’s Studies programs to such an extent that Carmen Rios, communications director of the Feminist Majority Foundation, jocularly described these departments as “Lesbo Recruitment 101.” This anti-heterosexual bias is reflected in the contents of Feminist Frontiers, which includes selections with titles like “Hetero-Romantic Love and Heterosexiness in Children’s G-Rated Films” (p. 153), “Doing Gender, Doing Heteronormativity: ‘Gender Normals,’ Transgender People, and the Social Maintenance of Heterosexuality” (p.  309) and “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” (p. 536). Among the lesbian feminist authors cited as references by the contributors are Mary Daly, Sheila Jeffreys, Andrea Dworkin, Celia Kitzinger, Adrienne Rich, Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Marilyn Frye, Gayle Rubin, Audre Lorde and Arlene Stein.

The anti-heterosexual bias of Feminist Frontiers is also apparent in “Feminist Consumerism and Fat Activists: A Comparative Study of Grassroots Activism and the Dove Real Beauty Campaign,” by University of Toronto professors Josée Johnston and Judith Taylor (p. 115). This article, first presented at a 2006 meeting of the American Sociological Association and later published in the feminist journal Signs, invokes the theories of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci as the basis of its analysis:

Building on neo-Gramscian theories of hegemony, we argue that ideologies express degrees of hegemony depending on their ability to reinforce and naturalize power hierarchies and material inequality.

Feminists have frequently used Marxist theory to analyze the “male supremacy” they depict as an “ideology” that oppresses women in capitalist societies. In their article, Johnston and Taylor compare the “transformative possibilities” of Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign to a protest movement by the Toronto lesbian group Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off (PPPO). Co-founded by in 1996 by Allyson Mitchell (who is now an assistant professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Toronto’s York University), PPPO staged protests promoting the message that “being fat can mean being healthy, sexy and socially productive” and counteracting “fat phobia,” as a 2004 article described the group. According to Johnston and Taylor, PPO’s objectives were to “challenge hegemonic beauty standards” and “challenge misogynist attitudes about fat women and sexuality,” in protests that offered “a counter-hegemonic critique of beauty and its relationship to capitalist consumerism” (pp. 116-117). They compare these protests to Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign:

Billboard, television, and magazine ads depicted women who were wrinkled, freckled, pregnant, had stretch marks, or might be seen as fat (at least compared with the average media representation of women). . . . The campaign . . .is now a major feature of Dove’s global marketing. (p. 116)

Because the “Real Beauty” ad campaign “promotes itself as a progressive force for women,” Johnston and Taylor interpret Dove’s marketing as “feminist consumerism,” a phenomenon with “the potential to partially disrupt gender norms” (p. 116). Johnston and Taylor contrast this to the “grassroots models for social change . . . at the heart of feminist consciousness-raising,” as exemplified by the PPPO protests:

The idea arose from a 1996 conversation between Allyson Mitchell and Ruby Rowan, both of whom were artists and women’s studies students. While attending a conference on subcultures, they lamented the absence of attention to lesbian feminists active in the queer arts scene. . . . The conversation turned to mundane matters; not being able to find cool pants that fit. . . .
Characterizing participants as a “dyke network” of artists, performers, feminists, friends, and exes, Mitchell says the event solidified their identities as fat activists . . . (pp. 118-119)
In addition, PPPO’s radical disruption of hegemonic beauty ideology worked to destabilize the heteronormative gaze. Strongly linked to a lesbian arts community, PPPO activists did not prioritize the approval of men socially or performatively, and this may have allowed a more radical rejection of beauty as feminine aspiration. (p. 123)

Comparing these protests to the “corporate strategy” behind “Dove’s appropriation of feminist themes,” Johnston and Taylor write that Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off “waged war with hegemonic beauty standards — actions far removed from Dove’s reformist peacemaking” (p. 123). Although the Dove campaign “partially disrupts the narrowness of Western contemporary beauty codes,” Johnston and Taylor conclude, “at the same time it systematically reproduces and legitimizes the hegemony of beauty ideology in women’s personal lives” (p. 125).

Hostility to “beauty ideology” has been a core theme of feminism since the emergence of the Women’s Liberation movement in the 1960s. Its first major  protest occurred in September 1968, when about 100 feminists staged a demonstration at the Miss American pageant, condemning how the contestants “epitomize the roles we are all forced to play as women.” The protesters claimed “women in our society [are] forced daily to compete for male approval, enslaved by ludicrous ‘beauty’ standards we ourselves are conditioned to take seriously.”

Lesbianism also emerged early as a core theme of the Women’s Liberation movement. In 1971, prominent feminist Charlotte Bunch was co-founder of a D.C.-based lesbian collective known as The Furies. In  the collective’s first publication (January 1972), Ginny Berson declared:

We are angry because we are oppressed by male supremacy. We have been f–ked over all our lives by a system which is based on the domination of men over women. . . .
Lesbianism is not a matter of sexual preference, but rather one of political choice which every woman must make if she is to become woman-identified and thereby end male supremacy.

Radical lesbians played key roles in founding Women’s Studies programs at many universities. Professor Bonnie Zimmerman, for example, was a founding member of the Women’s Studies College at SUNY Buffalo in 1970, and later helped begin the Women’s Studies program at San Diego State University. In a 1997 essay, Professor Zimmerman wrote: “I believe it can be shown that, historically, lesbianism and feminism have been coterminous if not identical social phenomena.”

 

So-called “fat-positive feminism” is a movement that “addresses how misogyny and sexism intersect with sizism and anti-fat bias.” While feminists blame “anti-fat bias” on male supremacy, the health risks of obesity are serious, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): “Obesity is a national epidemic and a major contributor to some of the leading causes of death in the U.S., including heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some types of cancer.”

Obesity is such a serious problem among lesbians that the National Institutes for Health funded a $3 million study to determine why “nearly three-quarters of lesbians are overweight or obese.”

When that study made headlines in September 2014, Mari Brighe wrote at the lesbian blog Autostraddle that lesbians “tend to be less critical of their bodies than straight women,” because they don’t “suffer the incessant, unreasonable pressure of the male gaze.”

This would suggest that “the male gaze” is actually beneficial to heterosexual women, whose “feminine aspiration” to be attractive to men by meeting “hegemonic beauty standards” (as the Johnston/Taylor article put it) leads women to stay thin and thereby avoid heart disease, diabetes and other health complications of obesity. But the way women benefit from heterosexuality isn’t something college students are likely to learn from Women’s Studies classes, where the textbooks are edited by lesbians who never have anything good to say about men.





 

Category: Education, Feminism, Sex Trouble

Welcome To Texas! Hope You’re Hungry

Posted on | May 30, 2015 | 34 Comments

— by Wombat-socho


It’s been almost a year since my recon mission to Las Vegas, during which I reported on In-N-Out Burger and the Heart Attack Grill, and now that I am halfway back to Vegas it’s time for another post on hamburgers.


First, I am happy to report that Krystal continues to be the burger joint White Castle wants to be when it grows up. In addition to the “steamer” burgers and fried chicken sandwiches served on dinner rolls, Krystal also has corn dogs and chili dogs, both of which are decent. Ambience and price are much like McDonald’s, so if price is a concern Krystal is a very viable alternative to the Golden Arches.


Next up is Whataburger, justly celebrated in the comments to the previous burger post. So far I’ve had several of the burgers at a couple of different locations, and except for a tendency to go overboard with the mustard, they are darn tasty, doubly so with avocado. Onion rings likewise live up to the reputation. I have not had either the chicken sandwiches or the breakfast menu, but those aren’t really relevant to our topic; besides, I have a hard time believing anyone’s chicken sandwiches can meet the standard set by Chick-Fil-A.


Then there’s Jack In The Box, which disappeared from the DC area back in the early 1970s when I was in junior high school. The current version’s menu is a weird mix of burgers, chicken sandwiches, tacos, teriyaki chicken bowls, and grilled sandwiches. As you might expect from such a wildly varied menu, the quality isn’t great, but it’s a cut above Burger King and McDonald’s; as for the tacos, whether they are better or worse than Taco Bell’s is a matter of taste. They’re certainly cheaper.


Category: Bacon, Texas

FMJRA 2.0: Water Pump Fails In Houston, Film At 11

Posted on | May 30, 2015 | 15 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thanks to an untimely failure of the water pump on my 1996 Jeep Cherokee, I am holed up in Baytown (a suburb of Houston) for a few days while the local Jeep dealer does the needful. There will be a burger post and a book post this weekend in addition to the usual FMJRA and Rule 5 Sunday posts, because there’s nothing on TV and I have to keep busy somehow. That having been said, here’s the week’s linkagery.

A Moby in the ‘Manosphere’?
Batshit Crazy News
Dalrock
Dark Brightness
Freedom’s Floodgates
Classical Values
A View from the Beach

Rule 5 Sunday: The Road To Sin City
Batshit Crazy News
Regular Right Guy
Proof Positive
A View from the Beach
Ninety Miles from Tyranny

N.C. Schools Employ Radical Lesbian Who Called Marriage ‘Slavery’ for Women
Living In Anglo-America
The Pirate’s Cove
Regular Right Guy
Batshit Crazy News
A View from the Beach

Credit Where Credit Is Due
Law of Markets
Dustbury
First Street Journal

FMJRA 2.0: Meanwhile at Balticon…
BlurBrain
The Pirate’s Cove
Batshit Crazy News
Regular Right Guy

Who Is ‘Silencing’ Whom?
Batshit Crazy News
SpangNation
Living In Anglo-America
A View from the Beach

Rape Culture Update
Regular Right Guy
Batshit Crazy News
A View from the Beach

The Dictatorship of Godless Perverts
Batshit Crazy News
Regular Right Guy
Living In Anglo-America
A View from the Beach

The Naïvietê of a ‘Skeptic’
Regular Right Guy
SpangNation
The Lonely Conservative

More From Feminist Tumblr
Batshit Crazy News
Living In Anglo-America

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge
Batshit Crazy News

Top linkers this week:

  1.  Batshit Crazy News (9)
  2.  (tied) Regular Right Guy and A View from the Beach (6)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!

Category: FMJRA Award

Still More Feminist Tumblr

Posted on | May 30, 2015 | 168 Comments

Is every teenage girl with a Tumblr blog mentally ill? “Rebekah, 19, Bi/Pan/Queer . . . abusive father . . . self harm . . . anxiety and depression” has deep thoughts:

“So much f–king heteronormativity in this house”

Let’s see, what else? Her mother is a racist, and Rebekah frequently applies the word “pathetic” to herself, e.g.:

“I always feel so pathetic because I would literally love to hang out with anyone whether they’re friends from Pacific or friends from high school (that I haven’t spoken to in two years) because I’m bored and sad and lonely, but I don’t think anyone wants to hang out with me and no one ever has.”

“I missed out on what were probably my only chances to hang out with people this summer because who would want to hang out with me?? No one, that’s who. I’m pathetic and no fun and people are only ever friends with me out of the convenience. They’re only friends with me because they see me every day at school and it would be more effort not to be friends with me.”

What a lively bundle of cheerful optimism!

The thing about Tumblr feminists — as with all feminists, really — is their bedrock conviction that men know nothing. All men are bad and wrong and stupid, the feminist believes, and the only things men ever do are (a) enjoy male privilege and (b) oppress women.

Fortunately, the suffering victims of oppression have Tumblr, where they can advertise to the world how pathetic they are, and how racist/heteronormative their mom is, etc., etc.

When I call attention to these pathetic creatures, I’m sometimes accused of an intent to “bully” or “harass” them. Because this is the definition of “harassment” in 2015: Quoting what people publish on their blogs.

All I did was search Tumblr for “heteronormativity,” see?

Strange people you can find, if you know how to find them.

Would I like to help these crazy people? Sure, but feminism by its nature means that nothing I say is valid, all my ideas are wrong, and no advice I might offer would be helpful. The young feminist must only ever listen to what her fellow feminists tell her, because everybody else is evil in this world full of heteronormativity, misogyny and, of course, racism.

They have been catechized, as it were, into this belief system. When you see a teenager slinging around jargon like “heteronormativity,” you know this isn’t something they just picked up at random. Eight syllables? How many teenagers do you know who routinely use eight-syllable words? No, “heteronormativity” is a word that is being taught to these kids, and the obvious question is, why? Think about it. If you know any actual 19-year-olds, you are aware that very many of them are almost completely ignorant of the classics, the Bible, Shakespeare, history, literature. How many college sophomores know any Latin? How many of them could tell you anything about, say, the Boer War or the Battle of Midway? Yet amid this vast ocean of ignorance . . . heteronormativity!

When I first encountered this bit of feminist gender theory jargon a couple of years ago and quoted it in a blog post, everybody laughed. “Heteronormativity? WTF? ROTFLMAO!” Yet gender theory is to 2015 what disco was to 1977 — it’s the hot new sensation that’s sweeping the nation. Gender theory is now hotter than John Travolta and the BeeGees were when Saturday Night Fever topped the charts.

Like I keep saying: People need to wake the hell up.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers!

Click here to see more of the “Sex Trouble” series.





 

Category: Sex Trouble

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | May 29, 2015 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

thump thump
Four teenage boys were poised to sneak into the old house.
Thump Thump
They were armed with smartphones to take pictures all the way up to the top floor.
THUMP THUMP
After their triumphal return, they planned to return the next weekend with girls, and Freddy claimed he knew how to get ahold of a bottle of whiskey. But first they had to prove that it was safe.
THUMP THUMP!
A hell-hound the size of a small delivery truck roared through the paralyzed boys, creating a momentary cloud of blood and limbs.
“Good Scooby!” said Mr. Wickles.

via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction

More From Feminist Tumblr

Posted on | May 28, 2015 | 86 Comments

Autumn is a 24-year-old cisgender queer Muslim, who posted this:

“Hands up if large groups of aggressively loud
white boys in your vicinity freak you out.”

To which spyderqueen (“mental health stuff, feminist rantings”) added:

“One of the things that bonds women, POC, and LGBTQA+ together: The fear of white men in numbers.”

That comment got more than 300,000 likes and reblogs in nine months. This is what feminism is really about: The promotion of completely irrational (but politically useful) fear.

My advice to “white boys” is: Always travel in large groups and be aggressively loud, because it makes feminists freak out.

 

Category: Feminism

Rape Culture Update

Posted on | May 28, 2015 | 11 Comments

Guarantee no feminist will take notice of this story:

A Centreville man has been charged with breaking into a home and inappropriately touching a 6-year-old girl who was sleeping girl inside, Fairfax County police said.
Josue Felipe Velasco Santiago, 19, of the 14000 block of Golden Oak Road was arrested May 27 following the incident that occurred in a home nearby at Rustling Leaves Lane and Golden Oak Road, police said.
Three children, ages 14, 8 and 6, were sleeping alone in the home about 3:30 a.m. when an intruder entered the home through a window, touched the 6-year-old girl inappropriately and then fled back out the window, police said.

Josue Felipe Velasco Santiago is neither a University of Virginia fraternity member nor a Duggar, so feminists don’t care.

 

Category: Crime
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