The Other McCain

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

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

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.19.14

Posted on | August 19, 2014 | 7 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Gov. Nixon Sends In The National Guard

Police use tear gas to disperse angry crowds

Police unable to maintain order without the Guard as violent protests continue
Obama refuses to answer question about going to Ferguson



Liberia Confirms Seventeen Patients Missing After Attack On Ebola Clinic
WHO urges exit screening in countries with Ebola

Iraqi, Kurdish Forces Regain Control Of Mosul Dam From ISIS With US Air Support
Pentagon spokesman says operations at the dam “ongoing”



POLITICS
Obama Opens Door To “Re-Examining” Military Gear For Police Program

“Can I just finish my golf game?”

“There is a big difference between our military and our local law enforcement, and we don’t want those lines blurred.”

Former Senator “Jumpin'” Jim Jeffords Dead At 80

Westerners Fear Monumental Land Grab By Administration

San Diego City Council Overrides Mayor’s Veto Of Minimum Wage Ordinance

Tom DeLay Calls Perry Indictment “Conspiracy”

Former McDonnell Aide Calls Him “Mr. Honest”, Wife “A Diva”

Power Plant Regulations Spark New Union Rebellion Against Administration



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Sinks To Lowest Since June 2013: WTI $96.18, Brent $101.43
Rival Chains Now Fighting To Buy Family Dollar
Dow Closes Up 176 Points, NASDAQ At 14-Year High
Dollar Stabilizes After US Housing Data, Fed Stance In Focus
Four Indicted In Sale Of Cancerous Beef
Market Basket Vows Effort To End Stalemate
AMD Teams With Toshiba To Make Its Own SSDs
Symantec Folds Nine Norton Products Into One Service
Amazon’s First Fire Phone Update Tackles Interface Problems
Roku TVs Marry Cheap Prices, Proven Smarts
Broadcasters Challenge FCC Over Airwaves Auction



SPORTS
Bold-School Ballmer Steals The Show At Clippers’ Fan Festival

New Clippers owner Steve Ballmer cheers as he greets fans at the Staples Center

Gets respect of Clippers Nation with loud, loony introduction



David Wright Returns To Lineup, Mets Lose Anyway 4-1


Angels Double Up Red Sox, Grab First Place In AL West

Bombs Away For O’s In 8-2 Thumping Of Pale Hose

M’s Phlail Against Phillies, Lose 4-1

Santana Shaky But Braves Win Anyway

Twins Rally Too Little Too Late; Royals Hold On For 6-4 Win

Cards Edge Reds In Extras, 6-5

Snakes Get To Soriano, But LaRoche Saves The Game With Sayonara Homer



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
So Many Models, So Little Room

This pic guaranteed 100% celebutard-free.

Supermodel September!

Christian & Sibi Bale: It’s A Boy!

Milla Jovovich Is Expecting

Wes Bentley Joins Zac Efron In “We Are Your Friends”

Robin Williams’ Final Message Of Hope

Chris Brown Back With Karreuche Tran Because He’s Not Guilty

Sarah Jessica Parker Rocks Swimsuit At 49

Ian Somerhalder Opens Up About Life With Rumored GF Nikki Reed



FOREIGNERS
ISIS Message To America – “We Will Drown All Of You In Blood”
Ukraine Rebels Kill Fleeing Civilians
Gaza Truce Extended; No Sign Of Breakthrough
Modi Government Walks Out On Talks With Pakistan
Israel Reportedly Bars Amnesty, Human Rights Watch Reps From Gaza
Obama Declares Syria’s Chemical Weapons Stockpile Eliminated
Third Largest Pakistan Party, Led By Imran Khan, To Quit Parliament
Train Accident Kills 21 In Eastern India
Merkel Pledges NATO Will Defend Baltic States
Australia, Indonesia Strike Deal To Resume Military, Intel Cooperation



BLOGS & STUFF
First Street Journal: Best Little Outhouse In Kentucky
Michelle Malkin: Read And Remember – Meet The Cops Who Gave Their Lives
Twitchy: “Outsiders Adding Fuel” – Amnesty International Deploys To Ferguson
The AnarchAngel: Wrong Problem, Wrong Solution
American Power: New Violence, Molotovs And Tear Gas In Ferguson Protest Zone
American Thinker: Riding The Tiger
BLACKFIVE: Missouri Calls In The Troops
Conservatives4Palin: Ahead Of Today’s Primary, Joe Miller Talks To Mama Grizzly Radio
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, August 18
Jammie Wearing Fools: The Devastating Effects Of Global Warming – Snow Set To Fall In Scotland
Joe For America: Democrat Mayor Gordon Jenkins Arrested On Bribery Charges
JustOneMinute: Ferguson – None So Deaf As Those Who Will Not Hear
Protein Wisdom: “In Failing To Stop The Islamic State, US Ignores The Lessons Of Auschwitz”
Shot In The Dark: Minnesota’s Potemkin Party
STUMP: Chicago’s Rahm Blames Poor Numbers On Shitty Economy (And Not Dem Legend Daley)
The Gateway Pundit: Protesters Attempt To Storm Gov. Nixon’s Office In St. Louis, Demand Removal Of Guard
The Jawa Report: Islamic State Of Losers Having Very Bad Week
The Lonely Conservative: Officials Received Bonuses Despite Disastrous Obamacare Rollout
This Ain’t Hell: Rep. Engel – “We May Have Boots On The Ground In Iraq”
Weasel Zippers: Shot – Sharpton Criticizes Christie For Going To Party During Ferguson Riots; Chaser – Obama Goes To Jazz Concert During Riots
Megan McArdle: More Bad News For Medicare


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Category: Live at Five

Celebrity Feminist Emma Watson Says Something Really Stupid on Twitter

Posted on | August 19, 2014 | 27 Comments

Emma Watson (@EmWatson) is the actress most famous for her part in the Harry Potter movies. More recently, she has become “Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women,” a job that evidently requires her to say silly feminist stuff on Twitter, e.g.:

Gender equality not only liberates women but also men from prescribed gender stereotypes.

Ri-iiight. Because what guys really need is to be liberated from “prescribed gender stereotypes.” All the hot babes like Emma Watson are crazy for guys who don’t fit “prescribed gender stereotypes,” right? So you will probably be surprised to learn that Emma Watson is dating a bald scrawny impoverished poet the biggest jock at an elite university:

According to a multiple outlets, the 23-year-old former “Harry Potter” film star has recently begun dating a fellow Oxford University student named Matthew Janney. . . .
The UK’s Mirror reported . . . that Janney, 21, is not only a student at the prestigious institution, he is also a star rugby player for their varsity team. Despite his prized athletic skills, Janney has also been recognized for something else: his looks. According to the report, the college student was named “Oxford’s most eligible bachelor” and “best looking player” by the university’s rugby team’s official Twitter account.

In other words, an Alpha male, the epitome of “prescribed gender stereotypes” from which Emma Watson says we need to be liberated.

Smart young fellows figure out that listening to what women say is less important than watching what women do. Women are constantly saying they want sensitive Ashley Wilkes types, even while they’re actually going crazy for the Rhett Butler types. But women are hopelessly fickle and self-contradictory, anyway.

Women are one minute praising the “strong, silent type” of guy as an ideal, and the next minute complaining that their guy doesn’t talk enough about his feelings. If a man organizes his life around trying to do everything a woman says she wants, he’ll end up having a nervous breakdown from the impossibility of the task.

This is not to say that men should be rude and domineering. It is to say that being a spineless doormat isn’t sexy. And if a feminist says she hates “prescribed gender stereotypes,” you can bet that her actions will contradict her words. When all is said and done, the basic human sex instinct is still as simple as, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.” 

Advice to Emma Watson: Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining.

 

Category: Celebrities, Feminism

My Official #Ferguson Commentary

Posted on | August 18, 2014 | 94 Comments

Stop watching cable TV news.

If that commentary sounds familiar to regular readers, it’s because that’s what I said about the Trayvon Martin case. The 2012 Florida shooting controversy dominated headlines for weeks and months, and I don’t remember saying anything else about it until there was a verdict in the George Zimmerman trial: Not guilty.

Here’s the thing: Stories like this happen all the time.

People get shot to death on a daily basis in America, and if I was required to express an opinion every time somebody died in a shooting, I’d never have time to comment on anything else. The only reason that the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, has become The Biggest Story in History of the Whole Freaking World is that (a) Brown was black, and (b) the cop who shot him was white.

That’s it — the whole story.

Criminal suspects getting shot by cops isn’t really unusual. Brown was unarmed, but the policeman who shot him — identified as Darren Wilson — didn’t know that. There was a robbery, and Brown matched the description of a suspect. I don’t know the details of Brown’s encounter with Officer Wilson, and can’t say why he drew his gun and fired. If you forced me to speculate, I’d guess that Officer Wilson believed Brown might be armed, and that Brown made a sudden move that caused Officer Wilson to believe Brown might be reaching for a gun, at which point Officer Wilson made a split-second decision that turned out to be completely wrong. But that’s just speculation, as is nearly 100% of what idiots have been saying about this story.

It was widely claimed, for example, that Brown was shot in the back. Now, after days of rioting that led the governor of Missouri to call out the National Guard to keep the peace, we are told by the Washington Post that Brown was shot in the front — he was shot six times, which seems excessive, but he wasn’t shot in the back. Also, they say, an autopsy found marijuana in Brown’s system.

But that’s the Washington Post reporting that, and I make it a policy never to believe a damned word the Washington Post prints.

Some people seem to think that just because cable TV news is covering a story wall-to-wall, they are obliged to blog about it.

How many people got shot to death in Chicago this past weekend? I don’t know, but I’m going to guess it’s probably more people than the Ferguson, Missouri, police have shot to death in the past five years. (OK, I just Googled it: 7 dead, 29 wounded in Chicago last weekend, including 16-year-old Shaquise Buckner. For killing black kids, the Ferguson police can’t ever hope to rival Chicago.)

When a story like Michael Brown’s death makes national news, it’s because the media decided there’s some kind of Social Justice angle. Matthew Shepard was a story like that, and it took years for people to admit it wasn’t really about “homophobia.”

Cops shooting unarmed suspects is bad. Looting is bad, too. The media, and certain bloggers, seems to have decided that this case deserves to be tried on cable TV news shows. Because we don’t have courts or anything like that in this country, I guess.

So there’s my Official Commentary: Stop watching cable TV news. But if you find a lesbian feminist angle to this story, let me know.

 

Category: Crime, Media Bias, Missouri, Racism

Arkansas Teacher, 57, Gets Probation After Lesbian Molestation of Girl, 16

Posted on | August 18, 2014 | 23 Comments

Helen Banks molested teenage girl.

Monticello, Arkansas:

A 57-year-old school teacher that resigned after being arrested, accepted a plea bargain [Aug. 6], in Drew County Circuit Court.
Helen Banks, a former Drew Central High School teacher, agreed to a term of 8 years probation and will be required to register as a sex offender.
It had been alleged that during a 6-month period, prior to June 5, Banks had “twice engaged in sexual contact”, which was earlier described as “inappropriate contact and communication with a 16- year-old female student.”
Banks was arrested on June 11, and resigned her position on June 12.

(Hat-tip: Interested Participant.)

 

Category: Crime, Education, Gays, Sex

“Mokita”

Posted on | August 18, 2014 | 11 Comments

by Smitty


Mokita is the antonym of Political Correctness, that falsehood we all know but can’t seem to get the Progressive to quit humping like a sexbot.

I guess that’s the irony of the Information Age: we’re we seem to be buried in hooey, rather than elevated by truth. So the question remains whether we have reached Peak Hooey, or whether we need more Commie agitation like in Ferguson, MO to get us there.

via Instapundit

Category: Blogging
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