The Other McCain

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

Illegal Alien Hermes Rivera Charged With Raping 10-Year-Old Louisiana Girl

Posted on | May 3, 2015 | 16 Comments

Did Obama’s executive order amnesty make this crime possible?

A man living in Kenner has been charged with three counts of aggravated rape against a 10-year-old girl after the victim was seen in a video claiming they “made love,” police said.
The mother of the girl found the cell phone video on Thursday, April 16, 2015. It was recorded by her daughter. On it, the victim alleged that she and her mother’s boyfriend had “made love” three times.
After confronting her daughter, police said the 10-year-old victim told her mother it happened in their bedroom.
25-year-old Hermes Rivera admitted to police that he had sex with the victim three times between March and April 3, 2015.
Rivera remains in custody. At the writing of this report, no bond had been set.
Police said Rivera is an undocumented immigrant.

(Hat-tip: @exposeliberals on Twitter.) In her 2002 book Invasion, Michelle Malkin called attention to the fact that our broken immigration system means America is importing criminals (and terrorists) from all over the world. Those warnings have gone unheeded by the political elite in both parties, and advocates of multiculturalism wish us to ignore the kind of “culture” immigrants are bringing with them:

The legal age of heterosexual consent in Mexico is 12. . . .
Mexican men have a reputation for leering and worse at little girls, which shouldn`t surprise us, since sex with children is socially acceptable in Mexico. Fifteen-year-old girls have a ceremony called a Quinceañera which announces their availability to become wives, mothers and girlfriends. In America, children of that age are expected to complete three more years of high school, to be followed hopefully by a college education. But in Mexico, young girls are considered available, according to law and custom.
A 2005 news report from North Carolina found that “Culture might be factor in sexual abuse” . . . referring to Hispanic men`s propensity to prey upon little girls. . . .
An example: Mexican Diego Lopez-Mendez pleaded guilty to sexual assault on a 10-year-old girl in West Virginia, with a not-uncommon excuse that child sex is normal among his people.
“In the pueblo where I grew up girls are usually married by 13 years old. … I was unaware of the nature of the offense or that it was a bad crime”, said Lopez through the translator. . . .

You can read the rest of that 2007 report at VDare.com, which has been condemned as a “hate” site simply because they report facts and analyze news about immigration without a liberal bias. We live in an age where truth is “hate” and the news media are part of a dishonest partisan propaganda campaign to promote policies that amount to importing criminals and Democrat voters — but I repeat myself.





 

Category: Crime, Immigration, Louisiana

Demetrius Blackwell, 35, Charged in Shooting of NYPD Officer Brian Moore

Posted on | May 3, 2015 | 45 Comments

New York Daily News:

A plainclothes city cop was shot in the face in Queens Saturday when the ex-con cousin of a former New York Giant opened fire into his unmarked patrol car, authorities said.
Officer Brian Moore and his partner were driving through Queens Village when they spotted the suspect “adjusting an object in his waistband” near the corner of 212th St. and 104th Road about 6:15 p.m, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said.
The officers pulled up behind the suspicious man — identified as Demetrius Blackwell, the younger cousin of former Giants cornerback Kory Blackwell — and tried to question him.
Without warning, Blackwell whipped out a gun and squeezed off at least two rounds into Moore’s car, Bratton said.
“He immediately opened fire on them before they had time to get out of the vehicle,” Bratton said at a solemn Saturday night press conference. . . .
Moore’s father and uncle are both retired NYPD sergeants.
One of Moore’s Massapequa neighbors, who said she has known the wounded cop his entire life, described him as “an all-around good kid.”
“My daughter went to the prom with him,” said Joan Olton, 56. . . .
Blackwell, who occasionally stayed with relatives in the area, fled the scene after the shooting — but was captured 90 minutes later inside a neighbor’s house. . . .
Blackwell has nine prior arrests — including two separate assaults on police officers, sources said.

JVW at Patterico adds:

Officer Moore is the fifth member of the NYPD to be shot in the past five months. Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were ambushed and shot dead in Brooklyn by a Baltimore man this past December, and Officers Andrew Dossi and Aliro Pellerano were wounded while responding to a January grocery store robbery in the Bronx.

(Via Memeorandum.) Coverage of the Baltimore riots over a man who died in custody has created the false impression that police brutality is routine. However, in a nation of 300 million people, it is a simple trick to pick some phenomenon you want to criticize and then say, “Look, here is a Example A, and there is Example B and, oh, look! Now we have Example C — it’s an epidemic!”

The phenomenon in question (for example, lesbian school teachers molesting teenage girls) may actually be quite rare, but in a nation of 300 million people, you can find a dozen examples of relatively rare phenomena every year. The campus “rape epidemic” hysteria has been manufactured by feminists (and their media allies) using this method. Here is a video about the real frequency of “police brutality”:

Which is more common: Police brutality, college fraternity gang rapes, or lesbian teachers molesting teenage girls? None of these phenomena are really “common,” but there are activists, politicians and media with an agenda to promote the false perception that some phenomena are symbolic of social injustice. Certain incidents are emphasized to create the impression of a “trend” when there is not really a trend at all.





 

Category: Crime, Media Bias, New York, Racism

Rape Culture Means: Guys, Do Not Have Sex With Jordan Bosiljevac (Updated)

Posted on | May 2, 2015 | 147 Comments

Jordan Bosiljevac is a deeply confused sophomore at Claremont McKenna College (annual tuition $47,395) and, like every other college girl, she’s got an opinion about rape culture:

Why Yes Can Mean No
It started with “consent is sexy.” But, of course, there was no point in that—it was like saying rape is just bad sex, instead of a felony. Then there was “consent is mandatory.” It was much better, reminding us that sex is consensual, and everything else is rape. But then there was me, after a party, in a man’s dorm room. And there was “is this ok?” If we are being legal about this, I said ‘yes’ — no coercion, no imminent threat of violence, no inebriation (well, not a lot, anyway). But what I want to talk about is what happened before I said yes, who taught me to say yes, why I thought it was better to say yes, and why I really meant ‘no.’ . . .

(Pause, dear reader, to imagine yourself in the position of the male Claremont McKenna College student who is the other half of this story. You hooked up with Jordan Bosiljevac after a party, and now she’s going to tell everyone who reads the student newspaper why, in fact, she really didn’t want to hook up with you.)

Depending on who you are, it might sound ridiculous: why would anyone ever say yes when they meant no? Honesty is important to any relationship — sexual or otherwise. Besides, the legal definition of rape in the State of California states “rape is an act of sexual intercourse when a person is incapable of” . . .
Honestly, there’s a lot more to it than that for me. At five, relatives used to kiss my cheeks even as I winced and turned away. At the tender age of twelve, I was taught that my bra straps and thighs deserved detention because they distracted boys at school. At sixteen, my boyfriend assured me that most girls liked this — I just needed to relax. So at 20, in someone’s room after a party, ‘no’ was scary and unfamiliar to me. These incidents, unfortunately, are not unique to me. In discussing this experience with friends, we coined the term “raped by rape culture” to describe what it was like to say yes, coerced by the culture that had raised us and the systems of power that worked on us, and to still want ‘no.’ Sometimes, for me, there was obligation from already having gone back to someone’s room, not wanting to ruin a good friendship, loneliness, worry that no one else would ever be interested, a fear that if I did say no, they might not stop, the influence of alcohol, and an understanding that hookups are “supposed” to be fun.

She was “coerced by the culture” and oppressed by “the systems of power,” you see. That dude she hooked up with after the party might have thought she was consenting to have sex with him when, in fact, he was “culture” and raped her. Or something like that.

The idea that women are “coerced by culture” into having sex with men is, of course, consistent with feminist Professor Marilyn Frye’s assertion that “most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.” In other words, women do not actually want to have sex with men. Instead, because female “subordination is the basis of male power,” as Professor Charlotte Bunch explained, heterosexuality for women means “submission to personal oppression.” Having sex with men, feminist theory teaches, is part of the “socialized behavior instruction” of “the unnatural, yet universal roles patriarchy has assigned” to women. As lesbian feminist Adrienne Rich explained, “male power manifests itself . . . as enforcing heterosexuality on women,” so that “for women heterosexuality” is “imposed . . . and maintained by force.”

Whether or not Jordan Bosiljevac has learned any of that Advanced Feminist Logic™ at Claremont McKenna College, she clearly has grasped the core feminist doctrine that her entire life has been a traumatic experience of oppression. “Feminist consciousness is consciousness of victimization . . . to come to see oneself as a victim,” as Professor Sandra Lee Bartky has explained. Women’s oppression under patriarchy is so pervasive, according to feminist theory, that women cannot be sure that their ideas, beliefs and emotions are their own. Instead, feminism teaches women that they have been indoctrinated by a system of male supremacy, brainwashed into believing that having sex with men is “natural.” Feminist “rape culture” discourse is not about protecting women from rape; it’s about convincing them that any sexual activity with men can be considered rape, because how can any female (being a victim of male oppression) be able to freely “consent” to sex with her oppressor? This seems to be what Jordan Bosiljevac is trying to tell us:

For me, and many others like me, consent isn’t easy. Yes doesn’t always mean yes, and we misplaced ‘no’ several years ago. This experience isn’t random, but disproportionately affects oppressed communities. Consent is a privilege, and it was built for wealthy, heterosexual, cis, white, western, able-bodied masculinity. . . .
When you’re poor, disabled, queer, non-white, trans, or feminine, ‘no’ isn’t for you. . . . for me, finding ‘no’ is a process, consent is elusive, and sometimes, even when people don’t mean to — they hurt me.

Translation: Guys, do not have sex with Jordan Bosiljevac, ever.

She cannot authentically say “yes,” because “consent is elusive” and, while she is willing to stipulate consent as a hypothetical possibility, any male who would even think about having sex with Jordan Bosiljevac is as crazy as she is.

UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter who pointed out that, in another article at the Claremont McKenna Forum, Jordan Bosiljevac labels herself “a brown woman of gay parents,” and describes “third grade me, starting elementary school with more wealthy white children than I’d ever seen in my whole life”:

On the first day I entered this alien planet via my mothers’ red van — yes, that’s two moms that both came to drop me off. As if gay moms in an old, unfashionable van weren’t enough, I was one of a few children of color at my school. I had no friends, a lot of whispers about my strange family situation, and sudden regret for all the time I’d spent outside that past summer. Basically, I felt like a mess.

Well, “the personal is the political,” as Women’s Liberation pioneer Carol Hanisch famously proclaimed, and this sort of identity-based narrative approach to politics — i.e., offering one’s personal biography as the justification of a radical ideology — has multiple consequences. Forming any kind of coherent movement becomes difficult because everyone has an unlimited psychological investment in the movement, and must fight to make the movement reflective of their own identity. This was the history of Women’s Liberation in a nutshell, familiar to anyone who has read Alice Echols’ Daring to Be Bad or Susan Brownmiller’s In Our Time.

From its beginning amid the radical New Left of the 1960s, the modern feminist movement was crippled by its tendency to attract fanatical ax-grinders who were using politics as a means of addressing their own narrow personal grievances against men, against Judeo-Christian morality, against society in general. The undeniable fact that many of the leading activists in the Women’s Liberation movement were lesbians should have been a warning to any woman who joined the movement in expectation of advancing a reform agenda aimed at the everyday concerns of the typical woman’s life. When it became apparent that some of the movement’s most vocal spokeswomen (including both Kate Millett and Shulamith Firestone) were quite literally psychotic, this should have prompted other feminists to reconsider their own basic principles.

Here we are, then, in the 21st century and the 20-year-old daughter of a lesbian couple finds that her search for happiness is fraught with perils and disappointments she can only analyze through a feminist lens. She has no other frame of reference and yet, as I have said, if feminism is the cause of your problem, the solution to your problem is not “more feminism.” This puts someone like Jordan Bosiljevac into a painful dilemma, for if she were somehow to re-examine her principles and discover traditionalism, she would be compelled to reject her own “family values.” Therefore it is much more likely that she will instead double-down on feminism, embracing an even more radical hostility to human nature.

This kind of reaction to feminism’s failure is exactly what we are witnessing everywhere now. A new book, Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism, edited by a pair of Australian feminists, collects essays advocating a renewed radicalism. The titles of these essays reveal a totalitarian suspicion of personal liberty (e.g., “Entitled to Be Free: Exposing the Limits of Choice”), a sense of a radical indignation (e.g., “The Illusion of Progress: A Betrayal of Women from Both Ends of the Political Spectrum”), and an underlying anti-heterosexual hostility toward men (e.g., “The Oppression That Dare Not Speak Its Name? Silences Around Heterosexuality in Contemporary Feminism”). These attitudes are surprising only to those who have not studied feminist gender theory and the history of the movement. (My book Sex Trouble provides a helpful introduction.) Ultimately, the movement aims to bring about the destruction of civilization as we know it, annihilating the traditional married family as a normative institution, and bringing about an “equality” of the sexes by the imposition of androgyny, i.e., “the abolition of gender.” If anyone asks where “the pursuit of happiness” fits into this radical vision, the answer is that feminists consider “happiness” a myth, a social construct of the heteronormative patriarchy.

BTW, as of May 5, it’s National Offend a Feminist Week. You can celebrate by being as happy as possible. Feminists hate happiness.




 

Category: National Offend a Feminist Week, Sex Trouble

Magic And Other Enormities

Posted on | May 1, 2015 | 19 Comments

— by Wombat-socho


Now that the tax season is over, and all I need to work on is getting rid of dirtiness and mess (mind you keep your storage locker and yourself just so) before the move to Las Vegas later this month, I actually have the time and inclination to get some reading done. In fact, it’s going to be a real effort to keep from blowing gas money on books for the Kindle…fortunately, there’s always the county library.

Which is where I picked up the latest installment of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files urban fantasy series, Skin Game. I particularly wanted to get hold of this since Marko Kloos pulled his novel Lines of Departure off the ballot, and none of the other nominees (except maybe for Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem) look that interesting. Anyway, the latest adventure of Harry Dresden involves him getting a job from Mab, the Faerie Queen – a job that forces him to work with a deadly former enemy and shows every likelihood of bringing Harry’s career to an untimely and painful end. Previous Dresden Files novels struck me as okay brain candy but nothing special, but this one…yeah, this one is definitely Hugo-caliber writing, and unless Liu’s novel lives up to the hype, it’ll wind up getting my nod for Best Novel.

Also from the county library, Niven and Benford’s Shipstar, which concludes the story begun in Bowl of Heaven*, where a human starship intended to explore and colonize an alien world runs into a gigantic structure that uses a captive star for light, heat and propulsion. The aviform aliens in charge seem determined to add the humans to their collection of subject races, but of course the monkey boys and girls have other ideas – and as things develop, the Big Birds may not be at the top of the chain of command after all. Lots of interesting ideas to chew on, interesting characters, and a plot that keeps trucking along nicely. Recommended.

Speaking of Marko Kloos as we were earlier, his third novel Angles of Attack is out, and while it ties up a lot of loose ends from Lines of Departure and the sidestory Measures of Absolution, there were parts of it that left me feeling that it wasn’t quite up to the expectations set by the first two novels. Among those were the gratuitous suicidal destruction of the [redacted], the gay husband of the Russian combat controller who’s partnered with our hero for about half the book**, and a rather sizable plot hole involving elements of the NAC fleet. You’ll know that one when it comes by. Anyway, it’s an okay story, but somewhat of a letdown after Lines of Departure. Good thing I was able to borrow it from the Amazon Prime Lending Library.

Last, another fantasy, one which looks like it’s going to be wandering into the same gritty territory as the Dresden Files, even though it’s set in L. Frank Baum’s Land of Oz. I am speaking, of course, of Ryk Spoor’s Polychrome, which some reviewers have compared to William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, from which they made this movie you might have heard of. 🙂 I’ll be honest, I wasn’t that impressed with Spoor’s Grand Central Arena, but this is looking very good in the early going. I’ll follow up next week and let you know if I think it lives up to the promise.


Oh, yes – voting for the Hugo Awards is underway. Read widely, choose wisely.



*Currently available on the Kindle for $3.99.
**Look, Russians aren’t down with the whole gay equality deal, and I don’t see that changing in the next century. Certainly nothing in Kloos’ sparse backstory on the SRA gives any indication that this is the case; this just gets dropped on you out of left field, and as somebody who’s spent entirely too much of his life wrapped up in what Russians think and how their culture works, it hit the floor with a resounding THUD and broke the suspension on my disbelief.


Category: Books

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | May 1, 2015 | 17 Comments

by Smitty


“Over Macho Grande?” we challenge the trenchcoated figure with the fake cigarette.

“No. I don’t think I’ll ever get over Macho Grande.”

“We lost the dearest and best that day,” goes this week’s passphrase.

Nods. Leads us deeper into Baltimore’s maze of alleys, still riot-torn decades on. Hillary’s Faith Fairness Act, taxing churches, superficially destroyed them a dozen years back. Christianity goes underground. Again.

Hence our trek through darkness seeking the Light. Christianity’s not officially illegal, but dare publicly challenge current moral ambiguity. Paganism? Bring it. Baby.

He gets us in.

“For God so loved the world…” intones the pastor.

via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction, Uncategorized

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.01.15

Posted on | May 1, 2015 | 9 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


It’s May Day. Don’t forget to wear your blue shirts. 😉


TOP NEWS
Nepal Earthquake Toll Tops 6100

Rescue workers in Katmandu

$2 billion needed for reconstruction
Roads to Gorkha district could be reopened today
A moment of joy as two rescued five days after the quake



Scant Details On Gray Death As Protests Continue
“Many…finding it hard to be patient”

Sanders Takes On “Billionaire Class” In Launching Presidential Bid
Stark contrast with Hillary Clinton



POLITICS
Blacks, Hispanics Reject Obama Climate Change Agenda

“But…but…global warming! I mean climate change!”

Minority leaders warn stiff carbon emissions regs will stifle minority opportunities


Obama Chooses Chicago For His Presidential Library

DHS Deputy Secretary Doesn’t Remember Democrats Seeking Visa Favors, Just Republicans

Port Of Los Angeles Police Chief Indicted For Corruption

IRS Still Targeting TEA Party Groups



Dems Introduce Bill Calling For $12 Minimum Wage

Is NSA Snooping Program On Last Legs?



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Crude Futures Steady After Biggest Rise In Six Years: WTI $59.67, Brent $66.69
Tesla Expands From Electric Cars To Batteries For Home, Business
Exxon Q1 Profit Down 46%
Asia Shares Waver In Wall Street’s Shadow
Social Media Stocks Pounded As Earnings Projections Missed
DreamWorks Animation Losses Deepen Even As Revenue Increases
Microsoft Reveals New Web Browser Edge
Apple, IBM Partner With Japan Post To Improve Elder Care
Qualcomm: Nothing Wrong With Snapdragon 810 Chip
Samsung Galaxy S6 Beats Apple iPhone 6
The Era Of Japan’s All-Powerful Videogame Designers Is Over



SPORTS
Capitals Stun Rangers At The Buzzer

Ward scores the winning goal with just one second left in the third period

Washington wins 2-1, takes Game 1
Ducks snuff Flames 6-1

Royals Rout Tigers 8-1

Bulls Clobber Bucks 120-66 To Advance

Astros Edge M’s 3-2 In Extras

Clippers Stun Spurs, Force Game 7

Twins Pound Pale Hose 12-2

Florida’s Billy Donovan Will Coach OKC Thunder

Tribe Falls 5-1 To Blue Jays

Nats End Mets’ Perfect Home Record With 8-2 Thumping



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
The Show Won’t Go On

Doctors advise a couple days off

Injured ankle during Wednesday’s show forces postponements


“Goodfellas” Stars Fondly Remember Late Cast Member

Rosie O’Donnell’s Wife: Rosie’s Wine And Weed Habits Make Parenting Too Dangerous

Courtney Stodden Offered $1 Million For Sex Tape

Demi Lovato Responds To Tattoo Artist: “I Was Simply A Drunken Teenage Girl”


Taylor Swift Phones Young Fan Battling Cancer

Blake Lively Wants To Go To Harvard Business School

Eva Chen Steps Down From Lucky Magazine

Plus-Size Model Stars In Repsonse To “Beach Body Ready” Campaign

Demi Lovato’s Gynecologist Asked For An Autograph

VH1 Announces Summer Lineup (Sorry, No Videos)

Ryan Adams Finally Gives In And Plays Bryan Adams’ “Summer Of ’69”



FOREIGNERS
British Gurkhas Return Home To Aid Recovery
No Deal With SNP, Labour’s Miliband Says
Frankfurt Bike Race Cancelled After Terror Arrests
Traumatized Boko Haram Captives Opened Fire On Rescuers
US Navy Begins To Escort US-Flagged Ships In Straits Of Hormuz
PRC Says US Welcome To Use Civilian Facilities In South China Sea
Saudis To Restructure ARAMCO, Separate It From Oil Ministry
Opposition Parties Up In Arms Over Abe’s Vow to Pass Security Legislation
Italian Hangs Up On Pope Twice – Thought He Was Being Pranked
Russia Readying For New Ukraine Offensive?



BLOGS & STUFF
EBL: #BaltimoreRiots
American Power: California Latinos Lag “Far Behind” In College Achievement
American Thinker: Democrat-Run Baltimore Is A Gangsters’ Paradise
BLACKFIVE: Stop The Iran Bomb And Signing Bonus
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Benji, Please See The Suggested Changes
Conservatives4Palin: Why Americans Don’t Want To Soak The Rich
Don Surber: Bernie Sanders Brings Wealth Of 19th Century Ideas To Democratic Political Sweepstakes
Joe For America: Obama Puts Lawyer In Charge of Immigration Who Has No Immigration Experience. Bonus – She’s From EPA
Pamela Geller: Muslim Arrested For Threats To Behead UKIP Candidate
Protein Wisdom: Friday Fiction – 100 Word Challenge
Shot In The Dark: Our Silly Cultural Conscience
STUMP: 80% Funding Hall Of Heroes – Welcome, Evan Inglis!
The Gateway Pundit: HARD TRUTH – More Law Enforcement Officers Killed Each Year Than Young Black Men By White Cops
The Jawa Report: Alas, The AMEF Forum Is Now Closed
The Lonely Conservative: “Mom Of The Year” Under Fire For Child Abuse, Caving To White Supremacy
This Ain’t Hell: 40 Years Ago Today
Weasel Zippers: Hillary’s Position On Indian Nuke Deal Changed After Influx Of Donations
Megan McArdle: Riots Just Don’t Work


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Category: Live at Five

Teaching Literary Feminism

Posted on | April 30, 2015 | 68 Comments

“Why invite the potential headaches of teaching a lesbian graphic novel in a religious institution?” asks Professor Scott A. Dimowitz in an essay published in an academic anthology this month. “In the course of several iterations of a class on Literary Feminism that I teach at Regis University, a Jesuit school in Denver, Colorado, I have used Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and selections from her long-running comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For to explain postmodern life narratives that incorporate nontraditional matter and a nodding acquaintance with Roman Catholic Church doctrine.”

Perhaps the disclosure of Professor Dimowitz’s curriculum is shocking to some alumni of Regis University and to Catholics who don’t realize how “postmodern life narratives,” including feminist gender theory, now pervade academia. As I previously explained (“Introduction to Feminist Theory”), “there are very good reasons why the proceedings in Women’s Studies courses are generally not discussed outside the classroom.” If parents and alumni were aware of what was being taught in these programs, and if voters understood how taxpayer subsidies to higher education are helping fund such ideological indoctrination on campus, we might expect a political firestorm to erupt. One can easily imagine a congressional committee hearing on what Professor Glenn Reynolds has called The Higher Education Bubble, where the “Your Tax Dollars At Work” aspect of this nonsense could be exposed to public scrutiny.

There are now Women’s Studies programs at some 700 U.S. colleges and universities, enrolling more than 90,000 students annually, and these programs are the intellectual command centers of the Feminist-Industrial Complex. Many thousands of professors are employed to teach courses in this interdisciplinary field. Carmen Rios, the self-described “raging lesbian feminist” who is Communications Coordinator at the Feminist Majority Foundation, has explained:

Is it Gender Studies? Women’s Studies? Women’s And Gender Studies? Sexuality Studies? Gender and Sexuality Studies? LGBT Studies? Queer Studies? Feminist Studies? . . . Women’s Studies remains an interdisciplinary field, making its name all the more difficult to decide on. Is it Women’s History and Theory, or is the program really Lesbo Recruitment 101?

She said that, not me. Regis University describes its program:

Women’s and Gender Studies examines the intersections of gender, race, and class, and also considers how gender roles are constructed in different global cultures and historical periods. Women have made important contributions in traditionally defined “male pursuits” (politics, science, art, etc.) Although traditionally understudied, women’s experiences and participation have led to the reexamination of long-held interpretations and conventional wisdoms in a wide variety of academic fields. Uniting all women and gender studies inquiries is the effort to understand and explain inequality between men and women, and to envision the possibility of new social practices that could bring about greater equality, mutual understanding, and human flourishing.

And also, lesbian comic books. Professor Dimowitz explains that he teaches Bechdel’s cartoons because this helps “defamiliarize traditional linguistic life narratives and form a uniquely productive site of tension and destabilization of students’ assumptions about gender, sexuality, and the very nature of what constitutes aesthetic merit, which few of the other traditional texts were able to achieve to the same extent.”

Exactly how does all this relate to the aims of a Catholic university? Professor Dimowitz is eager to explain:

To be clear about my own position . . . I was raised in a particularly strict form of Pennsylvanian, Croatian-immigrant Roman Catholicisim. . . . Years later I find myself teaching Catholic students, although Regis is a Jesuit university and Jesuits have always been more of a distinctly unconventional form of Catholicism. . . . As a specialist in postmodern literature and gender studies, I have an investment in engaging students in open discussions about representations of gender and sexuality in contemporary literature and culture.

Hmmm. So now the professor talks about his Literary Feminism class:

The course is offered as part of Regis University’s Integrative Core Curriculum, which was established in 2009, seeking to integrate juniors’ and seniors’ understanding of four key areas: (1) Diversity and Cultural Tradition, (2) Global Environmental Awareness, (3) Justice and the Common Good, and (4) The Search for Meaning. As a Diversity and Cultural Tradition course, Literary Feminism has two pragmatic goals, among others: (1) to introduce students to the idea of gender as a performative act, and (2) to understand the complexities and varieties of human sexual expression and representation. These goals reflect an overall tolerant approach to the study of gender and sexuality. . . .

So here we find the postmodern “idea of gender as a performative act,” i.e., the social construction of the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix. One wonders what would be the reaction to Professor Dimowitz’s recitation of all this academic jargon, if you could present it to the devout priests who established this university, originally called Sacred Heart College, in the 19th century? One wonders, indeed, what the Pope must think of this, considering how he has twice in recent months condemned gender theory. In an interview with Italian journalists Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi, Pope Francis compared gender theory to the doctrines of the Hitler Youth and, on April 15, Pope Francis described “so-called gender theory” as “an expression of frustration and resignation that aims to erase sexual differentiation because it no longer knows how to come to terms with it.” Anyone who expects Catholic institutions of higher education to heed the Pope and fight against the nihilistic doctrine of gender theory, however, will be disappointed to discover what Professor Dimowitz is teaching at Regis University:

This graphic nature of the form is clear throughout Bechdel’s 2006 Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, a darkly humorous coming-of-age memoir of Bechdel’s childhood growing up in a funeral home run by her father, a closeted homsexual who was also a high school English teacher with a penchant for seducing some of his male students.

(Feminist Literature is so wholesome and inspiring!)

The book cycles its meditations around the event of Bechdel’s father’s death, which she believes may have been a suicide. Juxtaposing her own coming out story as a lesbian against her father’s inability to lead an authentic existence. Bechdel in Fun Home metanarratively meditates on the nature of life writing. . . . The book is frank about sexuality and blunt about her father’s statutory rapes of high school boys, and the text even includes several panels in which Bechdel recreated imagined scenes of seduction of these students. Bechdel struggles to understand her ambivalent responses to her father’s death while trying to unify a life narrative out of the fractured collage of documents and memories.

Again: Why is this being taught in a Catholic university? Do the parents who are paying $33,060 a year to send their children to Regis University have any clue what is being taught there? Does anyone even care? Professor Dimowitz says 70 percent of freshmen at Regis “self-identify as Roman Catholic.” However:

Many incoming students . . . have a rather cavalier attitude toward Church orthodoxy, which is part of an overall movement in contemporary attitudes. In America, especially, belief in strict Vatican law is clearly trending away from dogma. . . . According to a 2011 Pew survey of Americans, clear majorities “across most demographic groups say homosexuality should be accepted by society” and not discouraged or ignored (which are the two other categories). Interestingly, Catholics, in general, favor acceptance at 64 percent, which compares positively to the overall population’s acceptance, which is only 58 percent.

Here it should be pointed out that the choices Pew offered — whether homosexuality should be “accepted,” “ignored” or “discouraged” — omit other alternatives, particularly “tolerated,” i.e., an attitude somewhere in the range of “live and let live” or ‘who the hell cares?” This kind of toleration of homosexuality has in fact been widespread in America for decades, even while gay activists have hyped up claims that America is gripped by “homophobia.” So, sure, given the three choices the Pew poll offered, most people would say “accepted,” particular because they know that’s the answer they’re supposed to choose. We return to Professor Dimowitz’s discussion:

This general trending toward acceptance [of homosexuality], especially among millennials, opens up a fertile space for dialogue with students of a traditional college age.

(Professor Dimowitz gets paid to have a “dialogue” about gayness with college kids, and he seems quite eager to do so.)

When asked in a survey, “How did you feel about our openly discussing homosexuality in a Catholic school?” the Regis students were overwhelmingly positive. . . . Of course, part of this positivity is perhaps a function of Regis University’s generally progressive Jesuit orientation, and the question might receive a different response from a far more conservative school.

The bottom line, then, is that Professor Dimowitz and the administration at Regis University are comfortable with the idea that moral issues should be determine by (a) public opinion polls, or (b) “progressive Jesuit orientation,” and certainly not by (c) that old-fashioned “Thou shalt not” stuff in the Bible. Any institutional resistance we might have expected Catholic educators to make against society’s drift toward nihilism has been swept away. A progressive devotion to radical egalitarianism (the heretical “liberation theology” that embraced Marxist revolutionary movements in Latin America during the 1980s) steadily replaces devotion to God at institutions like Regis University.

Being “conformed to this world,” they teach “doctrines of devils.”

“Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon. . . . He is a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don’t listen to him. Remember that — do not listen.”
— The Exorcist (1973)

Nobody believes in that kind of stuff anymore, I guess.





 

Category: Catholics, Education, Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox, 04.30.15

Posted on | April 30, 2015 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Ugh. So easy to screw things up by eating the wrong food. Anyway, here’s some linkagery in lieu of Live at Five; there will also be a book post later today (or maybe Friday) with some updates on the Hugo Awards kerfluffle.


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: GoFundMe?
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: A Mild Defense Of Alcoholics Anonymous
Michelle Malkin: Debunking Obama’s Bilious Baltimore Babble
Twitchy: Adam Baldwin Puts A Hulk Smash On Mark Ruffalo’s Recommended Reading For “White America”
Shark Tank: Bernie Sanders Announces He’s Running For President



RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Baltimore “Hero Mom” Berates Son For Participating In Riots
American Thinker: Another Thrilling Episode Of Blacks Behaving Badly
BLACKFIVE: EFMB – Giving It Your All
Conservatives4Palin: Gov. Palin – The Slap Heard Round The World
Don Surber: A University Stands Up To Unpatriotic Students
Jammie Wearing Fools: Confirmed – Baltimore’s Incompetent Hack Mayor Ordered Police To Stand Down In Face Of Violent Thuggery
Joe For America: American Patriots, Your Kiddies Must Dress Islamically For “Field” Trips!
JustOneMinute: They Must Have Seen This Coming
Pamela Geller: Students Publicly Humiliated By School Because Parents Refused Permission For Mosque Visit
Protein Wisdom: Is Your City Burning? Thank A Democrat!
Shot In The Dark: A Thought Experiment
STUMP: 80 Percent Funding Hall Of AWESOME – Experts Say…
The Gateway Pundit: Obama vs. Reagan On GDP Growth – Not Even Close
The Jawa Report: In Japan, R2D2 Flies You
The Lonely Conservative: Obama Lawyer – If SCOTUS Rules For Same Sex marriage, Religious Schools Could Lose Tax Exempt Status
This Ain’t Hell: Brooke Baldwin Apologizes To Veterans
Weasel Zippers: Michael Moore Demands America Disarm The Police
Megan McArdle: Blame The Machines


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