The Other McCain

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

FREE CATHY BRENNAN!

Posted on | August 26, 2014 | 82 Comments

Cathy Brennan’s Twitter account @GIDWatch got suspended Tuesday because Brennan, a radical lesbian feminist, began “naming names” of those who had signed a petition to end the women-only policy of the Michigan Womyn’s Festival. Transgender activists have been attempting to take over feminist events and organizations, claiming that the fact that they were born with penises and XY chromosomes should not prevent them from being accepted as “lesbian feminists” even if they have not undergone surgery.

Cathy Brennan recognizes this as the shady scam it is:

Trust me: Cathy Brennan is not a conservative and hates everything about my patriarchal heteronormative existence. Nevertheless, Brennan is right about this one thing — women don’t have penises or XY chromosomes. While I don’t want to interfere with any person’s liberty to wear dresses, get themselves injected with hormones and undergo extreme surgery, neither do I think that such people have a right to force others to play along with their psychological dramas and cross-gender fetishism. AMERICA IS A FREE COUNTRY. This means that people are free to disagree with you, no matter how much political power you rally in support of your arguments.

If I am free to call Cathy Brennan a fanatical man-hating nutjob, then Cathy Brennan is free to call me . . . well, whatever. Brennan is also free to say that people with penises are not women, and that even surgery won’t turn an XY-chromosome male into a “lesbian.”

The transgender activists are trying to silence their critics. If they can silence a feminist like Cathy Brennan, guess what? Conservative critics of feminism will be next in line for this suppression of freedom.

Ladies and gentlemen, we must defend this dyke: #FreeCathyBrennan!

 

Category: Feminism

Fat Feminist: ‘Stop Staring at Me!’

Posted on | August 26, 2014 | 76 Comments

Erin McKelle Fischer (@ErinMcKelle) is a Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies major at Ohio University we’ve encountered a few times previously. She has expressed hostility toward “penis-in-vagina sex” and the “norm” of heterosexuality. In June, we took note of her column about “the very real struggles that young feminists face.” Now she has another “very real struggle” to share with us:

Talk about calling in fire on your own map coordinates, huh? Let’s see what Erin has to say about this Important Feminist Issue:

I’m also a body image and fat positive activist, which basically means that I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong or bad about being fat. In fact, I love being fat.
Since I enjoy wearing a lot of clothing that reveals my skin and shows off my body, like crop tops, short skirts and shorts, bikinis, leggings and tight dresses, I have to deal with a lot of backlash. Because god forbid a fat woman likes the way she looks and lets the world know it.
Because fat girls aren’t supposed to take pleasure in our bodies or even consider showing other people what they look like, there is a lot of sh*t that can hit the fan. Mostly caused by other people not knowing how to handle someone as sexy as me owning it.
The good news is that the fat positive movement is starting to take off and people are starting to notice. The #fatkini hashtag has gone viral on Twitter, plus sizes are starting to be sold in the stores of hip and trendy retailers like Forever 21 and H&M, and fat is starting to lose some of it’s stigma as a bad word. We’re making progress.
Despite this, though, some people really need to get an education in how to treat fat girls who like to show off our curves some respect. . . .
If you’re offended by me showing my stomach or the way my thighs jiggle, you need to f*ck off. My body is my own and no one has the right to tell me what to do with it. Period.
Boohoo, you have to look at a fat woman’s body. . . .
The most common reaction I get from others when I wear revealing clothing are stares. Some people will sort of roll their eyes or look disgusted; others will just stare as if I’m some kind of art exhibit at a museum. Either way, there are a lot of stares.
Look, I understand that I’m challenging your views on fat womanhood and forcing you to question your beliefs and attitudes, but keep this contemplation to yourself. Yes, I do notice when you’re looking. Yes, it does make me feel uncomfortable.
I’m not some sort of object to be admired; I’m a human being first and foremost. Respect my right to choose to be fabulous and move it along. . . .
You might have the urge to shame me for daring to own my sexiness as a fat girl, or you may even want to compliment me for my taste. But either way, I really don’t want to hear about it. . . .

You can read the whole thing. I cringe in anticipation of the rude things commenters will say about Erin’s “sexiness as a fat girl.”

 

Category: Feminism

Equal Rights for Hostages?

Posted on | August 26, 2014 | 28 Comments

The United States refused to pay a ransom for James Foley, and it would be sexist discrimination to pay ransom for a woman:

A third American hostage held by ISIS has been identified as a 26-year-old American woman who was kidnapped a year ago while doing humanitarian relief work in Syria. The terror group is demanding $6.6 million and the release of U.S. prisoners for the life of the young woman, who the family requested not be identified.
She is the third of at least four Americans who were known to be held by ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. American journalist James Foley was executed by the group in a video that appeared online last week. Another writer, Steven Sotloff, was seen alive but under duress in the same footage.
In addition to the multi-million dollar ransom, the terror group has also demanded that the U.S. release Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT-trained neuroscientist who was convicted by the U.S. in 2010 of trying to kill U.S. officials two years before, according to a supporter of Siddiqui who has been in contact with the hostage’s family.

Meanwhile, an American has been killed fighting for ISIS in Syria. His name is “McCain,” but he’s probably not close kin. He was born in Illinois and my guess is that he’s from the Mississippi branch of the family, who owned vast plantations in the Delta and from which my Crazy Cousin John is descended. I’m from the East Alabama dirt-farmer branch of the McCain family. My folks never owned anybody.

 

Category: Syria, Terrorism

Nobel Peace Prize Winner

Posted on | August 26, 2014 | 38 Comments

“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

There seems to be some confusion about President Obama’s “foreign policy.” At times, it has been alleged that he actually has a policy, but these allegations have never been substantiated. My perception, after watching this administration’s actions for the past five years, is that the “foreign policy” is just one continual ad hoc improvisation.

It’s not a Mozart concerto, it’s bebop jazz. For example:

The White House is struggling to deliver a clear message on the threat posed by radical Islamist group ISIS and what the administration might do to counteract it.
Officials have sowed confusion by giving different statements at different times on the level of danger posed by the Islamic group, whose full name is the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Obama’s decision last year to ask Congress for authority to level Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces with air strikes is also haunting the administration as it mulls strikes in Syria against ISIS. There have been no guarantees that similar Congressional approval will be sought this time around.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest was peppered with questions on the issue Monday. Referring to the proposed strikes against the Assad regime last year, Earnest responded, “That was a different situation, right?”
But he said little that was definitive about whether attacks against ISIS in Syria are now being considered. Any such action would represent a major escalation from the current situation, in which the U.S. is carrying out airstrikes against ISIS positions in northwestern Iraq.
Strikes within Syria would not merely represent a significant ramping-up of U.S, military action. They would also risk providing de facto assistance to the Assad regime, even while the United States hopes that government will be deposed.

See? The chattering class is convinced that the Obama administration has a “message” problem, when in fact, it’s a policy problem.

Exactly what the hell is the policy? Today is Tuesday, so the Obama administration’s Tuesday policy is in effect, and the Tuesday policy is whatever the hell they decide it is. There’s no long-term plan, no overarching strategy. For the first four years, the Obama administration’s foreign policy was the same as its domestic policy, i.e., “Whatever It Takes to Get Obama Re-Elected.” Now, it seems, the policy is “Whatever It Takes to Help Harry Reid Keep the Senate Majority.”

What this translates to is rather simple:

  1. Try to avoid obvious disasters.
  2. When obvious disasters happen anyway, try to avoid blame.
  3. If you can’t avoid blame, minimize the disaster, accuse critics of racism and get your media friends to change the subject.

As long as the media are eagerly solicitous to pretend that the Obama presidency has been a spectacular success, this approach can never fail. If radical Islamic terrorists were to take over Cleveland, Ohio, next Thursday, the media would unite their voices in a chorus of praise for the president’s handling of the “Cleveland crisis,” and any Republican who pointed out the obvious truth — that the crisis was actually a direct result of Obama’s failed policies — would be denounced as an irresponsible extremist hatemonger.

The media are judging the Obama administration by the standards of a kiddie soccer league where the score doesn’t matter and every child gets a trophy. As a matter of politics, therefore, Obama is always the winner. But policy failure is still policy failure, no matter how many times you call it “success.” If the media had been this blindly partisan in 1968, LBJ would have cruised to re-election on the strength of his “successful” policy in Vietnam.

 

Category: Barack Obama, Iraq, Islam, Media Bias, Syria, Terrorism

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.26.14

Posted on | August 26, 2014 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Federal Judge Strikes Down California’s Waiting Period, But-

Ten-day waiting period struck down

Strikedown only applies to existing gun owners or those with licenses

Who’s Carrying Out Airstrikes In Libya?
Egypt, UAE not bothering to inform Washington

IRS, Eh? Tim Hortons Deal Could Lower Burger King’s Tax Burden
Canadians Less Than Thrilled With Merger



POLITICS
Michael Brown’s Mourners Urge Black Americans To Take Action

Lesley McSpadden wipes away tears during her son’s funeral

Father’s request for a day of peace honored by protesters and thugs alike

Liberal Billionaire Steyer’s Campaign Ads Get Weird

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh Badly Hurt In Car Crash

GOP Says Justice Probe Into IRS Compromised, Demand Special Counsel

VA: Hey, There’s No Proof Care Delays Actually Caused Any Vet Deaths

Rick Perry’s Lawyers File Motion To Dismiss Indictment

DOJ Lawyers Admit Lerner E-Mails Still Exist

McDonnell Cross-Examination Marked By Tense Exchanges

Pentagon Says No Direction From White House To Tone Down ISIS Threat



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Continues Slide On Ample Supply: WTI $93.18, Brent $102.11
S&P 500 Hits New Record, But Doesn’t Crack 2000
Deep Tax Cuts Open Northern Front For US Companies
Asia Shares Firm As Euro Languishes On ECB Easing Hopes
Market Basket: Still No Deal
Judge Rejects Settlement Deal For HP Derivative Lawsuits
Amazon Bets On Gamer Website Twitch In $970 Million Deal
Cellphone “Kill Switches” Will Be Required In California
Facebook Moves To Rid Its Feed Of Clickbait
Samsung/B&N Nook Not Impressing Reviewers
Busted: 5 Myths About Facebook’s Messenger App



SPORTS
Samardzija Dominant As A’s Crush Astros 8-2

8 IP, 6 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 10K

A’s deliver finishing blow with five-run ninth


Blue Jays Fall Short In 4-3 Loss To Red Sox

Fish Rout Angels 7-1

Bombs Away: O’s Bash Five Homers In 9-1 Flaying Of Rays


Yankees Pound Shields For Six Runs En Route To 8-1 Rout Of Royals

Cards Edge Pirates, 3-2

M’s Bats Go Silent, Rangers Win 2-0

Rockies Edge Giants 3-2

Bucs To Sign Richie Incognito?

Burnett K’s 12 As Phillies Edge Nationals, 3-2



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Amanda Peet Pregnant With Third Child

Shown with husband David Benioff

Debuts her baby bump on the Emmy Awards red carpet


Nicki Minaj Has “Wardrobe Malfunction” While Opening VMAs


Watch Out: Kelly Ripa, Rosie O’Donnell Will Be Sharing The Same Building


Solange Knowles MIA At VMAs After Red Carpet Appearance


Croatian Church Turns Thumbs Down On Lena Headey’s Bare Boobs

Hayden Panettiere Announces It’s A Girl At The Emmys

Rapper Young Jeezy Busted For Possession Of Assault Rifle

Celebrities Win Big At Emmys

Emotional Beyonce Weeps At VMAs

TV Theme Songs Get The Weird Al Treatment At The Emmys

“Doll & Em” Finale: Season 2 Not In The Works

“Breaking Bad” Goes Out With A Bang



FOREIGNERS
Ukraine President Poroshenko Calls Snap Election On Eve Of Putin Summit
Obama Okays Surveillance Drones Over Syria
Aggressive Salmond Crushes Darling In Second Scottish Independence Debate
French Government Falls After Austerity Dispute
At Least Fifteen Killed As Car Bombs Detonate In Baghdad’s Shiite Neighborhoods
British Embassy In Washington Apologizes For Tweet Commemorating Burning Of White House
Australian Lawmaker Apologizes For Anti-China Rant
Thousands Flee To Cameroon After Boko Haram Attack On Nigerian Town
Syria Ready To Fight Terror Alongside US
Modi Invites England To Partner In Energy Conservation
Imran Khan: Demonstrations Will Continue Until Sharif Resigns



BLOGS & STUFF
First Street Journal: Democrisy – Do As They Say, And Don’t Even Look At What They Do!
Michelle Malkin: The Jihadi Serial Killer Nobody’s Talking About
Twitchy: Richard Dawkins Offers Weaksauce Apology To Mothers Who Don’t Abort Their Downs Babies
Alfonzo Rachel: We Want Justice, Gin, Juice, Hair Extensions, Rims, And Democrats
American Power: Layoffs At CNN? Start By Firing Serial Plagiarist Fareed Zakaria
BLACKFIVE: Task Force Black Back On The Attack
Conservatives4Palin: Kyle Smith – Why Comedians And “SNL” Are Shielding Obama
Don Surber: Ferguson Is About White Guilt
Jammie Wearing Fools: Chicagoland – At Least 19 Shot In 12-Hour Period Sunday
Joe For America: According To Michigan Teacher, “White Privilege” And The Tea Party Caused Michael Brown’s Death
JustOneMinute: Wrong-Way Columnist – It’s Perry-Bashing Time!
Protein Wisdom: Update From Jeff
Shot In The Dark: Their Masters’ Voice
STUMP: Public Pensions Watch – Rhetorical Failure In Illinois
The Gateway Pundit: Marine Severely Injured After Racially Motivated Beating
The Jawa Report: Where Your UN And US Aid Dollars Actually Went
The Lonely Conservative: Surprise! More Concealed Carry Permits Means Fewer Violent Crimes
This Ain’t Hell: Can’t Bomb Them Into Submission?
Weasel Zippers: Mexico Has Deported 93% Of The Illegal Immigrant Minors Detained At Its Border, And 64K of The 69K Adults
Megan McArdle: Fareed Zakaria And The Mysteries Of Plagiarism


Category: Live at Five

How ‘Fringe’ Is Radical Feminism?

Posted on | August 25, 2014 | 72 Comments

A few days ago, I happened to notice my Turner Middle School yearbook — the Signal, from 1973, when I was in eighth grade — on one of the bookshelves in my office, and started looking through it. My 11-year-old daughter Reagan became curious, and I began showing her some of the pictures, commenting on which girls I had crushes on (basically, all of them) and after a while, Reagan said, “Wow, Dad, you must have been totally annoying.” True, that. Anyway, among the girls I pointed out were (a) Alice, the first girl I ever kissed, and (b) Kathy, the second girl I ever kissed (neither of these kisses happened until ninth grade, however).

Quite coincidentally (the reason I’m telling this) a couple days later, the same Kathy commented on my Facebook page where I’d posted my article “Reading Feminist Theory,” asking about my “obsession with fringe feminist theory. . . . What is your point?”

A fair question. Since I started blogging regularly about this in January (“Mental Illness and Radical Feminism”), several regular readers have appreciated my work and encouraged me to write an ebook about it. Knowing from prior experience what grueling work it is to put together a book, I dreaded the thought, but in July, I finally surrendered. The “Sex Trouble” series, which began July 14 (“Radical Feminism and the Long Shadow of the Lavender Menace”) is basically an ongoing preview of draft chapters. The business of sorting all this stuff out, editing and compiling it, still lies several weeks or months in the future, but regular readers can watch the process as the unwieldy beast takes shape.

My “obsession,” therefore, is actually work, and my point is that “fringe feminist theory” isn’t fringe anymore. Remember this?

Ms. magazine found that over 900 programs in the women’s studies field were functioning in the US in 2009. That meant 10,000 courses teaching over 90,000 students at 700 colleges and universities across the nation . . . That included 31 Master’s programs and 13 Ph.D. programs . . .
[T]he American Association of University Women has started advocating to implement “gender studies” programs in public high schools, and the Feminist Majority Foundation is enthusiastic about the prospect of teaching 10-year-olds about “sexuality and gender identity” with a focus on “gender equity” while girls “are still malleable and relatively free of . . . gender role bias.”

If you research the faculty and curricula of Women’s Studies programs, and examine the content of their output in journals of academic feminism, you find yourself in a swamp of radicalism. Research a little more, and you find that Women’s Studies is “interdisciplinary,” which means that radical gender theory seeps into history, political science, psychology and other fields. The field of sociology, for example, appears to have been swallowed whole by radical feminists. At many schools, Women’s Studies is most commonly a minor, rather than a major, so you have students majoring in psychology, history or English with a Women’s Studies minor, and feminist doctrines thereby become part of the academic discourse far beyond the Women’s Studies classrooms, as these students go onto graduate school in their major field.

The extreme doctrines taught in Women’s Studies are not cordoned off from the rest of academia, and the fear of being accused of sexism — discrimination is a violation of civil rights, which could mean getting dragged into an ugly federal lawsuit — is so overwhelming within higher education that no member of the faculty or administration will criticize the radical feminist agenda. Unhindered by any opposition, then, the high priestesses of radical feminism have an influence on campus far greater than their numbers might suggest. The 90,000 students enrolled annually in Women’s Studies programs are less than 3% of total enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities; however, these numbers add up cumulatively year after year, so that it’s likely there are more than 500,000 American women under 30 who have taken at least one Women’s Studies class. Having scoured the Internet for online syllabi, I can assure you that even the basic “Intro to Women’s Studies” class is likely to be crammed full of radicalism.

In 1998, when Daphne Patai published Heterophobia — a book I highly recommend — this phenomenon was already clearly evident, but radicalism has steadily accumulated strength since then. Because the mainstream media prefer to ignore this subject, you’re not likely to realize how far it’s gone unless you start researching it. While looking for feminist texts on Amazon, for example, I found Interrogating Heteronormativity in Primary Schools: The ‘No Outsiders’ Project, edited by Renee DePalma and Elizabeth Atkinson:

The No Outsiders team, a collaboration of primary education practitioners and university researchers, has taken groundbreaking steps in addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in primary schools. DePalma and Atkinson and their colleagues from the ESRC-funded No Outsiders research team explore and analyze central issues which permeate the team’s challenge to gender conformity through primary education.
The need for primary teachers and other professionals working with children to address equality in relation to sexual orientation and gender expression is becoming increasingly urgent in the light of recent changes in UK legislation. . . .
This academic companion to the team’s practice-focused book drawing on the project teachers’ classroom work, Undoing Homophobia in Primary Schools, will be essential reading for all those in primary education who are concerned to challenge this last bastion of inequality, as well as for students and researchers in sociology, cultural studies, queer studies and related fields where the underlying discourses shaping heteronormativity and gender conformity require urgent analysis in the move towards a fairer society.

Notice this idea — challenging “gender conformity . . . working with children to address equality in relation to sexual orientation and gender expression” — is considered “increasingly urgent” because of changes in British law relating to homosexuality (e.g., the Equality Act of 2007). Similar arguments are being made in the United States and Canada: The legalization of same-sex marriage, we are told, means that our entire education system needs to be revamped to be “inclusive,” yadda, yadda, yadda. It is not enough, then, that your tax dollars should pay for a public school system to indoctrinate kids with atheism, global warming hysteria, multiculturalism and other such progressive dogma. No, it is now necessary that the radicals must “challenge this last bastion of inequality” — primary school — with postmodern gender theory developed by the disciples of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler.

Can you say “gender is a social construct,” boys and girls?

This bizarre experiment was funded with a grant of £575,000 ($950,000) from the British Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and sparked controversy when it made headlines in 2007:

Schools are teaching children as young as four about same-sex relationships to comply with new gay rights laws . . .
They are introducing youngsters to homosexuality using a series of story books in preparation for controversial regulations coming into force next month.
Fourteen primary schools are already taking part in a £600,000 Government-funded study aimed at familiarising children with gay and lesbian relationships.
The research team behind the project intends to post the findings on national websites to help all schools use the books in their literacy lessons. . . .
The academics working on the study say showing children that homosexuality is part of everyday life helps reduce homophobic bullying in the playground.
They claim schools need to ensure they are serving the needs of gay pupils and parents to comply with the Equality Act.
However the scheme sparked alarm among Christian groups who fear the legislation could leave schools open to lawsuits if they refuse to use books with gay characters. . . .
The use of the books in England prompted claims that repealing Section 28 — the law banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools — has increased the use of inappropriate teaching materials.
There are also claims that new gay rights laws, coming into force on April 6, will allow schools to be sued if they do not use homosexual texts. . . .
Dr Elizabeth Atkinson, reader in social and educational inquiry at Sunderland University, said: “The purpose of the project is to support schools in meeting their requirements under the Equality Act, which will require all public institutions to meet the needs of gay and lesbian users.
“There’s very little out there at the moment to enable them to meet the needs of all pupils.”
The No Outsiders project, which has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, is run by Sunderland jointly with Exeter University and London’s Institute of Education.
It has been launched in 14 schools across the North East, the South West, London and the Midlands.
Dr Atkinson added: “We are already finding that books like these are changing attitudes around homosexuality. Pupils are more willing to understand issues of discrimination.”
However Simon Calvert, spokesman for the Christian Institute, said: “The predictions of those who said the repeal of Section 28 would result in the active promotion of homosexuality in schools are coming true.”

The pro-gay British media was alarmed at the backlash:

So far, it has prompted such headlines as ‘Four-year-olds will get gay fairy tales at school’ and ‘Pro-gay kids’ books launched’. In one article, Stephen Green, director of the Christian Voice advocacy group says: “The arrogance of people like Elizabeth Atkinson, using children as guinea pigs is outrageous and thoroughly wicked.”
Sitting in a cafe in Newcastle, Dr Atkinson says she doesn’t mind that the project has attracted such vehement opposition — it’s all part of the wider debate. “To be attacked is a sign of recognition that you are doing something to change the world and the job of education is to change something for the better,” she says. “Fair enough if I’m attacked for changing the world for the better — so be it.
“We knew when we started this that the Christian groups wouldn’t like it because they don’t like homosexuals. It wasn’t surprising.” . . .
“Section 28 led to the continued marginalisation for children and adults who did not fit into specific norms,” says Dr Atkinson. “What repealing Section 28 has done is make it possible for that group of people to have their human rights recognised. It’s no good saying we’re going to have equality but there’s going to be an exception. There should be no exceptions.”
The No Outsiders project has the backing of the Department for Education and Skills and the National Union of Teachers. Dr Atkinson was recently awarded the scholar activist award by the American Educational Research Association.
But she feels a mark of success will be the day that raising awareness of homophobic bullying will be as prominent and normal as education about sexism and racism.
“If you look back 20 or 30 years ago people used to justify racism,” she says.
“We aren’t in any way teaching them about sexuality or teaching them to be gay. We’re teaching them about diversity and the right to be respected. But it will take time.”

Using children as guinea pigs in this taxpayer-funded experiment is about “human rights” and “changing the world for the better,” see?

And if you disapprove, you’re just a homophobic bully.

This totalitarian attitude — compulsory approval — has been fomented on campus within the Women’s Studies/Gender Studies faculty for the past two decades. Genuinely strange ideas about sexuality and gender have flourished within academia because no one was allowed to question feminism’s radical egalitarian dogma. Lawrence Summers, a liberal in good standing, who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, was chased out of his job as president of Harvard University merely for suggesting that there may be “innate” differences between men and women:

Several women who participated in the conference said . . . they had been surprised or outraged by Dr. Summers’s comments, and Denice D. Denton, the chancellor designate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, questioned Dr. Summers sharply during the conference, saying she needed to “speak truth to power.”

Denice Denton? Say, whatever happened to Denice Denton?

Denton, who was openly lesbian, resided part-time in downtown San Francisco with her partner of more than ten years, Gretchen Kalonji, a professor of materials science. On June 24, 2006, one day following Denton’s discharge from the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute where she had been treated for depression, she leapt 33 stories to her death from The Paramount, a high-rise in which she shared an apartment with Kalonji.

Probably just a coincidence.

At any rate, the trends are all pointing in the same direction:

A female PE teacher who groomed a girl pupil and then filmed them having sex in hotel rooms escaped jail yesterday.
Hayley Southwell, 27, started a relationship with the girl when she was 15 but waited until her 16th birthday to have sex with her.
Yesterday Southwell was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to engaging in sexual activity with a child under 18 in a position of trust.
The court heard how Southwell had started the nine-month relationship with the pupil at The Nelson Thomlinson school, in Wigton, Cumbria, in May last year.
At the time the pupil, who cannot be named, was 15 but Southwell groomed her and planned to have sex with her as soon as she turned 16.
Prosecutor Greg Hoare said: ‘Police investigations did not show there was anything of a sexual nature that occurred before she turned 16.
‘It was plain they were counting down the time till this girl was 16 and thereafter a sexual relationship did occur.’ . . .
There were both videos and photographs they had shared with each other, which were ‘intimately explicit’ and of a ‘sexual nature’, it was said.

“Changing the world for the better,” Dr. Atkinson would probably call it.

So that’s my point, Kathy. I’m a journalist. I’m also a Dad.

 

Category: Education, Feminism

Socializing, And Stuff Like That

Posted on | August 25, 2014 | 22 Comments

— by Wombat-socho


As previously mentioned, a couple of weeks ago, we’re doing a couple of get-togethers in the Northern Virginia area to celebrate the smiting of the Dread Pro Se Litigant Brett Kimberlin and whatever else needs celebrating while drinking the beverages of choice, eating sundry nibblements, and having actual face to face conversations. Crazy, right? Anyway, the first of these will be this Wednesday, the 27th of August, at Alexandria’s RockIt Grill, four blocks from the King Street Metro. There’s allegedly parking behind the bar off S. West Street, and of course parking on the street. Me, I’m taking the Metro unless I get a lift from someone. If you plan on being there, please drop me an e-mail so that I can ask for a large enough space for our party. Start time for the Pre-Smittypalooza Midweek Knees-Up & Happy Hour will be 5 PM though I don’t expect most folks to actually show up until 6, what with rush hour. Happy Hour runs from 3-7; wifi is available for those of you feeling antisocial.


A couple of weeks later, on Friday, September 12, to be specific, we’re going to do it again, this time in Herndon at Jimmy’s Old Town Tavern, far far away from any Metro stations. Free parking is available in the municipal lot across the street, Happy Hour is from 4 to 8, and I see no reason not to start at 4, especially if we want to avoid the DJ. They also advertise a Friday Fish Fry special if you like that sort of thing; it’s certainly the only one I’ve seen featuring pierogies and kielbasa. Should be interesting. Again, RSVP so I know how much space to stake out.


Category: smittypalooza

Sex Trouble: Feminism, Mental Illness and the Pathetic Daughters of Misfortune

Posted on | August 25, 2014 | 76 Comments

“The idea that acts of violence can be excused due to a victim’s dress, state of intoxication, location and sexual history is absolutely ridiculous and feeds into a cultural view of sexual assault as not a real crime.”
— Liz Sheridan, SlutWalk Chicago organizer, 2014

“Yesterday’s mental illness is today’s social policy.”
— Kathy Shaidle, “Feminism’s Rotting Corpse,” 2012

If you want to understand feminism, begin by studying abnormal psychology. Perhaps no fact about the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1960s and ’70s is more significant than this: Shulamith Firestone, a pioneering leader of so called “Second Wave” feminism who co-founded the radical feminist group Redstockings, was a paranoid schizophrenic who died alone at age 67, having spent decades on public assistance because of her mental illness.

Feminists can blame Firestone’s pathetic fate on the oppressive patriarchy if they wish, but sane people must suspect that the cause-and-effect are quite opposite. That is to say, while feminists believe that the patriarchy makes women crazy, the rest of us suspect that crazy women made the patriarchy — inventing this imaginary conspiracy of “male supremacy” as the phantom menace of their paranoid minds, a fantasy bogeyman, a rationalization of their own unhappiness and misfortunes.

Here is where the meaning of the famous feminist dictum “the personal is political” exposes the real truth of their ideology. Rather than looking at feminism as a political movement to redress legitimate grievances shared generally by all women, we must understand feminism as a personal movement, concerned with the specific grievances of a distinct minority of women. To oppose feminism is not to say that the personal suffering of these women — the aggrieved minority — is not real, but rather to say that their unfortunate experiences cannot be generalized to justify a revolutionary political agenda that aims to transform society. If we change society for the benefit of the angry few, we risk destroying a society whose benefits provide happiness to the many. Feminists see no problem there; when they talk about “equality,” they mean to equalize misery, too. And most feminists are profoundly miserable.

Women who are sane, normal and happy do not become feminists, because such women do not need feminism. Once you understand feminism as an expression of unhappy women’s psychological needs, the general insanity of feminist doctrine makes perfect sense. This phenomenon was evident in March 2014, when a controversy arose at the University of South Carolina Upstate (USCU) because the university’s Center for Women’s & Gender Studies hosted Leigh Hendrix’s one-woman show, “How to Be a Lesbian in 10 Days or Less.”

Question: Do college girls actually need to be told how to be lesbians? If they are so inclined, do students at USCU (or anywhere else) lack the requisite knowledge to accomplish homosexual activity? Are they smart enough to go to college, yet too stupid to Google this stuff?

Whatever didactic purpose was served by Ms. Hendrix’s performance as part of a USCU symposium called “Bodies of Knowledge,” controversy flared after the event made national headlines:

The show is a one-hour performance that follows Butchy McDyke, a motivational speaker and expert lesbian, as she “deftly guides her captive audience in an exploration of self-discovery and first love, coming out, lesbian sex, queer politics, and a really important Reba McEntire song.”
Hendrix encourages her audience to shout “I’m a big ol’ dyke!” in a show that is “one part instructional seminar, one part personal story, and one part wacky performance art.”

The First Amendment protects Ms. Hendrix’s right to perform her show, but compelling the taxpayers of South Carolina to fund it? That is another matter altogether. South Carolina is one of the most conservative states in the country, and UCSU is in Spartanburg, in the most conservative part of the state. Your right to shout “I’m a big ol’ dyke!” does not include the right to get paid by taxpayers to shout it in a crowded theater full of college kids in Spartanburg, S.C.

Whose crazy idea was this event, anyway? The news reports about the symposium quoted Professor Lisa Johnson, the Director of the Center for Women’s & Gender Studies at USCU, and so I started researching Professor Johnson. I quickly discovered that she is — brace yourself, because I’m afraid this may shock you — a crazy lesbian.

Sex and the Borderline Professor

In 2010, Professor Johnson published a book about her struggles with borderline personality disorder — “a serious mental illness,” according to the National Institutes for Mental Health. In her book, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: Memoir of a Borderline Personality, Professor Johnson describes herself as a “psycho girlfriend” with a history of dysfunctional relationships with both men and women. Her book describes “what amounts to a nervous breakdown as the result of an affair with a married lesbian colleague.” Professor Johnson in 2010 described herself as a “newlywed lesbian” whose partner was apparently her former student:

Stacey Haney was one of Professor Johnson’s most honored students at USCU, receiving one of four Campus Consciousness-Raising Awards for the 2006-2007 school year and also winning an Award for Scholarly Achievement in Women’s and Gender Studies for the 2007-08 school year. Professor Johnson selected the annual CWGS [Center for Women and Gender Studies] award winners in her role as the center’s director. Haney served as president of the student group Upstate Feminists, and in 2008 presented a paper at the Wofford College Conference on Gender entitled, “Butch is Back: The Marginalization of Butch Feminists Across the Feminist and Queer Communities.” Haney, who graduated from USCU in December 2008, subsequently served as a teaching assistant at CWGS . . .

Professor Merri Lisa Johnson.

Is there a law against mentally ill university professors marrying their former students? Not that I know of, not even in Spartanburg, S.C. But shouldn’t the taxpayers of South Carolina have some input on who is employed to teach their daughters? And if it appears that lesbian lunatics are running the Women’s Studies asylum, don’t lawmakers have a fiduciary responsibility to intervene? Evidently, South Carolina legislators thought so, and eliminated the budget for USCU’s Center for Women and Gender Studies in May 2014.

Gay activists may condemn South Carolina as a bastion of homophobia, but the controversy at USCU highlighted the correlation between feminism and mental illness just as much as it did the correlation between Women’s Studies programs and lesbianism. Are there sane heterosexual women teaching “gender theory” at our universities? It’s possible,but when you start checking the curricula vitae of Women’s Studies professors and reading the syllabi for their classes, you gather the impression that lesbianism is both the personal and political agenda of feminism as taught and practiced on campus in the 21st century.

We may avoid speculation about the connection between homosexuality and mental illness, except to note that homosexuality was considered a mental illness per se until 1973, when it was eliminated from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in a vote of the American Psychiatric Association that was controversial at the time. There are sane lesbians, according to the APA, but just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you aren’t also crazy, and if you spend some time examining Women’s Studies textbooks, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that all the really crazy lesbians now have Ph.D.s.

Professor Sue Wilkinson and Professor Celia Kitzinger are so inseparable they share a Wikipedia entry. The British Guardian newspaper reported on this lesbian academic duo in March 2014:

Eleven years after they married, two university academics celebrated becoming legally wed on Thursday, as the law in England and Wales changed to recognise same-sex marriages performed overseas.
Celia Kitzinger, 57, and Sue Wilkinson, 60, who married in Canada in 2003, cracked open champagne and put on the wedding rings they had not worn in England since losing a high court battle for recognition eight years ago.
As the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act came into force at 12.01am, other couples were for the first time able to register their intention to marry under the act, by giving statutory notice; the first ceremonies will take place on 29 March.
Both Kitzinger, professor of conversation analysis, gender and sexuality at York University, and Wilkinson, professor of feminist and health studies at Loughborough University, said they had never believed legal recognition of their marriage would occur in in their lifetimes.
“At midnight we were just by ourselves at a secret romantic hideaway deep in the country, and we actually opened the window of our room and we heard the bells of the local church ringing midnight,” said Wilkinson. “And when the church clock went ‘bong’ we put on our rings and opened a bottle of champagne. It was just magical, special, lovely.”

Professor Kitzinger has been “out” as a lesbian since she was a teenager, and is an editor of the journal Feminism & Psychology. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that Kitzinger and Wilkinson have spent the past two decades attempting to reverse the previous psychological orthodoxy so that, among feminist scholars, it is now heterosexuality which is considered abnormal for women. This was the avowed purpose of Kitzinger and Wilkinson’s 1993 book, Heterosexuality: A Feminism & Psychology Reader:

The set of questions we asked [in seeking contributions to the book from feminist writers] was a deliberate reversal of those which psychology has traditionally addressed to the topic of lesbianism: “What is heterosexuality and why is it so common? Why is it so hard for heterosexuals to change their ‘sexual orientation’? What is the nature of heterosexual sex? How does heterosexual activity affect the whole of a woman’s life, her sense of herself, her relationships with other women, and her political engagements?”

Citing lesbian feminist Adrienne Rich, Kitzinger and Wilkinson complain that, in much early feminist literature, “heterosexuality is simply assumed as the natural, taken-for-granted way to be for most women, obscuring the overt and covert violence with which ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ is forced upon us, through . . . the socialization of women to feel that male sexual ‘drive’ amounts to a right, the idealization of heterosexual romance, rape, pornography, seizure of children from lesbian mothers in the courts, sexual harassment, enforced economic dependence of wives and the erasure of lesbian existence from history and culture.” This is quite a laundry list of grievances, and if some random woman on a street corner were to start jabbering this radical stuff in public, she’d probably be put on a 72-hour psychiatric hold. However, when these words are published in a book by a pair of tenured feminist professors, no one dare criticize their academic gibberish for fear of being condemned as a homophobe and a sexist, to boot.

Heterosexual Feminist? How Dare You!

In the introduction to their book, Kitzinger and Wilkinson describe their “entirely different experiences of heterosexuality”:

[Kitzinger] has always been lesbian, came out aged 16, has never had, or wanted to have, sex with men, and developed a feminist awareness through the experience of living as a lesbian under heteropatriarchy. [Wilkinson] was happily and exuberantly heterosexual, married for 15 years, becoming lesbian only relatively recently through the impact of feminism on her emotional and sexual experience.

Does feminism cause lesbianism, or vice-versa? The answer from Kitzinger and Wilkinson seems to be, “Both.” Their 1993 book may be seen in retrospect as the moment when the “Lavender Menace” — as Betty Friedan called her fear that radical lesbians would take over and discredit the feminist movement — ceased to apologize for its agenda. The lesbian takeover of feminism, especially within the academic enclaves of Women’s Studies, has now progressed so far that it probably never occurred to Professor Lisa Johnson that anyone would think it weird for her to marry one of her lesbian students. Nor, perhaps, did Professor Johnson think it was unusual to stage a university symposium featuring “Butchy McDyke, a motivational speaker and expert lesbian” inciting her audience to shout “I’m a big ol’ dyke!” This kind of craziness has become so commonplace within the feminist echo chamber that they don’t even recognize it’s crazy anymore, not even if the Republican-controlled legislature cuts off their funding.

This craziness is not recent, however, and has existed within feminism for decades. In 1993, when the lesbian academics Kitzinger and Wilkinson sent out letters seeking contributors to their book on heterosexuality, some of the responses were amusing:

Only when we started to compile a list of heterosexual feminists as potential recipients of our letter did we realize how rare such a public identification is. It would have been much easier to compile a list of self-identified lesbian feminists. “Heterosexual” is not a popular label, and many feminists express their concern about it. . . . A couple of women we had known for years in professional contexts, who had never given us any reason to suspect that they were anything other than heterosexual . . . wrote angrily in response to our letter, “How dare you assume I’m heterosexual?” and “Don’t you think you are making one hell of an assumption?”

If “heterosexual feminist” was already a rare identification in academia in the early 1990s, what does this tell us about the field of Women’s Studies today? If it’s practically an insult to assume a feminist is heterosexual — “How dare you?” — is it wrong to suspect that Women’s Studies is not so much a scholarly discipline as it is a means of maximizing academic employment opportunities for lesbians?

No one is surprised to learn that the woman who organized SlutWalk Chicago is a Gender Studies graduate of the University of Illinois-Chicago. Parading around in your panties to protest against “rape culture” may seem crazy to normal people, but normal people don’t major in Gender Studies. Normal people don’t want to “Smash Patriarchy” or “F–k the System,” either.

Straight, Pretty, and Abnormal

Perhaps no feminist is more famous than Gloria Steinem, the longtime editor of Ms. magazine. From the time she emerged as the telegenic face of the Women’s Liberation movement in the early 1970s, Steinem’s good looks made her the living refutation of the oft-heard claim that all feminists were fat, ugly, resentful man-haters.  Steinem was not only ostentatiously attractive, she was also heterosexual, which served to refute accusations that the feminist movement was dominated by lesbians. (Although, of course, it actually was.) Nevertheless, just because she was pretty and straight, it is a mistake to assume that Gloria Steinem was in any way a typical woman.

This point was made recently in a video rant by a British commentator whose online pseudonym is “Sargon of Akkad.” In the video, Sargon intersperses his own (frequently NSFW) comments with a television interview with Steinem. Sargon begins his YouTube rant by reading from the Wikipedia biography of Steinem:

Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio, on March 25, 1934. Her mother, Ruth . . . was a Presbyterian of Scottish and German descent, and her father, Leo Steinem, was the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany and Poland. The Steinems lived and traveled about in the trailer from which Leo carried out his trade as a traveling antiques dealer.
When Steinem was three years old, her mother Ruth, then aged 34, had a “nervous breakdown” that left her an invalid, trapped in delusional fantasies that occasionally turned violent. She changed “from an energetic, fun-loving, book-loving” woman into “someone who was afraid to be alone, who could not hang on to reality long enough to hold a job, and who could rarely concentrate enough to read a book.” Ruth spent long periods in and out of sanatoriums for the mentally disabled. Steinem was ten years old when her parents finally separated in 1944. Her father went to California to find work, while she and her mother continued to live together in Toledo.
While her parents divorced as a result of her mother’s illness, it was not a result of chauvinism on the father’s part, and Steinem claims to have “understood and never blamed him for the breakup.” Nevertheless, the impact of these events had a formative effect on her personality: while her father, a traveling salesman, had never provided much financial stability to the family, his exit aggravated their situation. Steinem interpreted her mother’s inability to hold on to a job as evidence of general hostility towards working women. She also interpreted the general apathy of doctors towards her mother as emerging from a similar anti-woman animus. Years later, Steinem described her mother’s experiences as having been pivotal to her understanding of social injustices. These perspectives convinced Steinem that women lacked social and political equality.

This was hardly what anyone would call a “normal” childhood, then or now, nor was Steinem typical in any other way. Steinem graduated from elite Smith College (where undergraduate tuition for the 2014-15 school year is $44,450), never had children and didn’t marry until she was 66 years old. Sargon comments:

“This is where the confusion has come in, because Gloria is not your average woman. She was raised by an insane single mother. How could she possibly ever know what the average woman is thinking? She is clearly against the idea of the nuclear family. . . . This is exactly the problem with feminism: It goes against what women seem to actually want, and this is led by complete f–king head cases, who presume to speak for all women. She uses the term ‘women this,’ ‘women that,’ ‘women the other,’ as if she has spoken to all women and they had a vote — a unanimous vote for Gloria Steinem to speak for them.”

Here’s the video, which is good for lots of laughs:

 Progressive Parents, Lesbian Daughters

Growing up in seriously dysfunctional families seems to be a common denominator with radical feminists. It seems that if they don’t have “daddy issues,” they’ve got “mommy issues,” and the predictable attempt to blame all their “issues” on male oppression is often at odds with the available evidence. In the case of Professor Celia Kitzinger, for example, one can hardly claim that her radicalism is a reaction against her upbringing — her parents are both prominent (and predictably leftist) British intellectuals. Her father, Uwe Kitzinger, came to England as a child, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, and became an economics professor, eventually head of one of the colleges at Oxford University. Her mother, Sheila Kitzinger, whose own mother was a suffragette, has been called “the high-priestess of natural childbirth,” authoring a number of books on the subject, including the bestseller The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth. Two more progressive parents no child could ever have wished for and, in the book Heterosexuality she co-edited with her lesbian partner Wilkinson, Celia Kitzinger actually includes a chapter by her mother. Sheila Kitzinger writes:

I never planned to be heterosexual, of course. If I had known my three radical lesbian feminist daughters back then, I would probably never have made that decision. I was just. A child of patriarchy, I was shaped by it. I expected to love a man, and did. I married, made a home, had a family, established deep loyalties.
My husband Uwe and I have always shared fundamental values — values which may, just possibly, have had something to do with the fact that three of our five daughters are lesbian feminists, and that we both admire their strength and idealism. . . . [Sheila met her husband] at a meeting exploring the problems and challenges of building a better society. We were anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-discrimination of any kind. . . . We called for world government, full employment, international understanding, world peace.

Uwe and Sheila Kitzinger sound like a perfect parody of the type of progressives who are so open-minded they believe in everything simultaneously. That three of their daughters turned out to be radical lesbian feminists doesn’t seem particularly surprising. As a teenager in the 1970s, their daughter Celia was expelled from a prestigious girls’ school where one of her teachers became her lesbian lover. Celia told her own story in another book, Changing Our Minds: Lesbian Feminism and Psychology:

I grew up in a house full of political argument and discussion: questions of right and wrong, both in personal morality and in international politics, were fervently discussed. As children we were all encouraged to be independent and critical thinkers, to challenge taken-for-granted understandings, to question and to take stands where we believed we were in the right, “to speak truth to power.” Although our sex education began at an early age and included all the details about menstruation, intercourse, conception, pregnancy, and birth, I knew nothing about lesbianism. “It just didn’t occur to me that any of you would be lesbian,” Sheila told me years later.
So when, at the age of seventeen, I began my first sexual relationship with a woman, I was, despite my liberal upbringing, desperately confused and unhappy. . . .

This was circa 1974. Celia was plagued by “feelings of extreme isolation [that] led to a suicide attempt and subsequent hospitalization”:

Three months in a mental hospital, where I was diagnosed as ‘immature’ and ‘jealous of adult sexuality,’ contributed to my developing sense of psychology and psychiatry as dangerous and oppressive to lesbians.

So, naturally, she became a professor of psychology. Celia Kitzinger considers therapy harmful for women because women’s problems are not personal, in her view, but rather political.

Everything must ultimately be blamed on the patriarchy, of course. It is impossible for any feminist to to say otherwise. They have spent so many decades blaming every misfortune on the all-purpose scapegoat of male supremacy that one imagines the radical feminist who stubs her toe screaming in pain: “Damn the patriarchy!”

Feminism is not a political philosophy; it’s an ideé fixe, the obsession of deranged minds. Male supremacy is to feminists what windmills were to Don Quixote or what Jews were to Hitler. This has been true since the Women’s Liberation movement began, even before anyone realized that Shulamith Firestone was clinically insane. In her 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex, Firestone wrote this:

So that just as to assure elimination of economic classes requires the revolt of the underclass (the proletariat) and, in a temporary dictatorship, their seizure of the means of production, so to assure the elimination of sexual classes requires the revolt of the underclass (women) and the seizure of control of reproduction: not only the full restoration to women of ownership of their own bodies, but also their (temporary) seizure of control of human fertility — the new population biology as well as all the social institutions of child-bearing and child-rearing. And just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally. (A reversion to an unobstructed pansexuality — Freud’s ‘polymorphous perversity’ — would probably supersede hetero/homo/bi-sexuality.) The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both would be replaced by (at least the option of) artificial reproduction: children would born to both sexes equally, or independently of. either, however one chooses to look at it; the dependence of the child on the mother (and vice versa) would give way to a greatly shortened dependence on a small group of others in general, and any remaining inferiority to adults in physical strength would be compensated for culturally. The division of labour would be ended by the elimination of labour altogether (through cybernetics). The tyranny of the biological family would be broken.

 What would you call that 275-word paragraph? I call it lunatic gibberish. If you call it “political analysis,” you’re either a radical feminist or mentally ill — two ways of describing the same thing.




 

 

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