The Other McCain

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

Ferguson Question For The Gungrabbers

Posted on | August 20, 2014 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

Instapundit notes:

What’s amazing about Ferguson is that, for all the sturm und drang, the casualty count is pretty light.

Are we supposed to expect that, for all the guns and ammo in circulation, Missouri was going to melt down in some vast firefight?

Is there some point to be made that Second Amendment Gestapo really needs to get stuffed, and we can discount anyone calling for “MOAR GUN RESTRICTIONS” than we already have  from consideration for our votes?

Category: Uncategorized

Feminism Repeats Itself, the First Time as Tragedy, the Second Time as Farce

Posted on | August 20, 2014 | 84 Comments

Amy Austin (@amymarieaustin) is a British university student, a lovely blonde soprano, who wrote a blog post about “gender roles” that became something of a viral sensation among feminists. We’ll get to that in a minute, but first let’s acknowledge that Amy Austin has suffered serious misfortune. Her father committed suicide in December. She describes slipping into severe depression after his death:

I went home for a while and the funeral took place. We nearly didn’t make it in time. My sister was hysterical and didn’t want to leave the house, we got stuck in traffic and everything was awful and rushed. I chocked back the tears and I held my sister’s hand because I knew I had to stay strong for her and I didn’t want my family to see my weaknesses. Ridiculous in hindsight I know. Surely it’s more embarrassing not to cry at your own father’s funeral after he was found dead in his flat the day after you sent him a text telling him to get a grip, contact you, asking him, rather rudely, to realize that he was your dad and telling him, rather selfishly, that he needed to be there for you more.

What happened to her father? I don’t know. She speaks of “his flat” as if he lived alone, so I’m guessing her parents were divorced. But searching her blog yielded no information about her parents’ marriage or her childhood home life, so it is impossible to contextualize Ms. Austin’s attitude toward her father, which was rude and selfish by her own admission. Ms. Austin continues:

Back to Bristol, post funeral and after several unsuccessful attempts at waiting it out, I found it increasingly more difficult to cope with everyday life. Getting out of bed for cups of tea was about all I could manage, I looked horrendous, my skin was awful, and university became a thing of the past. If I managed to submit assignments, they were half arsed and not caring became a coping mechanism. This is when I went back to the doctor. I still wasn’t anywhere near the top of the waiting list for therapy so she decided to put me on an SSRI called Sertraline. I happily accepted in the hope that it would be the miracle cure I was waiting for. I couldn’t have been more wrong. After a few days of taking the medication I started to feel disconnected from reality, almost as if my mind and body were entirely separated. I began to watch myself existing as if I was watching from another’s perspective. After a week I wasn’t in control of myself at all. My flat mates watched horrified as I sunk from one low to another, completely incomprehensible to them. I was merely a zombie. Terrified but strangely calm, I had accepted my fate. I spoke to my mum, who told me she would drive up to me to bring me home. I couldn’t think of anything worse. I began pushing my family away and constantly wanted to be alone, but I agreed to get on a train the next day. As I stood waiting for the Northern Line at Kings Cross, I imagined myself falling off the platform. In a split second I snapped back to reality but the overwhelming (albeit fleeting) moment of helplessness was enough for me to scare myself. I called my doctor who told me that these unwanted thoughts and feelings, hallucinations, vivid dreams and blurred reality were awful but normal side effects of the drug, and I was told to carry on taking the medication, at a slightly reduced dosage, for a few more weeks.
Then came the unwanted compulsions. . . . I was self-destructing, and my behavioural patterns entered a vicious circle: the behaviour occurred, then the guilt followed, then the guilt made the behaviour occur once again, and so it went on. . . .
I eventually came off the sertraline slowly after I had a massive breakdown in front of a tutor and a good university friend. They convinced me to do something about it, and they saved my life. I am now on mirtazapine (an NaSSA) and it is amazing. Whilst it’s made me put on weight, I’m enjoying food again, and am enjoying the company of my friends and family.

First — and yes, feminists will deride this as “mansplaining,” which is their way of saying that no man knows anything about anything — get off those medications, Ms. Austin. I’m not saying to stop taking your meds immediately, without consulting your doctor, but I am telling you that (a) psychiatric medication is unnecessary for sane people, and (b) you’re not that crazy, are you? You’ve obviously experienced serious problems coping with stress in the wake of your father’s death, but this doesn’t mean your brain is abnormal.

Second, I’ve been there. When I was 16, my mother died suddenly. I was the one who found her. It would serve no good purpose for me to imitate the sad habit of modern memoir-writers whose goal in telling their stories is to portray themselves as victims of their dysfunctional upbringing, and who therefore publicly trash their own parents and siblings. My parents were good hard-working people, wonderful in many ways. They sacrificed to provide a good life for their three sons and it would be the height of ingratitude and disrespect for me to criticize them for their faults or failures. Nobody’s perfect, and everybody suffers misfortune and disappointment in life.

Rather than complain about whatever problems my parents had, what I will do is to tell you briefly the problems I had: About three years after my mother’s death, when I was 19 years old and on the verge of flunking out of college, one day I was getting high with a dope buddy who had made some psilocybin mushroom tea.

It might be inaccurate to describe my life after my mother’s death as a “downward spiral,” but I was reckless and out of control, and the miracle is that I survived at all — especially after I drank about a quart of that psilocybin tea, and also snorted up some Bolivian flake cocaine for good measure. I’d done lots of drugs before, but I’d never done either psilocybin or cocaine. The coke gave me an awesome euphoria, but I didn’t recognize the effects of psilocybin when that finally kicked in.

After about a week or 10 days of total craziness, my brother came to get me and I was admitted for psychiatric treatment. Recovering from a drug-induced psychotic episode is not easy, and it was a year before I was able to return to college. I made dean’s list my first semester back at school, but my behavior was still erratic, and getting back to “normal” was a slow process. People who think I’m crazy now have no idea how crazy I once was.

Prayer is essential, Ms. Austin. You can laugh if you want, but I’m telling you from personal experience that your problems are a matter of spiritual warfare. Not only must you yourself study the Bible and pray for God’s aid in your struggle, but you must solicit the intercessory prayers of other Christians on your behalf.

It was a blessing to me, in the darkness of the valley of death, that there were good people praying for my deliverance, and guess what? I married a praying woman. As a matter of fact, my wife is an answer to prayer. Our romance was not without its difficulties. I’ll spare you the details, but I prayed to God that my wife would marry me.

Twenty-five years, six children and one grandchild later, I regret that I have not always been as grateful as I should for this miracle. Sometimes my wife gets angry at me, for good reason, and the ferocity of her wrath reminds me of an ancient verse:

Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon,
clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?

“Terrible as an army with banners,” indeed!

But the regular readers didn’t come here for a testimonial sermon, Ms. Austin, they came to see me spank a feminist, and as always I must be diligent in my business, because whatever my hand finds to do, I do it with all my might. Selah. Prophetic authority has foretold of these evil times, Ms. Austin, but let’s just go ahead and quote your highly praised feminist screed, shall we?

Characterised by unequal power relations between men and women, patriarchy systematically oppresses those who are, through no fault of their own, born female. Ironically even the male reproductive cell triumphs here. If patriarchy wasn’t bad enough, biologically speaking men fundamentally control sex, albeit unintentionally, making it difficult for society (although I say society very loosely, clearly there are many who do so) to refute the ideology that men are biologically ‘superior’. Described as a Social System in which men are at the forefront of social organisation, patriarchy, although historically epitomised through political authority (what’s changed?), is very much in the present. Society tends to have an uneasy relationship with power and power relations tend to be socially constructed. More often than not we are offered a socially formulated interpretation of power based on pre-constructed patriarchal ideals, stemming from hundreds of years of parliamentary history, male rulers and inequality.

On second thought, Ms. Austin, maybe you should stay on the mirtazapine, because this lunatic gibberish of yours very much resembles the symptomatic “word salad” of schizophrenics. Can you step back from your subjective feelings far enough to behold the objective fact? Your father committed suicide, and here you are ranting about “patriarchy”? Hello? Can you say “acting out”?

There are layers and layers of painful irony in your situation, and your regurgitation of feminist jargon — “power relations . . . socially constructed” — is a poor substitute for therapy. But that’s the problem: You go to the doctor, who is paid to give you pills, so you take the pills, but you never get any help understanding the real sources of pain that have caused your spiritual crisis. More:

Social constructions of gender, like power, stem from patriarchal ideologies- how often have we heard the phrases “man up!” (because you’re acting “like a girl” and femininity equates to feebleness of course) or “you hit/fight/run/throw (you can pretty much substitute this with anything) like a girl!” Meant as an insult because of course, running “like a girl” means that you’re not running “like a man”, and of course not running “like a man”means that you aren’t running properly. Socialisation, whilst imperative in terms of forming independent personal identities, brings with it an air of ‘dirtiness’. The term talks of a process whereby an individual “acquires a personal identity and learns the norms, values, behaviour, and social skills appropriate to his or her social position.” (Dictionary.com) The word”appropriate” troubles me somewhat. Who are we to define what is or is not “appropriate”, or what does or does not constitute as gender? What does it mean to be male? Why should masculinity define superiority and in turn heroicness?

Anyone can read the rest of that. Suffice it to say that Ms. Austin is lost in the tangled underbrush of postmodern “gender theory,” and one almost wishes it were possible to have an “intervention” for her, like they do for drug addicts. Her rhetoric is a bad imitation of Judith Butler or Janice Raymond or some other eminent lesbian feminist whose books or essays she’s been assigned in school.

Amy Austin’s amateur feminism is like me as a teenager, trying to imitate the sex, drugs and rock-n-roll lifestyle of my guitar heroes. I didn’t have a private jet or a million-dollar recording contract, so there was no “glamour” in tripping out on psilocybin. And whereas eminent professors of Women’s Studies live a rather privileged life — faculty tenure, paid speaking engagements at feminist conferences, book deals, newspaper columns, TV appearances, etc. — the young amateur wannabe feminist receives none of these rewards for online mimicry of her academic feminist idols.

Nor can feminism solve Ms. Austin’s problems. More than 40 years have elapsed since the Women’s Liberation movement erupted in the late 1960s and early 70s, and one thing has remained constant throughout: Unhappy women are still unhappy.

In fact, having witnessed these four decades of history, I do not hesitate to say that women in general are now much less happy than they were when the Women’s Liberation movement began. The heedless pursuit of “equality” and “freedom” — really, what do these slogans mean? — has been accompanied by a plague of misery, loneliness, sexually transmitted diseases and broken minds.

Shulamith Firestone, whose 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex was one of the first works of radical feminism, died alone in 2012, having suffered through decades of schizophrenia. Yet her descent into madness, while generally known among feminists, was a sort of trade secret in the women’s movement, as was the unusual prevalence of  lesbianism among feminist activists and intellectuals. Every imaginable kind of kook, freak, and misfit jumped on the bandwagon of Women’s Liberation back in the day, and yet nowadays feminists become indignant when you refer them to polls indicating that most women reject feminism per se:

Meanwhile, the vast majority of women, according to a Huffington Post poll, don’t consider themselves feminists — and only six percent consider themselves “strong feminists.”

The same poll, of course, found that most women say they believe in “equality,” but what does that word mean to most people? Does the woman who tells a pollster she believes in “equality” share the feminist belief that all women are victims of male oppression? Does she sit around brooding about “gender roles” and “compulsory heterosexuality”? Is she reading Sheila Jeffreys and Andrea Dworkin? Is she fighting to overthrow patriarchy? Probably not.

Amy Austin is unhappy, and I do not doubt she has legitimate cause for her unhappiness. What I do doubt is that Amy Austin will find happiness through feminism, unless she’s a lesbian.

As I keep saying, feminism is a journey to lesbianism. If a woman has such an overwhelming resentment of men and such an aversion to normal “gender roles” that she is incapable of finding satisfaction in her relationships with men, she might as well place a “girlfriend wanted” ad online and admit she’s a failure at heterosexuality.

Is there some young fellow out there, perhaps, who would want Amy Austin to become his wife and the mother of his children? If so, he had better make known his love for her quite soon, before she gives up hope on men entirely. She publicly declares she’s “bisexual,” but if she’s like most young women who say they’re bisexual, I figure that’s merely her way of advertising her loneliness.

HETEROSEXUAL CLEARANCE SALE
Badly damaged girl, available at a steep discount to the right male customer. Guys, this is your last chance to cope with her irrational demands, subnormal  libido, and occasional bouts of unexplained crying. Hurry now for this unbelievable bargain, before she turns completely queer!

Excuse my caustic sarcasm, Ms. Austin, but my point is very simple: Your problems are your problems, and attempting to externalize blame for your unhappiness — to scapegoat men by ranting about the “patriarchy” — is the opposite of therapeutic. You are quite literally making yourself crazy, and your jargon-crammed feminist screed is a symptom of your illness, not a cure.

Welcome to your own personal Judgment Day, Amy Austin.

These evil times have been foretold by prophetic authority, and souls are being winnowed like wheat on the threshing floor.

Try to clear from your mind the confusion sown by “theory,” and resolve yourself to confront the actual facts. You attend Bristol University, and it took little research to discover that Bristol has a very lively LGBT scene. No one is stopping you from heading down to Frogmore Street and surveying that scene with calm objectivity. Do you see there a future you can envision for yourself?

It is certainly not my prerogative to make your choices for you. I’m merely trying to point out to you what your choices are.

“See, I have set before thee this day life and good,
and death and evil . . . I call heaven and earth to
record this day against you, that I have set
before you life and death, blessing and cursing:
therefore choose life, that both
thou and thy seed may live . . .”

There is no one exempt from that judgment, not me, not Amy Austin, not anyone who reads this. “Therefore choose life.”

P.S.: Pray hard. Then pray harder.

P.P.S.: Avoid psilocybin.

 

Category: Feminism

Go For The Fundraiser, Perry

Posted on | August 20, 2014 | 12 Comments

by Smitty

Rothman needs to think outside the media bag of tricks:

[Reporting for a mug shot in response to the abuse of power indictment is] really bad news for those who backed Perry’s prospective 2016 presidential campaign. No matter how frivolous the charges Perry faces, and they are frivolous, few politicians can recover from having a police mugshot follow them around wherever they go. And Perry’s mugshot will do just that in 2015 and 2016.

You take that mugshot, slap it on T-shirts, and start counting the money. Surely a CPAC fashion sensation.

On the other hand, the Puffington Host seems to think that maybe Perry was kind of doing some shady things and that probably vetoing the budget for the Public Integrity Unit was sort of a about mostly getting the “good guys” off of the trail of corruption.

I guess if that held true, then intrepid investigative reporters would just expose Perry’s corruption, wouldn’t they?

I’m going to have to double down on my suggestion and recommend that Perry sport a scraggly goatee & beret for a mug shot photo on a T-shirt.

Category: Republicans, Texas

American Journalist James Foley Beheaded by Islamic Terrorists

Posted on | August 20, 2014 | 100 Comments

The killers blame Barack Obama:

A video released by ISIS shows the beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley and threatens the life of another American if President Barack Obama doesn’t end military operations in Iraq.
In the video posted Tuesday on YouTube, Foley is seen kneeling next to a man dressed in black. Foley reads a message, presumably scripted by his captors, that his “real killer” is America.
“I wish I had more time. I wish I could have the hope for freedom to see my family once again,” he can be heard saying in the video.
‘The world’s most ruthless terrorists’ American journalist beheaded by ISIS
He is then shown being beheaded. . . .
Obama was briefed about the video, and “he will continue to receive regular updates,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said.
ISIS has carried out executions, including beheadings, as part of its effort to establish an Islamic caliphate that stretches from Syria into Iraq. In many cases, ISIS — which refers to itself as the Islamic State — has videotaped the executions and posted them online. . . .
Foley disappeared on November 22, 2012, in northwest Syria, near the border with Turkey. He was reportedly forced into a vehicle by gunmen; he was not heard from again. At the time of his disappearance, he was working for the U.S.-based online news outlet GlobalPost. . . .
The video of his killing also shows another U.S. journalist. The militant in the video, who speaks English with what sounds like a British accent, says the other American’s life hangs in the balance, depending on what Obama does next.
The journalist is believed to be Steven Sotloff, who was kidnapped at the Syria-Turkey border in 2013. Sotloff is a contributor to Time and Foreign Policy magazines.
The Committee to Protect Journalists estimates there are about 20 journalists missing in Syria, many of them held by ISIS.
Among them is American Austin Tice, a freelance journalist who was contributing articles to The Washington Post. Tice disappeared in Syria in August 2012.

(Hat tip: Memeorandum.) Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the terrorists who executed Foley the same “militants” the Obama administration supported during the 2011 “Arab Spring” in the State Department/CIA plan to overthrow Syria’s Assad regime?

 

Category: Iraq, Islam, Syria, Terrorism

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.20.14

Posted on | August 20, 2014 | 6 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
52 Arrested, Two Shot; Four Officers Injured In Ferguson

Tonight’s news priorities

93% of those arrested not from Ferguson; 27% not from Missouri
Peaceful protesters plead with people on the streets to go home
Gov. Nixon refuses to remove county prosecutor

Nigeria Scrambles To Contain Ebola
President Jonathan declares national emergency

Egyptian Talks Fruitless As Gaza Truce Broken By Heavy Fighting
Hamas fires rockets, Israel responds with airstrikes



POLITICS
GOPe Favorite Dan Sullivan Holds Early Lead In Alaska Senate Primary

Sullivan, Joe Miller, and Mead Treadwell

With 20% of precincts reporting, it’s Sullivan 40%, Miller 33%, Treadwell 24%


Texas Judge Refuses To Issue Arrest Warrant For Gov. Perry


Suit Claims White House Meddling In Records Requests

LA Schools Ease Discipline To Stem Dropouts

Louisiana Judge Rules Against Gov. Jindal In Common Core Lawsuit

Staten Island DA To Convene Grand Jury In Eric Garner Chokehold Death

Army General Accused Of Blocking Afghan Hospital Probe

Poll: Common Core Standards Losing Support Nationwide



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Holds Near 14-Month Low On Plentiful Supply: WTI $94.97, Brent $101.07
Asian Stocks Steady On Robust US Data; Dollar Extends Gains
Apple Stock Soars To Record Highs Amid New Product Optimism
Home Depot Profits Jump In Second Quarter
Consumer Prices Edge Up 0.1% In July
Corn, Soy Ease As US Crop Tour Sees Bumper Yields
HTC Releases Windows Version Of One M8 Phone
Sprint Launches $100 Family Plan
Google Courts Controversy With Accounts Aimed At Children
One Big Tablet For Children To Share
Snapchat In Talks To Expand Services



SPORTS
Andrew McCutcheon Returns From DL, Pirates Lose Anyway

The Pirates star: outstanding in his field

Buccos’ skid reaches seven games after 11-3 beatdown from Braves


Gee Loses Fifth Straight As A’s Top Mets 6-2


Fish Edge Rangers In Extras, 4-3

Iwakuma Blanks Phillies For 8, Mariners Win 5-2

Carter Hits Three-Run Dinger In Ninth; Astros Beat Yanks 7-4

Tribe Tops Twins 7-5

O’s Dominate White Sox, Now 20 Games Over .500

Nats Streak Reaches Eight With Rout Of Snakes



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
I conic Announcer Don Pardo Dies At 96

Dominick George Pardo, 1918-2014: RIP

Probably most famous for 38 years as announcer on “Saturday Night Live”



Benedict Cumberbatch Joins “Jungle Book” For Warner Brothers


Kevin Smith And Johnny Depp Team For Action-Adventure “Yoga Hosers”

Julianne Hough Returns To “Dancing With The Stars” As Judge

Jennifer Lopez And Casper Smart Together Again?

NFL Looking For Acts To Pay To Play Super Bowl Halftime Show

Billy Crudup, Ezra Miller, Michael Angarano To Star In “Stanford Prison Experiment”

We Can Blame TLC For Kate Gosselin’s Continued Notoriety

Taylor Swift Announces New Album, Performs Single “Shake It Off”

“Agents Of SHIELD” Enlists Adrienne Palicki As Marvel Favorite Mockingbird



FOREIGNERS
Kidnapped Journalist James Foley Apparently Executed By ISIS
Pakistan Crisis Puts Army Back In The Driver’s Seat
Landslides Kill 27 In Hiroshima
Pakistan’s Ambassador To India Defends Meeting Kashmiri Separatists
Advancing Ukraine Troops Take Fight To Heart Of Separatist Rebellion
UN Announces Emergency Aid For 500,000 In Northern Iraq
Chinese Media Cautiously Optimistic On Vatican Ties
Boko Haram’s Janissaries
NATO To Shun Eastern Troop Buildup In Nod To Russia
Kasem Family Pleads With Norway To Deny Wife’s Burial Request



BLOGS & STUFF
First Street Journal: We Don’t Know Enough For Informed Commentary, But We Do Know Al Sharpton Is Despicable
Doug Powers: AP Headline Perfectly Encapsulates Obama’s Presidency
Twitchy: State Assemblyman Declines Lunch With Mexican President To Protest Tahmooressi Captivity
Popehat: Crowdsourcing Justice – Help Get Brett Kimberlin Declared A Vexatious Litigant (h/t Joy McCann on Facebook)
American Power: ISIS Beheads James Foley In Warning To Obama
American Thinker: Obama’s Rage
BLACKFIVE: Religion Of Pieces
Conservatives4Palin: Sharyl Attkisson – Obama Released Over 600 Illegals With Criminal Convictions
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, August 19
Jammie Wearing Fools: Illiterates Rally In Ferguson – “This Is Not The Time For No Peace”
Joe For America: Trampling On Coal Country Families
JustOneMinute: The NYT (Finally) Opposes The Perry Indictment
Protein Wisdom: Harry Reid Finds That He May Not Be Eaten Last After All!
Shot In The Dark: Trulbert! Part VI: Currency Events
STUMP: Escheatment – Looking For Change In The Couch Cushions
The Gateway Pundit: Officer Wilson Suffered Blowout Fracture To Eye Socket During Mike Brown Attack
The Jawa Report: Brightstar Energy Creates Bird Death Star
The Lonely Conservative: Not One State Has Seen Employment Increase Since Recession Began
This Ain’t Hell: Bayonets? Really?
Weasel Zippers: Bill Maher Hits Fellow Libs For “Pretending All Religions Are Alike” After Foley Beheading
Megan McArdle: Coming To Your Dinner Table – California’s Drought


Shop Amazon – Get Ready For Football With Up To 60% Off Protective Equipment

Category: Live at Five

You Lost Me at Marx, Gail Dines

Posted on | August 19, 2014 | 24 Comments

The feminist troll @UniLantern jumped my timeline on Twitter this afternoon and got as much respect as she deserves:

Understand that my “Sex Trouble” series, about which the troll was enraged, is about exposing the exact kind of ideology she espouses. That is to say, she is angry at me because I am publicizing her own beliefs to a larger public that has no idea how extreme feminist theory really is. Radical feminists are used to talking to themselves inside the academic echo chamber, where no one will dare talk back to them for fear of being fired or sued for “harassment” (openly disagreeing with feminists is now considered a form of harassment on some university campuses). Feminism’s hegemony in elite academia means that the radicals are free to indoctrinate young college women with their anti-male/anti-heterosexual ideology, and the students are never permitted to hear a counter-argument.

So I was checking the troll’s Twitter timeline and noticed she had tweeted out a video of a 2012 lecture by Professor Gail Dines, posted to YouTube by Dines’ group, StopPornCulture.org. It so happens that I, as a Christian, agree with radical feminism’s opposition to pornography and, as a parent, I am seriously concerned about the influence of pornography in our culture. Dines’ controversial book, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, is one I’ve heard about via reviews and commentary from her critics and supporters and, although I haven’t read her book, I agree with her basic point: The Internet has spawned a generation of young porn addicts, whose sexuality is being warped by mass consumption of this vile stuff online.

Older readers may need to be told what we’re talking about: This isn’t just the Playboy centerfold stuff, OK? Gail Dines isn’t writing in opposition to pretty ladies posing naked. No, what we’re talking about is pretty ladies doing nasty, explicit and inarguably degrading things or — more to the point — having these things done to them.

The porn problem that has exploded online in the past two decades is creepy, perverse and humiliating hard-core stuff that I promise I never imagined doing to those Playboy centerfolds back when I had a couple of issues hidden under my mattress in 1972. It seems to me, really, that the easy availability of hard-core porn online has impaired the erotic imaginations of freaks who can’t conjure up their own deranged fantasies, but instead need to have someone demonstrate for them the wicked behaviors they crave.

Having known people whose lives were ruined by porn addiction, I’m against this, but liberal First Amendment absolutists long ago destroyed the opposition — and the Porn Über Alles crowd triumphed with active assistance of so-called “pro-sex” feminists.

Of course, the anti-porn feminists were the same radicals I’ve been writing about for the past six months, but those left-wing lesbians were certainly correct about one thing: Porn is bad.

Gail Dines, like all other radical feminists, is only correct when she approaches the truth by a process of intellectual circumnavigation, following her left-wing ideology until she arrives at what is actually a conservative conclusion.

Now, watch this hour-long video, in which Dines sets up as the bogeyman of her tale “neoliberalism,” i.e., free-market democracy, noticing that (a) at about 3:20 she attacks Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and (b) at about 11:00, she quotes Karl Marx:

Long before Gail Dines gets to the anti-porn part of her lecture, she has already attacked the only possible economic basis of a free society, to say nothing of disparaging the two world leaders who did the most to rid the world of the oppressive and violent totalitarian menace of Soviet communism. And here’s two words that Gail Dines never says to her audience: Meese Commission.

You can look it up: The Reagan administration actually tried to do something to fight the spread of pornography, but were unable to do so because of opposition by . . . Democrats and feminists.

Until Gail Dines tells the truth about Democrats as the Pervert Party, she can’t be trusted to tell the truth about anything. Even when she’s right, she’s still wrong. Porn is bad. Marxism is worse.

 

Category: Feminism

A Lesbian Feminist Horror Movie

Posted on | August 19, 2014 | 35 Comments

Lesbian actress Ingrid Jungermann (left) and director Stewart Thorndike.

Working on “Sex Trouble,” my continuing series about radical feminism, I routinely search Twitter for relevant news and commentary. Searching for “lesbian feminist,” this headline popped up:

Lyle Director Stewart Thorndike on Making
the Lesbian Version of Rosemary’s Baby
and the Need for Feminist Horror

We will proceed to criticism of Ms. Thorndike’s film Lyle, but first this thought: Does anyone else notice how “lesbian” and “feminist” go together so naturally that the writer who did this interview, Kelcie Mattson, sort of took it for granted? Because I’ve spent so much time researching the subject, I’m beginning to take it for granted, too. Just a couple of quick examples from Twitter:

What you see here is young women spontaneously associating the terms “lesbian” and “feminist,” occasionally to defend these terms, occasionally as a sort of joke. As we have seen, however, this association is not accidental; since the early 1970s, radical feminists like Artemis March and Charlotte Bunch have insisted that lesbianism is essential to women’s equality and liberation. And if you accept their premise — that heterosexuality involves a condition of subordinated inferiority imposed on females by the male-dominated patriarchal society — it is impossible to dispute their lesbian/feminist conclusion.

For more than four decades, so-called “mainstream” feminism has attempted to marginalize (or at least to conceal from widespread public scrutiny) the outspoken advocates of this radical ideology, despite the fact that lesbian feminism is the logical conclusion of the basic feminist theory, which views men and women as collective groups that have inherently hostile interests. However, in the Women’s Studies programs that have proliferated on American university campuses, enrolling more than 90,000 female students annually, the curriculum invariably features lesbian feminist treatises, and the professors who teach these courses are often themselves proudly “out” lesbians. Graduates of Women’s Studies programs are employed in key roles at “mainstream” feminist organizations, so that the radical agenda and the mainstream agenda have steadily merged over the years.

All of this was sort of “inside baseball” within the feminist movement until the past decade. The 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision and the 2013 Windsor v. United States decision, however, have legitimized homosexual equality, meaning that gay adulthood is now a socially acceptable and legally protected condition. From this “emerging awareness” (to quote Justice Anthony Kennedy’s decision in Lawrence) it is logical to assume that one purpose of education now is to prepare young people for their lives as gay adults. Post-Windsor, you will be condemned as a homophobic hater if you disapprove of gay advocacy in public schools, and all opposition to such advocacy must be swept away in the name of “social justice.”

The general trend is unmistakable, if you pay close attention, and the teleological meaning of “equality” becomes apparent, the conclusion of the radical syllogism being implicit in its premises.

While much conservative criticism of the gay-rights movement has focused on male homosexuals, however, few conservatives noticed that lesbians actually bring greater ideological resources to the battlefields of the Culture War. They are both gay and women and, in terms of the Competitive Victimhood Derby that is modern progressivism, this places lesbians in a position to claim that they are suffering from double discrimination. Because feminism has always been a movement of the political Left, and because the Left is fanatically committed to gay rights, no woman who considers herself a feminist would dare disparage the militant lesbians who increasingly dominate the official institutions of feminism. Heterosexual women concerned about workplace harassment or abortion rights might not publicly lock arms in solidarity with lesbian radicals. The “mainstream” feminist may quietly ignore the angry dykes ranting about the heteronormative patriarchy. Yet no woman could hope to maintain her status as a feminist if she were to publicly denounce the academic radicals who relentlessly strive to teach girls that lesbianism is the feminist ideal. Professor Daphne Patai, who spent a decade teaching Women’s Studies classes at the University of Massachusetts, saw this trend emerging, and described it in her 1998 book Heterophobia:

Something very strange happened toward the end of the twentieth century. Heterosexuality went from being the norm to being on the defensive. By calling this phenomenon “heterophobia,” I am not speaking abstractly. Rather, I am referring to a distinct current within feminism [since the late 1960s], a current that has been “theorized” explicitly by feminist scholars and agitators alike as they attack men and heterosexuality.

If this trend was apparent more than 15 years ago, we ought not be surprised now to see high-school girls declaring themselves lesbian feminists on blogs, on Twitter and elsewhere. The ideas of the 1970 Radicalesbian manifesto and Adrienne Rich’s 1980 treatise “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” have been gradually diffused throughout the culture. And so we return to Stewart Thorndike’s lesbian horror film Lyle.

The movie premiered at New York’s Outfest for gay films. Ms. Thorndike wrote and directed the film, and cast her girlfriend Ingrid Jungermann as the lesbian partner of the protagonist played by Gaby Hoffman. An excerpt (no spoilers) from a recent review:

Lyle stars Gaby Hoffmann as Leah and Ingrid Jungermann as June, a lesbian couple with a young daughter, Lyle, in search of an apartment in New York City. And although somewhat disturbed by an off-kilter landlady, the couple settles into a comfortable dwelling to raise Lyle and the new baby which Leah is carrying. Things immediately go bad in this one-hour horror story that gives the viewer very little breathing room as it makes very good use of every minute of that hour. Hoffmann’s Leah carries the film as her partner is almost constantly away at a recording studio working on an increasingly successful music career. Without giving away too much of the story, simply know that a life-altering tragedy occurs and Leah’s mental well-being is crushed along with the picturesque life she and June were building. Determined to discover just what is truly tormenting her life and how deep the web of deceit goes, Leah turns to researching her new apartment and her strange landlady and begins to put the pieces together. But is the puzzle truly an evil plot, or is it Leah’s fragile psyche playing tricks on her?

Having promised no spoilers — and I haven’t seen the movie — I’m going to take a wild guess that the villain of the movie, the “strange landlady,” is some kind of hateful homophobe. Ah, but what was the inspiration? From the interview with Ms. Thorndike:

The story for Lyle came to me in this one, really clear moment. I was dating Ingrid [Jungermann], who plays June, at the time and was mad at her. I wanted to have a kid, and she didn’t. I was in the shower — angry — and I had this thought: she’s bad. Then the whole story of her preventing me from having all these babies I wanted slammed into my head. I remember jumping out of the shower, jotting the whole thing down, looking at it, and thinking, Oh, I just wrote the story for Rosemary’s Baby a little. But the lesbian version.

Isn’t this interesting? A lesbian couple angrily arguing because one of them wants children and believes her partner is “preventing me from having all these babies I wanted.” You can’t blame that problem on the heteronormative patriarchy, can you?

But notice the way Thorndike answers this interview question:

What do you think your perspective brings to the genre, and to Lyle in particular, with its deliberately female/LGBT-focus?
Thorndike: Maybe Lyle‘s contribution to LGBT stuff is that it normalizes it. They just happen to be gay — it’s not the storyline.

Wait a doggone minute there. The movie is about a lesbian couple having babies together and the director has declared that it was inspired by a quarrel with her girlfriend, who is cast as one of the partners in the movie, and yet “LGBT stuff” is “not the storyline”?

Do people like this actually understand what they’re saying? Or is it the case that their worldview is so prevalent in elite culture that they are accustomed to never having their ideas criticized?

Also, I’m guessing Ms. Thorndike isn’t a fan of Disney movies . . .




 

 

THE ‘SEX TROUBLE’ SERIES:

 

Category: Culture, Feminism, Movies, Sex Trouble

A Statement To Ponder

Posted on | August 19, 2014 | 133 Comments

by Smitty

Emphasis mine:

A hundred years ago, the first group of progressives concluded that this country needed to change in a big way. They argued explicitly for a refounding of the United States on the grounds that the only absolute in political life is that absolutes are material and economic rather than moral in nature.

That’s one of those statements that leaves one rubbing the chin. It seems plausible on the face of matters. However, having taken one’s eyes off the Almighty, much is possible. As someone wicked once said:

. . .All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

Category: Culture
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