LIVE AT FIVE: 01.20.15

Satan is the Father of Lies (John 8:43-45). Satan is the false accuser (Revelation 12:9-11). Satan constantly tells us lies about ourselves and lies about God. If you listen to that satanic voice, you will drive yourself crazy, because the lies are contradictory. Satan will tell you whatever you want to believe, whatever it takes to destroy you. Satan will tell you that your sins are so wicked that God cannot possibly love you. Then Satan will tell you there is no such thing as sin. Satan will tell you that good is evil, and evil is good, and that you should do evil because that will make you happier than doing good. Most of all, Satan tells us to reject God’s law, to instead make our own judgment of right and wrong.
This was the original lie of history: “Ye shall be as gods!”

That was controversial, because a lot of conservatives online aren’t religious, and also because it is widely assumed — without much evidence, actually — that overt appeals to biblical authority are bad for the Republican Party. Political experts tell us that young voters are alienated by expressions of Christian conservatism, and so we should just shut up about all that Bible stuff. My hunch is that the political experts, as usual, are wrong. And also, Satan is real.

Would you like to see evidence of metaphysical evil? In February 2014, a “genderqueer” woman posted this on Tumblr.com:

Recently my grandmother found out I’m queer. Her response was to tell me that she disapproves of me living with my “friend” (i.e. my girlfriend) and that I should give up my vile queer ways and become a Christian (Lol). She even sent me a bible. Here are its remains, which I made into black-out poetry.

Her “black-out poetry” consisted of using neon highlighter on some words, and using black marker to obliterate the rest. She transcribes her poetic creations, one of which is this:

Fisting (from Judges 8:5) — “water/ lap the water/ drink/go down to drink/your hands/go down/I give into your hands/go down/encouraged/down/on the seashore/the whole hand/your hand/inside/I get to the edge/and shout/grasping/crying out/Beth/Beth/Beth/Beth/Beth/God/I came”

You can click here to see a photo of that blasphemous “poem.” (Having consulted my Bible, I realize that the passage she uses actually begins with Judges 7.) Can you imagine the insane hatred inside this woman, that she would take a Bible — a gift from her own grandmother! — and make it into such a heinously abusive celebration of degeneracy?

Do you think that people this crazy and hateful are not also in the grasp of a frightening evil? What kind of person do you think would act this way? Nine months later, the same person posted this:

Please help me pay for my
medical expenses and diagnoses!
Hello! My name is Robin. I am 25 years old, queer, and non-binary. Because of my disabilities and mental illnesses, I have been unable to work since March of 2014. Back when I was working, I was only able to work part-time, for minimum wage, at extreme cost to my mental and physical health. This has led me to seek medical treatment, as well as official diagnoses for my illnesses and disabilities so that I may apply for disability income (also known as Social Security Income, or SSI).
My disabilities and illnesses include: I am on the Autism Spectrum. I also have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression (including mania and dissociative symptoms), generalized anxiety, joint pain that makes bending, walking, and standing for long periods of time difficult, and fatigue. I have been having to see a gastroenterologist for digestive issues and pain that have lasted several months now. He recommended a colonoscopy that is well out of my budget.
My partner is currently helping with my living costs, but she cannot continue doing so indefinitely and cannot assist much with my medical expenses. . . .
Once my physical health is taken care of, I will seek treatment and official diagnoses for my mental illnesses and for Autism. These diagnoses by medical professionals are required for me to apply to SSI. If I were to be accepted, it would greatly relieve our financial burdens and stress. It would allow me more stability while I try to recover from my mental illnesses and physical health issues.

Robin the Disabled Mentally Ill Nonbinary Queer has useful skills!

In exchange for helping me out, please allow me to do Tarot readings for you! I have been reading Tarot for myself for five years and for others for one year. . . .
I currently have the World Spirit Tarot, the Shadowscapes Tarot, the Romance Angels Oracle, and the Angel Therapy Oracle. If you have a preference which deck or spread I use, please let me know. Otherwise, I will pick the one most suited to your question.

So, five years ago, she began doing tarot card readings, and by November 2014 she’s so sick and crazy she’s soliciting donations to help her get diagnosed to be eligible for federal disability payments. Maybe you think this is all just a coincidence, that Robin’s mental illness and her sexual perversion are unrelated to her blasphemous hatred of God and her dabbling in the occult. Maybe I’m just an ignorant hillbilly Bible-thumper for suspecting that Robin’s misfortunes are not entirely coincidental.

Perhaps you’d care to check out Robin’s witchcraft Tumblr site?

I’m reminded of what Pat Robertson said more than 20 years ago:

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights
for women. . . It is about a socialist, anti-family
political movement that encourages women to leave
their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft,
destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

I keep telling you people: Every single word of that is true.

“There are no Christian feminists, because feminism is a sort of narcissistic idolatry, wherein women deny God and instead worship themselves as their own divinity.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Dec. 17

Category: Feminism, Religion, Sex Trouble

Well, This Happened

Posted on | January 19, 2015 | 47 Comments

Readers may recall @HollyRFisher as the mom whose Facebook image holding a Chick-fil-A iced tea in front of Hobby Lobby made liberals’ heads explode in July 2014. Her stand for religious freedom made her the target of rape threats from “tolerant” liberals, and conservatives responded with the #IStandWithHolly campaign.

She was soon appearing on national TV as a conservative heroine. Suddenly being thrown into the spotlight was apparently a disorienting experience that nearly destroyed her family. Her personal problems were entirely private, however, until somebody decided that gossip should be news. For reasons known only to himself, Chuck Johnson of GotNews.com applied his skills as an investigative reporter to expose Mrs. Fisher’s affair with a videographer named Joel Frewa.

Really, Chuck? Was this necessary? Did this serve any legitimate journalistic purpose? At a certain level, I can understand the logic here. Democrats are the party of lies and perversion and, as antagonists of such evil, conservative journalists are quite eager to report the typical Democrat behavior of Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, Terry Bean, Joe Morrissey, et al. So when we become aware of Republicans behaving like Democrats, conservative journalists are thrown onto the horns of a dilemma, faced with two choices:

Do we report the story?
or
Do we ignore it, cross our fingers and hope that the misbehavior of these Republicans doesn’t turn into a damaging scandal?

The answer is almost always Number Two, and we sometimes feel like awful hypocrites for staying silent. More than once, I’ve become aware of shady behavior by people on “our side” and kept it to myself, only to see the scandalous truth subsequently blazoned in headlines at Politico or some other liberal outlet. Well, OK, this is how the partisan game is played: Liberals expose Republican scandals and conservatives expose Democrat scandals, and it is not my job to help liberals do their work.

Is that cynical? Sure, but a certain amount of cynicism is necessary to be able to maintain your sanity in this crazy business.

The world if full of misery and wickedness, and if you let it get inside your head — if you start taking the news too personally — you’ll end up either in a looney bin or lost in the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

One of the best investigative reporters I ever knew drank himself out of a job and, after he’d wrecked his own personal life and professional career, he decided to blame his misfortune on his former colleagues. I had never thought of him as anything other than a friend nor ever did him any wrong, and I knew nothing of his problems (divorce, alcoholism, etc.) until he popped up on the Internet falsely accusing me of anti-Semitism (!!!) as part of his misguided quest for vengeance. My friends knew better than to believe that fool’s spiteful lies, but real harm resulted from his heinous libels against me and others.

Chuck Johnson’s erratic judgment reminds me of that guy, and also reminds me of myself. Having a “loose cannon” reputation as a journalist can be a lot of fun, and I know that one of the reasons this blog has been so popular (about 3 million page-views annually) is that gonzo factor: “What kind of dangerous craziness is McCain going to get himself into today?” When I dive into a whirlpool of insanity — the Kentucky census worker story or the Kaitlyn Hunt story — people know that I’ll not only find the facts, but I’ll report the facts in a way that is entertaining.

Chuck Johnson is an arrogant young hotshot, and I recognize something of myself in him, both good and bad. His story about Holly Fisher is the bad side, a serious error in judgment that a lot of people will probably never forgive. Here’s the key point: In the war of politics, Holly Fisher is a civilian volunteer.

Until July 2014, she was just a mom with a Facebook page. Thrust onto the stage in the middle of a national controversy, she could not have anticipated how the semi-celebrity world of political activism can make people think that the rules don’t apply to them.

Oh, the stories I could tell if I ever decided to start telling stories. Let’s put it this way: Drunk people act like drunk people, without regard to partisan affiliation or political ideology. Furthermore, the Law of Large Numbers applies here. If you send X number of political activists out on the road for Y number of days — traveling to conferences and campaign events, staying in hotels, going to bars and restaurants together — it is inevitable that, as the numbers X and Y increase, so also will the number Z, representing the amount of non-marital sexual activity. Avoiding temptation in such environments is an acquired skill and as for resisting temptation when people fail to avoid it? Oh, the stories I could tell.

BREAKING: REPUBLICANS HAVE SEX
Developing . . .

Fortunately, you’ll never click that banner link at Drudge and find my byline on the story, because my sources trust me to know the difference between gossip and news. There are stories that I can never report, because my sources swore me to secrecy. Gonzo journalism can’t work any other way. Sane people are always suspicious of reporters, and if you want to get close enough to the story to learn the real truth, you have to demonstrate to the people involved that you can be trusted not to report everything you know. There is an implied contract between a reporter and his sources in that kind of situation, as simple as four words:

NEVER BURN YOUR SOURCES.

If somebody is giving you the inside lowdown on a story, not only must you give them an ironclad guarantee of their anonymity, but you cannot report the story in a way that hurts your source. There are professors of journalism who would certainly be horrified at the kind of ethical compromises that are sometimes necessary to the day-to-day business of finding the truth, but to hell with professors of journalism. My sources quite often are also my personal friends, and my personal friends know that it’s against my religion to pay a bar tab.

Ethics, schmethics: As long as what I am reporting is factual, how I get the facts is my own business. It’s certainly nobody else’s business who’s paying for my beer, but if I have any say-so in the matter, you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be gone before the bar tab arrives.

The journalistic ethics of free beer is, however, only tangentially related to the grievous wrong Chuck Johnson has done here.

As Donald Douglas says at American Power, “we’re all fallen. We’re human.” One thing that keeps conservatives from getting involved in politics is because they know that the liberal media will use anything — e.g., Michelle Duggar’s lesbian sister — to try to undermine the reputations of patriots who stand up for American values. Democrats have no compunction about using character assassination or terroristic intimidation tactics to silence their opponents. Should conservative activists also have to fear such tactics from Chuck Johnson?

Why on earth would a political “civilian” like Holly Fisher be considered a fair target of this kind of treatment? Ethics has nothing to do with this. Johnson’s story cannot be justified as journalism because it cannot be justified as morality. Who was Chuck Johnson’s source for this story? Who tipped him off? You can search Twitter and make a few guesses, but Chuck Johnson is obligated to protect his sources, which means that if anyone manages to figure out where Chuck Johnson got this story, that is also Chuck Johnson’s fault.

Once upon a time, I was on the phone with someone who asked my advice on whether they should publish a sex-scandal story.

No, you can’t report that, I told them, and explained why: It’s a one-source story. Even though you know it’s true — your source provided you with documentation that confirms their story — you can’t report it, because the person whose reputation you would destroy will immediately be able to figure out where you got it. Your “anonymous” source will lose their anonymity as soon as you publish this story. Unless you can get another source who is able to confirm the facts (and it would be helpful if at least one of your sources was willing to have their name in the story), you’ll just have to let this go. Such was my valuable advice.

Anonymous sources are a two-edged weapon, and reporters have to think very hard about these things. The more serious the accusation involved, the more important it is to be able to obtain independent verification of what the source tells you. And there are inevitably going to be occasions when you invest a lot of time developing a story — a story you know is absolutely factual — that you can’t publish because you just can’t get it sourced properly.

Now, some of my friends will criticize me for even noticing Chuck Johnson’s story about Holly Fisher, much less linking his story, but I’m going to link it here just once so that if readers want to go see for themselves, they can learn why you don’t publish a story like that.

Once upon a time, I had a story that was nailed down cold, but I never contacted the subject of that story until after I decided not to publish it. If I had decided the other way, the damage to this person and their family would have been irreparable, but I had the facts nailed down cold and I was this close to clicking the “publish” button when I stopped. I realized that as evil as this person was (and trust me, the left-wing evil was strong in this one), innocent people would also be harmed if I clicked “publish.” So I decided against it, and sent them an email explaining my decision.

What was the result of my kindness? This person told their friends that I had “threatened” them, when in reality I’d done them a favor and had offered them some friendly advice.

See, if I could find this particular set of scandalous facts — confirming the scandal so clearly that I didn’t even need to ask this person for an explanation — certainly any other good reporter could confirm it, as well. You keep doing what you’re doing, I told them, and somebody else is sure to discover these scandalous facts and decide to report the story. I didn’t click “publish,” because I’m a Christian. On the other hand, I explained, some people in this business are not Christians, and I sure would hate to get scooped on a story this juicy.

Not a threat, just an explanation. If the person on the receiving end of that email told their friends they had been “threatened,” so they could pretend to be a victim of right-wing malevolence, so what? Let them save face by claiming victimhood, because I knew the truth, and there wasn’t a damned thing they could do to stop me from clicking the “publish” button if I ever changed my mind. Plus, I know a lot of reporters who would have run with that story in a heartbeat if I had sent them my copious files of documentation. I’ve still got those files, and the draft version of that story I didn’t publish? Yeah, one click is all it would take.

The decision not to publish a story is one that every journalist must learn to make. It’s frustrating to spend hours or days chasing after a story and then have to decide that you’ve just wasted your time in pursuit of a story that either (a) can’t be properly confirmed, or (b) just isn’t worth reporting. Chuck Johnson made a bad decision on his Holly Fisher story. This is certainly not the first bad decision he’s made lately, but it’s likely to hurt him worse than any previous bad decision he’s made.

The world has gone crazy: Islamic terrorism in Belgium, civil war in Yemen, Miss Israel taking selfies with Miss Lebanon, and yet Chuck Johnson has nothing better to do with his time than to report on the private lives of Tea Party moms? Are you kidding me?

Holly Fisher writes about her experience:

My life crumbled. My marriage crumbled. I lost my faith in God. . . .
I have suffered from depression and anxiety most of my life, only recently telling my family about it, but after being at my lowest, my darkest, and literally about to end it all, my daughter started laughing. My sweet, angelic baby girl toddled into the room while I was sitting on the edge of my bed, and she was squealing with delight.
Right then and there I knew I needed to get off my butt and get on my knees. My daughter, along with God, saved my life. I regained my ability to pray after a few long nights of my husband squeezing me tight and helping me realize that we are a team, we are best friends, we are partners, and no matter how lost we’ve been in the past, we can survive anything.

God bless you, ma’am. And thank you for your graciousness as we are all reminded of some very valuable lessons about life.

@HollyRFisher I am with you always. We crossed this bridge and will walk together now with our heads high. I love you. Matthew 6:14-15

— David Fisher (@DavidIFisher) January 19, 2015

If @HollyRFisher 's husband forgave her & God forgave her, who are any of you to throw stones? #truth #love #holiness

— Sarah (@overcmr) January 19, 2015

@rsmccain At some point, one must ask oneself, "What drives this cruelty?" @ChuckCJohnson

— GadsdenJazz (@GadsdenJazz) January 19, 2015

@brainfertilizer It's about @ChuckCJohnson using private pain to advance his own ends. @AaronWorthing @rsmccain

— GadsdenJazz (@GadsdenJazz) January 19, 2015

July 2014: http://t.co/6Wrm4DFC21 Said it then: #IStandWithHolly And I still do. May God bless you both. @DavidIFisher @HollyRFisher

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) January 19, 2015

Category: Journalism, R.S. McCain School of Journalism, Scandal, Tea Party

Let Me Be Perfectly Clear. . .

Posted on | January 19, 2015 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

BREAKING: Rioters in Bulungi say ‘American Sniper’ “Profits insulting”, demand Clint Eastwood be thrown in jail.

— HireThisGuyIn2016 (@smitty_one_each) January 19, 2015

Bulungi is not an actual country.
“Profits insulting” is a play on “Insulting the Prophet”
The whole gag is a Benghazi reference, specifically to throwing Nakoula Nakoula in the joint.

Note that no religious figures have been explicitly depicted (much less, mentioned) in the making of this joke.

Category: humor

In The Mailbox, 01.19.15

Posted on | January 19, 2015 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
First Street Journal: Sounds Like A Great Place To Eat!
Louder With Crowder: MLK Jr. Speaks To Ferguson

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: American Sniper Busts Out To Record-Breaking Opening Weekend
American Thinker: No Room For Parody
BLACKFIVE: President Obama, You Have Got To Be F*cking Kidding Me
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin’s Message To The SC Tea Party Convention
Don Surber: Why Less Than Half Of Adults In WV Work. EVIL.
Jammie Wearing Fools: Czechs March Against Islam – “Islam Is Evil”
Joe For America: Dianne Feinstein’s Husband Gets Billion-Dollar Sweetheart Government Deal
JustOneMinute: Live From Paris, It’s Saturday Night!
Protein Wisdom: The Argument Over Obama’s “Fundamental Transformation” Is Over
Shot In the Dark: (Bombed) Houses Of The Holy
The Gateway Pundit: #BlackLivesMatter Protesters Hold Bay Area Dance Protest – With NO Black Protesters
The Jawa Report: The Beheading Of Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim
The Lonely Conservative: Here We Go – Sharpton To Shake Down The Oscars
This Ain’t Hell: Hagel Becomes Angel Of Death For Troops’ Compensation
Weasel Zippers: Obama – Let’s Pay For “Free” Community College By Taxing Those Who Save For College
Megan McArdle: Does Mitt Romney Know When To Quit?
Mark Steyn: Schlock And Awe

Shop Amazon Home – New Year, New You – Take Control of Your Closet

Category: Linkagery

Rule 5 Sunday: Cinnamon Girl

Posted on | January 18, 2015 | 17 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Welcome back to another edition of Rule 5 Sunday, your weekly break from deranged radical feminists, vile criminals, spineless politicians, and other such annoyances of everyday life. For those of you who may be new to Rule 5 Sunday, be advised that some of the following links are NSFW, so therefore, dear readers, exercise discretion in the clicking.

“I could be happy the rest of my life
With a cinnamon girl…”

Average Bubba leads off this week with Rule Five Friday: Russian Beauties Edition, followed by Goodstuff with generously endowed cosplayer Abby Dark Star, Ninety Miles from Tyranny with Hot Pick of the Late Night, Morning Mistress Bar Rafaeli, and Girls with Guns; and Loose Endz with Mary Jane and the Superheroes. Also, Animal Magnetism with Rule 5 Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon!

EBL has dirty Girls, last week’s Packers win, Buckeyes Rule 5, some Zooey, Rule 5 Retweet, Packers vs. Seahawks, and Seagals at the NFC Championship.

At Soylent Siberia, it’s vintage coffee creamer, overnighty snow blinding, Monday Motivationer: Polished, Evening Awesome For Wirecutter: Extreme Cameltoe, Tuesday Titillation Invitation, Overnighty Sushi, V is for…Yeah, You Win, Evening Exceptional, Spassfabrik Fursday Featurette Ava, Corset Carumba With Incidental Incidentals, T-GIF Friday Poke Salad Annie, OverNighty Linky Love Contender…With Fur, Weekender Reflection, and Bath Night Bayou.

A View from the Beach brings us Kylie Minogue, the Wonder from Down Under, You Knew it was Basketball Season in Lithuania, Right?, Average American Men Prefer Blondes, Wednesday Wombat News Review, “White Flag”, Wombat Tuesday News, “All Along The Watchtower”, RIP: Anita Ekberg, Colts vs Broncos, Packers vs. Cowboys?, Sunday Morning Wake Up Music, and Ravens vs. Patriots

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Diane Neal, his vintage babe is Carole Lombard, and Sex in Advertising is all about staying focused. Plus, a double double extra scoop of NFL cheerleaders! At Dustbury, it’s a Carol Cleveland retrospective and Zooeypalooza XXII!

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox for next week’s parade of pulchritude is midnight on Saturday, January 24.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop

Category: Rule 5

Feminism’s Predictable Consequences: ‘Our Society at Large … Hates Women’

Posted on | January 18, 2015 | 75 Comments

What is the effect of feminism on males? How does a constant barrage of anti-male/anti-heterosexual discourse influence men?

Newton’s Third Law of Motion — for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction — can be applied to group psychology. Confronted with hostile criticism, some people will comply (the equal reaction), attempting to conform to the views of critics, so that we see some men trying to placate feminists by refraining from whatever male behaviors or attitudes feminists say they find offensive.

However, some men will not merely reject feminist criticism as incorrect or unfair, they will exhibit the opposite reaction, deliberately saying or doing things that offend feminists.

This kind of Newtonian opposite reaction to feminism takes many forms, both conscious and unconscious. I’ve always considered the “macho man” trend that emerged in the late 1970s and ’80s — e.g., the body-builder culture, action hero blockbusters like Rambo and Terminator — as a psychological reaction to feminism. Sure, those movies were mostly just escapist fun. Sure, tough-guy heroes have always been a staple product of Hollywood. But the ultra-muscled physiques of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were cartoonish in their exaggerated masculinity, and the stories were cartoonish, too.

We also see the Newtonian opposite reaction to feminism in the whole “dudebro” male-bonding culture, where chilling with your buddies in your “man cave” playing videogames or watching sports on TV is venerated as the ultimate in leisure. And I would argue that a lot of what feminists now label as misogyny (a word that means woman-hating) could best be understood as a secondary effect of feminism.

Quite often, you see young men doing or saying things they certainly must know will drive feminists into a furious rage. This is the politically incorrect thumb-in-the-eye response to feminist rhetoric that routinely insults heterosexual males. It is evident that feminists, despite their constant disclaimers of desiring nothing more than an innocuous “equality,” are in fact advancing a totalitarian worldview, a zero-sum game in which women’s “equality” requires expropriation.

According to this logic, everything any man possesses — education, employment, family, property, a good reputation — can only have been obtained through his oppression of females. If your son graduated summa cum laude, was hired by a Fortune 500 company, married a beautiful woman, and bought a nice house in the suburbs, this just proves that your son has benefitted from male privilege. His success is a result of cultural misogyny and anti-female discrimination.

Male success is social injustice, according to feminism’s totalitarian worldview. The feminist demand for “equality” is actually a demand that society punish successful men, a demand for new policies in schools and workplaces, a demand for a system that can guarantee more success for women by systematically depriving males of opportunities for success.

The enactment of such punitive anti-male policies is what feminists consider “progress” toward “equality.” We can view the entire campus “rape epidemic” discourse — false statistics and false journalism intended to force the imposition of policies aimed at depriving males of due-process rights — as emblematic of feminism’s totalitarian tendency.

Young men sense this intuitively. They perceive feminism as a hostile force. However, more than four decades into the feminist revolution, with feminism now deeply entrenched in our culture, exercising hegemonic influence within academia, today’s 20-year-old has no access to a rhetoric by which he can effectively challenge feminism. There are no anti-feminist professors on campus and no anti-feminist books in the library, and so young men generally lack the intellectual resources necessary to countering feminist arguments. Very few opponents of feminism bother to study the subject at a theoretical level, and opposition to feminism is therefore often badly argued — or not “argued” at all, instead taking the form of crude jokes and insults.

Viewing all this in terms of psychology, rather than politics, is really the only way to understand it. Here’s an example: Some dude posts a genuinely offensive joke about tricking women into believing he’s wearing a condom during sex. This joke is so wrong in so many ways that you have to suspect it was deliberately wrong, intended as some sort of ironic spoof of Bad Male Behavior. But the reaction? Oh. My. God.

If a guy does this, it’s rape. Call the cops. Ruin his life since he has no problem risking yours. Make him f–king learn. Rapists belong in jail. Rape by deception is rape, not a funny “meme.”

. . . and . . .

I’ve had a dude do that before. that sh–t is terrifying. . . . I didn’t know that he [wasn’t wearing a condom] until he pulled out.
I FLIPPED. Cried all the way home. Cried for days. Got tested. Bought the morning after pill. Seriously, f–k dudes that do this.

. . . and . . .

This is how men talk to each other about us.

Ever since the “safe sex” gospel took hold in reaction to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, young women have been learning painful lessons about human nature that their sex-education teachers never taught them. Anybody who actually buys into the In Latex We Trust mentality promoted by the “pro sex” evangelists is a fool, but these fools refuse to accept responsibility for the harms they suffer as a result of their own folly. “Safe sex” is a myth. There is no such thing as risk-free promiscuity. If you don’t know a guy well enough to know whether he can be trusted, sweetheart, why are you having sex with him?

The most ironic reaction, however, was this:

I had a man do this once. When I first started sex work and had no idea what I was doing, I went to a man’s house. I made so many mistakes- I’m lucky I’m not dead.

Uh . . . “sex work”?

The person who posted that describes herself as an “overeducated whore,” and provides this information about herself:

I have about 3 years’ experience as a stripper.
I have been escorting a bit over two years.
I have been sugaring for almost one year.

In case you didn’t know, “sugaring” is about so-called “Sugar Daddy” arrangements, which is prostitution by any other name. For an “escort” to admit that she’s lucky she’s not dead is a recognition of the brutal realities of that sordid business, and johns not wearing condoms is scarcely the worst of it. But, hey, feminists will condemn us for “slut-shaming” if we disapprove of prostitution, so once again we see how feminism’s totalitarian tendency to silence dissent serves to suppress basic common sense.

Easy money for easy sex ain’t so easy, is it, honey?

Moving on in our Bad Ideas Have Bad Consequences tour — try to imagine if Richard Weaver had a blog — let’s ask ourselves what kind of guy actually buys into feminist ideology?

Assuming that you are an honest, decent, law-abiding person, you realize that you are not to blame for creeps who slip Rohypnol into girls’ drinks at frat parties. You don’t engage in abusive catcalling. You are not producing “revenge porn.” You are not “oppressing” women. You genuinely like women and so you recognize that feminists are engaged in dishonest anti-male propaganda if they accuse you of misogyny merely for disagreeing with their ideology.

A clean conscience is helpful in confronting totalitarians, which is why most males enjoy mocking the feminist rhetoric that portrays us as Patriarchal Oppressors. What about those other guys, the ones who jump on the feminist bandwagon and start pointing the accusatory finger at other males? We naturally suspect they have some ulterior motive, and our suspicions of these “white knight” types are frequently confirmed: Feminist hero Bill Clinton turned out to be a sexual predator, and then there was the case of “male feminist” Professor Hugo Schwyzer.

Nevertheless, not every “male feminist” can be presumed to be a hypocritical worm who has figured out that he can get laid by hanging around liberal women and talking “pro-choice” politics. Some of these guys sincerely believe feminist theory, and one of them posted a diatribe against MRAs (Male Rights Activists) in 2012:

Misandry Isn’t Real Dudez
I’m a guy, and I need feminism. Not “men’s rights.” Feminism. Here is why.
Everything that MRAs talk about that men can’t do or are socially punished for arise directly and immediately from misogyny and transmisogyny. Not “misandry.” Misogyny.
Whether a man is expressing his emotions, playing with children, baking, having sex wherein he is penetrated in any way, wearing the wrong color, talking the wrong way, moving the wrong way, being sexually harassed/assaulted, or paying too little attention to looking like he’s not paying attention to how he looks, when society punishes him or derides him or marginalizes him for these things, it is happening because they are things associated with women, and our society at large f–king hates women.
Has that sunk in yet?
Men, can you even think of a single goddamn way you have ever been mocked that wasn’t somehow related to something that a misogynist society sees as feminizing? Even when large men are mocked for their bodies, they are referred to as having “man-boobs,” for f–ks sake.
How do you expect to improve those things with “men’s rights?” What right are you fighting for? I can tell you what I think you’re fighting for. I think you’re fighting for the right to contain and control misogyny, and direct it back at women, where you think it belongs. You want to maintain your privilege but erase its consequences, and that’s why your movement is farcical; it’s a big f–king feedback loop. How do you expect men to be free from the peripheral effects of misogyny and transmisogyny when you refuse to even f–king believe it’s real?

That 2012 male feminist rant went viral and has been endlessly reposted on Tumblr, where it is typically praised thus:

A post that brilliantly explains why “Men’s Rights Activists” are misguided and why the oppression that men face in our culture is not a result of “misandry” but of misogyny.

Here, then, we have a brilliant male feminist. This guy is the progressive beau ideal of a supportive ally for gender equality. Yet when we check out the guy who authored this rant . . .

Edit: please note that since writing this post, which is by far my most popular, I have come out as a transgender woman. That doesn’t, however, change any of the points I make.

Sure it doesn’t. Whatever you say.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Category: Feminism

Feminist Author @PennyRed Quotes Bolshevik Commissar’s Anti-Love Advice

Posted on | January 17, 2015 | 94 Comments

In her most recent book, controversial British feminist Laurie Penny treats her unsuspecting young readers to Soviet propaganda, quoting a Bolshevik commissar’s denunciation of romantic love — without bothering to identify Alexandra Kollontai as the top female official in Vladimir Lenin’s Communist revolutionary regime.

A contributing editor for The New Statesman, Penny attacks “the neoliberal notion of romantic love” in her book Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution, insisting young women must “refuse to define ourselves by romantic love . . . or lack of it.”

In support of her anti-love position, Penny writes on page 236 of her book that “today’s growing girls of every age might do well to recall the words of Alexandra Kollontai.” Penny then quotes Kollontai’s condemnation of love as “an absolutely incredible squandering of our mental energy, a diminution of our labour power.”

The source of this quote is identified in the endnotes of Penny’s book (page 254) as Kollontai’s 1926 The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman. That note lists the URL at Marxists.org where Penny evidently found it online.

Beyond this endnote, however, Kollontai is not further identified in Unspeakable Things, perhaps because Penny assumes her feminist readers are already familiar with the Soviet official who died in 1952.

So-called “Second Wave” feminists — leaders of the Women’s Liberation movement that arose from the New Left in the United States in the late 1960s — embraced Kollontai as a pioneering hero. Between 1979 and 1981, three separate English-language biographies of Kollontai were published, two by American professors (Barbara Evans Clements and Beatrice Farnsworth) and issued by university presses, and a third by British scholar Cathy Porter. In addition to those three biographies, a 1977 anthology of Kollontai’s writings, translated from Russian by British editor Alix Holt, was republished in the United States in 1980 by W.W. Norton & Company.

“With the current high interest in both feminism and Marxism in the West, the rediscovery of Kollontai was predictable,” Professor Simon Karlinsky wrote in a 1981 New York Times article reviewing the Kollontai biographies by Clements, Farnsworth and Porter. Karlinsky saw these biographers as seeking “to appropriate her ideas and experience to the newly revived feminist trends in Western democracies.” Karlinsky noted how Kollontai and the Bolsheviks opposed the liberal reform efforts of “bourgeois” feminists:

The roots of all oppression, the Marxists reasoned, are economic. Proletarians, whether men or women, are exploited by the bourgeoisie, and a proletarian revolution will put an end to that. . . . Alexandra Kollontai’s contributions to the anti-feminist campaign of the Marxists were her coaching of a group of women workers to disrupt the 1908 national congress of Russian feminists by shouting slogans and the publication in 1909 of her book The Social Bases of the Woman Question, a 400-page diatribe against the leaders of the feminist movement.

In that “diatribe,” Kollontai declared that the Marxist party “always and everywhere adheres to the principle of women’s equality”:

The followers of historical materialism reject the existence of a special woman question separate from the general social question of our day. Specific economic factors were behind the subordination of women; natural qualities have been a secondary factor in this process. Only the complete disappearance of these factors, only the evolution of those forces which at some point in the past gave rise to the subjection of women, is able in a fundamental way to influence and change their social position. In other words, women can become truly free and equal only in a world organised along new social and productive lines.

Kollontai’s rejection of reforms within the capitalist system and her demand for a revolutionary destruction of that system, are echoed in Laurie Penny’s own denunciation of “the logic of business and money” that she identifies as “neoliberalism.” Penny slams liberal feminism:

As financial capitalism faltered following the near-collapse of the global stock markets in 2008, the notion that one day all women would be able to make empowering choices within a market that respected their goals and autonomy was exposed as a twenty-year-old fairy tale.
The feminism that has mattered to the media and made magazine headlines in recent years has been the feminism most useful to heterosexual, high-earning middle- and upper-middle-class white women. Public ‘career feminists’ have been more concerned with getting more women into ‘boardrooms,’ when the problem is that there are altogether too many boardrooms, and none of them are on fire.

Although she is herself of upper-middle-class background — her mother is a lawyer, as was her late father, and she attended elite schools in England — Penny’s hostility toward capitalism led her to support the so-called “Occupy” protest movements in 2011. In this, also, Penny mirrors the life of Kollontai. The Russian revolutionary Kollontai describes in her autobiography how she grew up in comfortable circumstances as the daughter of a general in the czar’s army:

I was the youngest, the most spoiled, and the most coddled member of the family. This, perhaps, was the root cause of the protest against everything around me that very early burgeoned within me. Too much was done for me in order to make me happy.

Alexandra Kollontai, Soviet Commissar

In contrast to the reformist measures advocated by 19th-century liberals, Marxist doctrine demanded the destruction of the traditional family, as Kollontai explained in her 1921 Bolshevik treatise, “Theses on Communist Morality in the Sphere of Marital Relations”:

The communist economy does away with the family. In the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat there is a transition to the single production plan and collective social consumption, and the family loses its significance as an economic unit. The external economic functions of the family disappear . . . In the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat the family economic unit should be recognised as being, from the point of view of the national economy, not only useless but harmful. The family economic unit involves (a) the uneconomic expenditure of products and fuel on the part of small domestic economies, and (b) unproductive labour, especially by women, in the home — and is therefore in conflict with the interest of the workers’ republic in a single economic plan and the expedient use of the labour force (including women).
Under the dictatorship of the proletariat then, the material and economic considerations in which the family was grounded cease to exist. The economic dependence of women on men and the role of the family in the care of ‘the younger generation also disappear, as the communist elements in the workers’ republic grow stronger. With the introduction of the obligation of all citizens to work, woman has a value in the national economy which is independent of her family and marital status. The economic subjugation of women in marriage and the family is done away with, and responsibility for the care of the children and their physical and spiritual education is assumed by the social collective. . . .
Once the family has been stripped of its economic functions and its responsibilities towards the younger generation and is no longer central to the existence of the woman, it has ceased to be a family. The family unit shrinks to a union of two people based on mutual agreement.

Penny does not quote these other writings of Kollontai and, as previously noted, gives her readers no biographical information on the Russian Marxist who was the lone female member of the Bolshevik Central Committee at the time of the 1917 revolution. Kollontai spent six months as a commissar in Lenin’s dictatorship before resigning that post and was subsequently appointed to a series of diplomatic posts, spanning two decades as a Soviet ambassador first in Norway (1923-25), then Mexico (1926-27) and Sweden (1930-1945).

Left to right: Josef Stalin, Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov.

Left to right: Leon Trotsky, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Lavrenti Beria.

“This is no time for speech-making. Our Revolution is in serious danger. . . . We have no need for justice now. Now we have need of a battle to the death! We must act not tomorrow, but today, at once!”
— Felix Dzerzhinsky, December 1917

It is doubtful that Laurie Penny’s young readers know any more about the murderous brutality of the Soviet Union than does Penny herself. Only 28 years old, Penny’s attacks on “neoliberalism” in Unspeakable Things never examine the prosperity and freedom enjoyed under this system — i.e., limited government, representative democracy and industrial capitalism — in historic contrast to the totalitarian nightmares that covered the 20th century in the blood of innocents. A deliberate policy of terrorism was a weapon that the Bolsheviks considered absolutely necessary, as Leon Trotsky proclaimed in 1920:

We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem can only be solved by blood and iron. . . .
The Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to destruction, which does not wish to perish. . . .
The man who recognizes the revolutionary historic importance of the very fact of the existence of the Soviet system must also sanction the Red Terror.

Dzerzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, Lavrenti Beria — these depraved monsters led the Cheka and the NKVD, merciless and sadistic murder gangs that imposed the “dictatorship of the proletariat” on the enslaved millions who suffered under Soviet tyranny. By the time the Evil Empire crumbled into the ash-heap of history, it is estimated that as many as 100 million people had been killed by Marxist-Leninist regimes in Russia, China, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam, Angola, Nicaragua and other outposts of communist imperialism.

Of this senseless slaughter — to say nothing of the millions impoverished, imprisoned or exiled by the “dictatorship of the proletariat” — Laurie Penny seems stubbornly ignorant. Instead she heaps every imaginable calumny on the West’s “neoliberal” capitalist system. It is this system, of course, which sent her to some of England’s finest schools and provides her with publishing opportunities, a system that is even now providing her with a prestigious Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University.

If she would care to research the history of the man whose name is on that fellowship — founded with a bequest from his widow — Laurie Penny would learn that the self-made millionaire Lucius Nieman earned his fortune by hard work and courage. In 1919, Nieman’s Milwaukee Journal won the Pulitzer Prize for its “strong and courageous campaign for Americanism,” resolutely supporting the U.S. war effort against Germany “in a constituency where foreign elements made such a policy hazardous from a business point of view.” Indeed, at the time of World War I, Milwaukee was home to one of the largest German emigré populations in the world, yet Nieman’s “Americanism” was unflinching.

How ironic, then, that Laura Penny, an outspoken enemy of “Americanism” and an enthusiastic devotee of the Marxist doctrines of Kollontai and other radicals, should be granted a fellowship named for the great patriot Lucius Nieman, her reward for such important “journalism” as these colorful passages from Unspeakable Things:

In 2011, the summer of rage and riots, I kiss a girl and she tastes of cigarettes and gin and I like it. She says she wants to be a mistress forever. We met because we were sleeping with the same boy, and he isn’t entirely comfortable with how close we’ve become. I buy her a cupcake from a posh sex shop. The cupcake has icing on it shaped like a cunt with a little clear sugar glaze tricking obscenely off the frosting folds. She laughs and eats it right there in front of me because she is hungry. . . .
Then he’s sick of us both, and so we go out like we have before, eyeliner and cigarettes and bus passes on our way to corrupt young minds. . . . We are a tag team, an unstoppable perversion: we drag strange little hipsters into strange beds, turn them on to roll-ups and feminism. . . .
I have spent more time than I care to contemplate in my nimble years in the company of polyamorists, queer non-monogamists and the sort of people who prefer labels like “love anarchists” . . .
I don’t mean to advocate casual sex, housing collectives and late nights drinking bad vodka with bisexual activists as alternatives that necessarily work for everyone, though they’ve always done so for me.

Anyone who cares to read Unspeakable Things (those passages are excerpted from pp. 231-234) will discover that Laurie Penny is as wholehearted an evangelist for sexual perversion as she is a wholehearted enemy of democratic capitalism. Indeed, she is an enemy of every value of Lucius Nieman’s “Americanism,” but in this she is probably no different than any of the other Nieman Fellows at Harvard. Do any of them disagree with anything in Laurie Penny’s book? Is there a single Nieman Fellow who would criticize Laurie Penny’s tribute to the deadly ideas of the Bolshevik commissar Alexandra Kollontai?

Of course not. The last person at Harvard University who dared disagree with feminists was Larry Summers, and we know what happened to him. Feminism’s totalitarian terror continues, and the revolutionaries in power have no need for justice now.

ADDENDUM: Why am I such an outspoken and uncompromising anti-feminist? Because it is always smarter in the long run to be an enemy of totalitarians than to be a friend of totalitarians. If you think you can negotiate or compromise with totalitarianism, you are doomed to learn a painful lesson. While researching this article I discovered an interesting historical statistic: Of the 16 original commissars in the Bolshevik regime, nine were executed during Stalin’s 1937-38 purge and another, Trotsky, was assassinated by one of Stalin’s agents in 1940.

Category: Feminism, History, Sex Trouble

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