The Other McCain

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

Being an Atheist Is Bad. Being an Obnoxious Atheist Is Worse.

Posted on | July 29, 2014 | 76 Comments

Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) is inarguably obnoxious:

Prominent atheist and professional provocateur Richard Dawkins has sparked a fierce debate on Twitter after he classified certain types of rape and paedophilia as “worse” and milder than others.
“Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think,” Dawkins tweeted on Tuesday morning.
He had earlier tweeted: “X is bad. Y is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of X, go away and don’t come back until you’ve learned how to think logically.”
He followed it up with: “Mild pedophilia is bad. Violent pedophilia is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of mild pedophilia, go away and learn how to think.”

Am I the only one who notices that Dawkins was not merely demonstrating a logical principle, but that both of his examples were attempts to diminish the wrongness of sexual crimes? That is to say, if he had merely wished to demonstrate the principle, he could have said, “Armed robbery is bad. Murder is worse,” etc. But he didn’t do that, did he? No, it is specifically in the area of sex offenses that The Great Darwinian insists that we must learn to see gradations of moral relativity.

He insists that we mere mortals have misunderstood his genius.

 

Category: Science, Sex

Woman’s Harassment Lawsuit Claims Yahoo Executive Is Lesbian Predator

Posted on | July 29, 2014 | 36 Comments

Maria Zhang (left) and her accuser Nan Shi (right).

If women never lie about rape, as feminists have been lecturing us for decades, who are we supposed to believe when a woman claims that her lesbian boss subjected her to sexual harassment?

A high-ranking executive at Yahoo is being sued by an ex-employee on charges of sexual harassment . . .
The high-ranking executive being accused, Maria Zhang, plays a key role in Yahoo’s mobile content development efforts.
The complainant, Nan Shi, was working as a software designer at Yahoo, and says she was repeatedly coerced by Zhang into having “oral and digital sex.” Shi says she was terminated after she later refused Zhang’s advances.
Shi filed her sexual harassment lawsuit [July 11], naming Yahoo as a defendant and charging Zhang with sexual-harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and wrongful termination. . . .
Shi moved into Yahoo temporary housing (under orders from Zhang, she says), and Zhang soon moved in with her, the attorney said. It was then that the alleged harassment took place.
“While staying with Plaintiff, Zhang coerced Plaintiff to have oral and digital sex with her on multiple occasions against her will, even after Plaintiff told her she did not want to have sex,” the complaint alleges.
“Zhang told Plaintiff she would have a bright future at Yahoo if she had sex with her. She also stated she could take away everything from her including her job, stocks, and future if she did not do what she wanted.”
Speaking to the [San Jose] Mercury News . . . Shi said:
“I was in a deep sleep one morning, sleeping on the sofa because she had taken my bed, when she came in without clothes on, crawled into my blanket, and woke me up, hugging me, kissing my face and neck,” Shi said. “I woke up and got scared; I was shocked. I said, what are you doing? She said she’d liked me a long time, but I didn’t feel the same toward her. I said come on, we’re friends; I love you as a person, but not as a lover.”

In response, Zhang has not merely denied Shi’s accusation, but has filed a countersuit against her accuser:

Zhang says Shi fabricated the whole story.
According to Zhang, Shi had been an underperformer and received negative performance evaluations from two other managers.
Zhang claims that Shi went to HR to complain about her and other managers when it became clear that Shi’s job was in danger. But Zhang said that HR found Shi’s claims to be unsubstantiated.
Yahoo planned to fire Shi, Zhang claims. But as a last-ditch effort to save her job, Shi again went to HR [i.e., Yahoo’s human resources department], alleging Zhang forced her to have sex in return for favorable treatment. But Shi was “unable to provide a single piece of evidence” in support of her claim. Zhang says HR found that none of her correspondence with Shi indicated any sexual relationship.
Yahoo terminated Shi on July 11, after the investigation was closed.
Because Yahoo held up her termination for several months while investigating her sexual harassment claim, Zhang says Shi received “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in stock and salary that she otherwise would not have taken home.

Translation: “That ugly bitch is a lazy, money-grubbing liar.”

Now, I’m not a lawyer and I am certainly not in a position to judge the truth of the claims involved here. However, it seems to me that Zhang’s account of events — if it had been offered by any male defendant in a sexual harassment case — would be denounced by feminists as “blaming the victim” because, of course, women never lie about rape. Also, while denying any sexual involvement with Shi, Zhang apparently does not deny that she is gay.

Maybe Zhang should accuse Shi of being a homophobe who is trying to destroy her for being a lesbian. Zhang could be an LGBT hero, courageously fighting for her rights, yadda yadda yadda.

Maggie Quale of Huffington Post writes:

Occurrences of same-sex harassment are rare, even less than the rate of men reporting sexual harassment cases against women. However that number is on the rise. The EEOC says claims have doubled in the last five years. But you likely haven’t heard about them. . . .
One thing is crystal clear: same-sex abuse isn’t taken seriously. Despite how far the U.S. is moving forward with recognizing equality in same-sex relationships, parenting and employment rights, the notion of two people of the same sex harassing or abusing one another is considered a joke.
In fact, you’ll notice that nowhere in any of the reports has the term “rape” been used. Not once. Now imagine if a male boss had forced his female employee to have sex or risk losing her job — would that be rape?

Not only is the word “rape” never used by the media in cases like these, the words “lesbian” or “gay” are never used. Why?

In slightly related news, Cosmopolitian magazine is now offering readers gay sex advice. Cosmo goes lesbo? Yeah, that was predictable.

 

Category: Feminism, Gays

An Ill-Advised Apology

Posted on | July 29, 2014 | 23 Comments

The NFL suspended a player named Ray Rice because of domestic violence. On ESPN, analyst Stephen Smith was discussing the case and, after saying that there is never a reason for a man to be violent with women, Smith said that he had also personally advised women not to do anything to “provoke” a man to violence.

The feminist covens went into Indignant Outrage Mode over Smith’s remark, and yesterday Smith was compelled to grovel on air:

“On Friday, speaking right here on ‘First Take’ on the subject of domestic violence, I made what can only amount to the most egregious error of my career,” Smith said in a low-key taped segment before the show shifted over to its typical debate format. “My words came across that it is somehow a woman’s fault. This was not my intent. It is not what I was trying to say.” . . .
“To say what I actually said was foolish is an understatement. To say I was wrong is obvious. To apologize — to say I’m sorry — doesn’t do the matter it’s proper justice, to be quite honest,” Smith said. “But I do sincerely apologize.”

This is another sad example of the harmful impact of feminism’s totalitarian impulse to suppress dissent. Anyone who has seriously studied domestic violence knows that, in many cases, bad relationships are characterized by toxic emotions on both sides. You’ve got two people with uncontrollable tempers — often drugs or alcohol are involved, and often one or both partners were raised in households where abuse and violence were a problem — and when they get into an argument, the argument turns into a physical fight.

Doesn’t anybody watch C*O*P*S? The police show up in response to a domestic disturbance call, and they encounter the scruffy tattooed brute and his foul-mouthed tattooed live-in girlfriend.

Both of them are bad drunk, and the police have to question them separately to try to figure out what actually  happened: How did it start? Who hit who? Each partner points the finger of blame at the other, and the police have to sort out the evidence and testimony. Has one or the other partner got a bruise or a busted lip? Does one of them admit doing something that can be considered assault?

Most of the time, it’s the guy who gets handcuffed and put in the back of the patrol car, but as you watch these  C*O*P*S episodes — unedited, unstaged — quite often your sympathy for the female victim is tempered by the fact that (a) she had, after all, chosen to move in with this wretched boyfriend, and (b) she’s not exactly a meek and helpless type. She’s drunk, she’s got a Marlboro hanging out of her mouth, and she’s cussing like a sailor. Lowlife women have a habit of gravitating toward lowlife men, and the fact that their relationships are fraught with ugly violence is an unfortunate but predictable reality. It is what it is.

So, after saying that men should never hit women, Stephen Smith said something about telling women — I get the idea he was speaking of the advice he had given his own daughters — they should not do “anything to provoke wrong actions,” and the feminist covens decided he needed to be burned at the stake. But what was he really saying?

Or rather, what did he actually mean to say?

“Boys never hit girls” is something my wife and I have drilled into our children’s heads. We have two daughters and four sons, and there are no exceptions to the rule. Our son-in-law would not dare hit our daughter, and she would never put up with it. A man hitting a woman is simply intolerable. Period. And I’ve advised my sons, in regard to their own relationships, that if you ever feel like you’re about to lose your temper with a woman, just leave — walk out.

This rule against boys hitting girls, however, should not be understood as giving girls permission to abuse boys. Having dated a few bad-tempered females back in the day — The Psycho Girlfriend From Hell — I know what it’s like to deal with women who mistake kindness for weakness. She gets mad and starts calling you every name in the book, she’s throwing things at you, she’s hitting you, and the thought crosses your mind: “Does she actually want me to hit her back? Is this what she was raised with? She psychologically needs a physical confrontation?”

Well, there’s a reason they’re ex-girlfriends. Like I say, a man can always just walk away and leave.  But I think that what Stephen Smith was trying to say on ESPN, discussing the advice he had given his own female relatives, is: DON’T BE THAT WOMAN.

Don’t be the woman who is always having some kind of emotional drama and turning every disagreement into a screaming match. This kind of advice isn’t “victim blaming” — Smith wasn’t saying that any woman deserves to be hit — it’s just common sense.

Feminists hate common sense. And the pressure that compelled Smith to apologize is just another example of feminism’s totalitarian tendency to stifle free discussion of controversial issues.

Finally, as to the Ray Rice case: I hadn’t paid any attention to it, but when I asked my wife to read this post — just to make sure I wasn’t offending the only woman whose opinion actually matters — she said, “Have you seen that video? He knocked her out!” And she said, “He’d be six feet under if he had ever done anything like that to me. If I didn’t kill him, my brothers would kill him.”

Exactly. That’s the Domestic Violence Prevention Policy we endorse.

 

Category: Feminism, Sports

The Gaza War Continues

Posted on | July 29, 2014 | 12 Comments

No ceasefire:

Israel will press its air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday, preparing his country for a longer and bloodier campaign and dashing hopes that the three-week-old conflict would end soon.
Rebuffing appeals from President Obama, the United Nations and others for an immediate cease-fire, Netanyahu said in a televised address, “We will not finish the mission, we will not finish the operation, without neutralizing the tunnels” through which Hamas fighters have sought to infiltrate Israel. The tunnels, he said, “have the sole purpose of destroying our citizens, killing our children.”
Israel’s antagonist, the Islamist militant organization Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, continued to unleash deadly mortar and rocket fire, triggering air raid sirens across Israel.

Still haven’t heard back from the Nobel Peace Prize committee.

 

Category: Islam, Israel, Military, Terrorism

John Walsh Keeps Nabbing Bad Guys; Molester Killed in NYC Shootout

Posted on | July 29, 2014 | 15 Comments

Charles Mozdir liked little boys:

Investigators say they sifted through hundreds of tips in their search for Charles Mozdir, but a phone call they got during CNN’s “The Hunt” with John Walsh helped them crack the case.
On Monday, eight days after the show first aired, the 32-year-old suspected sex offender died in a shootout in New York City as police closed in.
During the show, first broadcast on July 20, a deputy U.S. marshal fielding calls got a tip about Mozdir, accused in a 2012 California child molestation case. . . .
The tip was the first strong lead about his whereabouts investigators had in more than two years, but they didn’t know where he’d gone since.
“It was the newest information we had,” Jurman said. “Our case went cold in 2012. He was definitely living on cash, with a good fake ID. He was off our grid.”
That changed on Monday, when a New York police detective and two U.S. marshals entered the smoke shop in New York City where Mozdir worked.
Mozdir “fired on officers at a very close range,” New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said, and “officers returned fire.” The officers were wounded during the shootout, but are expected to recover, authorities said.
Mozdir been sought by authorities since June 2012.. . .
Mozdir had a 32-caliber revolver with 20 spare rounds of ammunition in his pocket at the time of his death, the police commissioner said. . . .
Mozdir was arrested in California in 2012 after the young son of two close friends told his parents that Mozdir had touched his private parts. . . .
“He was on the run for almost two years. And this family was destroyed, terrified that he would come back and hurt them because they had the courage to come forward and file charges against him,” Walsh said Monday.
On the run from authorities, Mozdir had apparently shared with others his plan to one day kill the young boy’s father for turning him in, Walsh said. “And now they don’t have to worry if this guy’s coming back to hurt the family or hurt their little boy. So there’s a big sigh of relief tonight that Charles Mozdir is off this planet.”
After the parents’ report in 2012, investigators in Coronado, California, executed a search warrant on Mozdir’s house and found evidence of child pornography and bestiality on his cell phone and computers, according to U.S. Marshals Service deputy Brian Grimes. . . .

Years ago, watching America’s Most Wanted every Saturday night was kind of a family ritual. What made the show so different from anything on TV was that John Walsh didn’t mince words about the criminal fugitives — the killer or child molester police were looking for was a “creep,” an “animal,” a “monster.” Walsh urged viewers to “help get this bad guy off the streets.” That tradition continues with The Hunt:

On Monday, Walsh described Mozdir’s death as a “tough ending.”
“It really reaffirms my belief that people don’t want to be vigilantes. They want to be involved and do the right thing,” he said.
“This is our first capture. I’m very sorry that those police officers got wounded in the line of duty,” Walsh said, “but this is one more lowlife that’s off the streets.”

That kind of strong language — the moral clarity between good and evil — is something America needs more of. Way to go, John.

 

Category: Crime

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.29.14

Posted on | July 29, 2014 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Netanyahu Warns Israel To Prepare For Long War In Gaza

And the fighting continues

No halt until Gaza tunnels destroyed, Israeli PM says
Huge explosion hits Gaza media building
Five IDF soldiers killed in Gaza as death toll hits 48

Ebola Just A Plane Ride Away From The USA
CDC claims it wouldn’t spread far

Setbacks Complicate Putin’s Ukraine Strategy
Pro-Russian rebels take worst hammering in weeks as EU, US agree on harsher sanctions for Russia



POLITICS
Federal 4th Circuit Court Strikes Down Virginia Gay Marriage Ban

Plaintiffs in the case pose for the media after oral arguments

Decision stayed until August 18; could be appealed to full appellate court or Supremes

State Department Unhappy With Israeli Criticism Of SecState Kerry

House, Senate Agree On $17 Billion VA Fix


Dems Pump Up Impeachment Boogeyman In Appeal For Support, Bucks

Jury Deadlocked In Jesse Ventura Defamation Case

Former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro Sworn In As HUD Secretary

Defiant Cuomo Denies Tampering With Ethics Commission

Dem Senate Candidate From WV Shuts Off White House Power In Pro-Coal Ad

Report: Medicare Finances Improve, Hospital Fund Good For Additional Four Years



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Continues Slide As Stockpiles Offset Ongoing Unrest: WTI $101.33, Brent $107.40
Dollar Tree Buys Family Dollar For $8.5 Billion
Southwest Airlines Faces $12 Million FAA Fine
Foreign Bribery Costs Smith & Wesson $2 Million Fine
Darden CEO Steps Down Amid Food Fight With Investors
T-Mobile CEO Blasts AT&T (Again), Unveils New Promotion
Windows Phone 8.1 Details Leak
Microsoft Targeted In Apparent Red China Anti-Trust Probe
OKCupid Experiments On Users, Discover Everyone Is Shallow
Music Industry Trying To Extract Royalties From Ford, GM



SPORTS
Yu Can Do It: Darvish Holds Yankees Down, Rangers Win 4-2

8 K’s in Texas 20th home victory this year

Rangers offense finally puts together a big inning

Judge Clears Way For Clippers Sale

Astros Jack Four Homers In 7-3 Win Against A’s

NFL Official Tries, Fails To Justify Ray Rice Ban

Burnett Struggles, Mets Crush Phillies 7-1

Reds Lose To Snakes In Extras, Fall Below .500

Cabrera, Dickey Lead Blue Jays In 14-1 Rout Of Red Sox

Worley Tosses 4-Hitter As Bucs Blank Giants

Soriano Blows Save, Game As Fish Score 4 In 9th, Top Nats 7-6



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Sandra Bullock Celebrates Her 50th Birthday In Wyoming

Plus some cheeky photos on Instagram

Party started early at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar on Thursday

E! Czar Suzanne Kolb Gets The Axe

Freddie Prinze Jr. Bashes Kiefer Sutherland Over Behavior On “24” Set


Piper Perabo Says “I Do!”

Nikki Reed And Ian Somerhalter Are Everywhere

After Two Years, This Is Justin Bieber’s Pitiful Excuse For A Mustache

Eva Green Eyes Tim Burton’s “Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children”

“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay” Trailer Released

Eva Green: Too Sexy For ABC?



FOREIGNERS
US: Russia Broke 1987 Nuclear Missile Treaty
40% Of Weapons Sent To Afghanistan By US Unaccounted For
Rival Militia Groups Spark Libya Oil Depot Fire
Kerry To Woo Modi’s India But Swift Progress Unlikely
16-Year-Old Japanese Girl Held For Strangling, Decapitating Friend
Brazil’s President To Ask Zero Tariff For Mercosur Partners
Communist Chinese Police Remove Church Cross Amid Crackdown
Germany-US Rift Stalls Massive Trade Pact With EU
Japan’s Retail Sales Drop In Challenge To Abe Reflation
Rebel Factor Gives Congress Party The Jitters In Haryana Elections



BLOGS & STUFF
St. Dismas Mission: On Forgiving Those Who Trespass Against Us
Michelle Malkin: Still Fighting – The Delphi Workers Obama Robbed
Twitchy: Media Lap Dog Dismisses Nunn Campaign’s Reliance On Lap Dog Media
American Power: GOP Senate Prospects Brighten – Strong Candidates, Obama’s Slumping Approval Expand Party’s Map
American Thinker: Glenn Beck’s Kinder, Gentler Exploitation Of The Border Crisis
Conservatives4Palin: Gov. Palin Calls In To Michael Medved Show To Discuss Impeachment
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, July 28
Jammie Wearing Fools: Lefty Morons Fall For Fake Michele Bachmann Story
Joe For America: Being President Is Tough – Being Incompetent Doesn’t Help
Protein Wisdom: “Weather Channel Founder Debunks Global Warming Hoax”
Shot In The Dark: Junk Science, Junkier Journalism
STUMP: Public Finance Watch – Chicago Faces Doom
The Gateway Pundit: Muslim Rioters In Paris Screaming “Allahu Akbar!” Attack Police With Rocks, Poles
The Jawa Report: Flat Fatima Attempts Big Pallywood Comeback
The Lonely Conservative: Oops! Democrat Accidentally Releases Campaign Plan To Fool Voters
This Ain’t Hell: Another Democrat War Hero
Weasel Zippers: Federal Court Rules Against Radical Atheists – Ground Zero Cross To Stay
Megan McArdle: Ryan’s Anti-Poverty Plan Sure Can’t Hurt


Category: Live at Five

Crazy People, Crazy Times

Posted on | July 28, 2014 | 24 Comments

OK, the “switch rape” thing was so crazy it had to be a hoax. But don’t worry, there’s still plenty of genuine craziness out there.

Michelle Goldberg writes a long article in the New Yorker about the tranny vs. radfem craziness I’ve been covering here since January. And as I’m reading her very interesting article, I notice Goldberg refers to an open letter, signed by 37 radical feminists — some of them famous, like Katie Sarachild and Ti-Grace Atkinson — called “Forbidden Discourse: The Silencing of Feminist Criticism of ‘Gender’.” Curious, I Googled the title and found it at a blog called “Women’s Space.”

Hmmm. Who is this “Heart” person who runs the blog? She has written for the radical feminist journal off our backs (capitalization is patriarchy, or something) and she also published . . . a homeschooling magazine? What madness is this? Research, research . . .

Her name is Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff, and she’s so notorious she’s got her own Encyclopedia Dramatica page. Which is not to say that this 61-year-old woman is undeserving of sympathy, however. She first became a mother in 1972 at age 19. By 1994, she was a mother of nine, and the publisher of a popular Christian homeschooling magazine called Gentle Spirit. Unfortunately, her marriage was falling apart. She claimed her husband, Claude Lindsey, was violently abusive. He left, then he came back, then he left again.

Cheryl Lindsey sought pastoral counseling. She also made the acquaintance of a fellow named Rick Seelhoff, whom she subsequently married. However, before she was divorced and during the time she was in pastoral counseling, her pastor and soon-to-be-ex-husband started telling people about Cheryl’s marital problem and her involvement with Rick Seelhoff. Among the people the pastor shared confidential information with was Sue Welch, publisher of a rival homeschooling magazine, The Teaching Home. What followed, as a subsequent federal lawsuit determined, was a conspiracy against Cheryl Lindsey by Welch and other Christian homeschooling leaders that amounted to a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Lindsey won more than $400,000.

Now, some 20 years after the collapse of her marriage to Claude Lindsey, the former Christian homeschooling mother — who had two more children with Rick Seelhoff — is a radical feminist, who attends radfem conferences with Lierre Keith and Cathy Brennan.

That, my friends, is 100% crazy.

 

Category: Feminism

Feminists Against ‘The Unnatural, Yet Universal Roles Patriarchy Has Assigned’

Posted on | July 28, 2014 | 22 Comments

“We had turned the corner at U Street and were marching up 14th Street when the woman with the megaphone leading SlutWalk DC started a new chant: ‘We love consensual sex! We love consensual sex!’ Well, OK, but who doesn’t? Is there any actual opposition to this agenda? Is there an Anti-Consensual Sex Movement that someone forgot to tell us about? Oblivious to the absurdity, about 400 women joined in shouting this slogan, which was at least better than their previous chants: ‘Blame the system, not the victim!’ and ‘One! Two! Three! Four! We won’t take it anymore! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Stop the violence! Stop the hate!’ The ‘violence’ to which that chant referred is rape, and ‘hate’ is any discussion of rape (or any other subject) that doesn’t conform to feminist ideology. To distill their rhetoric to its totalitarian essence: ‘Shut up, because rape.’”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Slutwalk Insanity,” The American Spectator, Aug. 12, 2013

There is a lot of confusion about what “feminism” means. Many people seem to think that a vague commitment to slogans — “choice,” “equality,” “progress,” etc. — is sufficient to qualify them as feminists. Such “feminism” is very simple and very superficial:

  1. Do you have a vagina?
  2. Vote Democrat!

As simple as it is, this kind of feminism is neither an ideology nor a movement. Being “feminist” in this superficial sense is convenient, because it requires neither thought nor action. Just repeat the slogans and vote Democrat and you’re OK, sister.

This thought-free feminism has little in common with the historic Women’s Liberation Movement of the late 1960s and ’70s, nor does it reflect the ideas of the radical intellectuals who dominate academic feminism in university Women’s Studies programs. These feminists — the real feminists, not the silly women who parrot simple-minded slogans about “equality” — speak a rhetoric in opposition to women’s subordination as inferiors in a patriarchal society.

What they mean by this is that normal expectations for women, including ideals of beauty as well as common beliefs about marriage, motherhood and heterosexuality, are a form of oppression. A radical feminist blogger posted this manifesto:

Radical Feminism.
The controversial politics of liberating women in an age when even the title of ‘woman’ is given to any man who asks for it.
Radical Feminism is, and has always been a political movement focused on liberating girls and women, those who are born into the sex caste female, from the unnatural, yet universal roles patriarchy has assigned.
This role is always subordinate to the male role no matter where on the planet you are born, the color of your skin or your socioeconomic class. . . .
Radical Feminism fights to disassemble the subliminal sex role behavior performances that cause female subordination. We recognize females are not born to serve, be weak, pretty, wear dresses and make up, like princesses and cater to male feelings and pleasures. This is socialized behavior instruction. It’s a teaching, a grooming from birth that is false, harmful to our freedom and must stop.

Do you see what I mean? Fighting “to disassemble the subliminal sex role behavior performances that cause female subordination” — that is an ideology, the credo of an actual movement. As the author of that manifesto says, this is a “controversial politics” and, when you translate all that jargon into plain English, what they aim to liberate women from is femininity and heterosexuality.

This is what I mean when I say that feminism is a journey to lesbianism. If we take feminist ideology seriously, if we study the doctrines and objectives of the movement — especially as manifested in the teachings of Women’s Studies professors — we must admit that these revolutionary goals are incompatible with everything most people take for granted about women, about men, about sex.

Feminists have declared war on human nature. In arguing that men and women should be equal, proponents of feminist “gender theory” are in fact arguing that men and women are the same.

This intellectual commitment to androgyny, whereby differences between the sexes are “deconstructed” and analyzed with the presumption that sex-roles are an “unnatural” condition imposed on women by the system of male supremacy called patriarchy, is a radical idea with radical consequences. (Ideas Have Consequences, as Richard Weaver famously warned.) These radical ideas are not new; they have been part of feminist doctrine for more than four decades. However, it is only in recent years, with the political triumphs of the gay-rights movement, that academic feminists have cast aside the mask of moderation to declare heterosexuality itself the essence — both cause and effect — of “female subordination” under patriarchy.

“We do not seek tolerance and acceptance. We seek freedom from oppression, intimidation and harassment. We seek justice and a legal system that is capable and willing to defend our rights.”
— Wanda Henson, co-founder of the lesbian feminist community Camp Sister Spirit, 1994

Far be it from me to oppress, intimidate or harass anyone pursuing their rights under the Constitution and the rule of law. My interest is solely in discovering the truth about feminism and exposing that truth to the widest possible audience. Yet in the 21st century, the most precious of our rights, including freedom of speech and religious liberty, are now menaced by feminists and their allies in the gay-rights movement. Revolutionary developments in our law, our education system and our culture have quite nearly reversed the situation of which Wanda Henson complained. What seemed radical two decades ago has now become the law of the land. The 2013 Supreme Court decision in Windsor v. United States has had the practical effect of overturning the constitutions of more than 30 states where voters had ratified amendments defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. It was in the wake of the 2008 passage of once such amendment, California’s Proposition 8, that I made these observations:

Seizing on the triumphant narrative of the black civil-rights movement, liberals adopted the habit of framing political debates in terms of minority “rights” versus majority “discrimination.” . . .
“Rights talk” allowed liberals a means of preemptively delegitimizing their opponents and thereby to avoid arguing about policy in terms of necessity, utility and efficacy. If all legal and political conflicts are about “rights,” there is no need to argue about the specific consequences of laws and policies. Merely determine which side of the controversy represents “rights” and the debate ends there.
The gay rage in California can be traced directly to the Supreme Court’s 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, which voided a Texas sodomy law because, as Justice Anthony Kennedy declared, “our laws and traditions in the past half century . . . show an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex.” . . .
If homosexuality is a right, and denying legal recognition to same-sex marriage is a violation of that right, then the rage of gay activists against their opponents is entirely justified. Proposition 8 does not deny tolerance, safety and freedom to gays and lesbians, whose right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is as secure in California as anywhere in the world.
Tolerance, safety and freedom are not the same as equality, however, and equality is the freight that liberals seek to smuggle into arguments via “rights talk.” Gay activists do not construe their “rights” in terms of liberty, but in terms of radical and absolute equality. They insist that same-sex relationships are identical to — entirely analogous to and fungible with — traditional marriage.

Only the most shallow minds could fail to recognize in the 2003 Lawrence decision a radical revision of American society’s basic understanding of the relationships of men and women under the law, a revision which predictably led to the 2013 Windsor ruling.

If any recognition of differences between men and women is “discrimination,” if homosexuals are oppressed by our belief that heterosexuality is normal, if ordinary expectations about masculinity and femininity are “socially constructed” delusions imposed as a means of oppressing women, then the legalization of same-sex marriage is merely the first stage of a new radical era.

“PIV is always rape, OK?” Mocking laughter greeted this declaration from an anonymous radical feminist blogger who, in December 2013, explained that heterosexual intercourse — PIV being a feminist acronym for “penis-in-vagina” — is “inherently harmful,” a manifestation of male supremacy and the patriarchy’s violent oppression of women. The same blogger elsewhere declared, “No woman is heterosexual,” a statement that seems absurd, except to those who have studied the influential feminist scholars whose theories lend themselves to such a claim. Heterosexuality, these authors argue, is never a woman’s own free choice, nor is female heterosexuality the result of natural instinct or biological urges. Rather, according to radical theorists whose works are commonly taught in Women’s Studies courses at universities everywhere, women who are sexually attracted to men have been indoctrinated — brainwashed by “hetero-grooming” — to believe that male companionship is desirable or necessary to their happiness.

The blogger whose anti-PIV rantings inspired so much laughter (“Was she dropped on her head?”) was, in fact, able to cite as sources for her arguments such eminent feminist authors as Mary Daly, Dee Graham and Sheila Jeffreys. To say that these lesbian feminist authors are “controversial,” and that their radical views are not shared by the majority of American women who call themselves “feminists,” is by no means a refutation of their arguments. Such attempts to separate “mainstream” feminism from the more radical aspects of its ideology cannot avoid the problem that the faculty and curricula of university Women’s Studies programs — where feminism wields the authority of an official philosophy — are overwhelmingly dominated by radical lesbians. This hegemonic influence is not merely manifested in the fact that outspoken lesbian activists are employed as directors and professors in Women’s Studies programs everywhere, but also plainly evident in the textbooks and readings assigned in their classrooms. Even if a moderate heterosexual feminist were to become a Women’s Studies professor, she would find it nearly impossible to find a textbook that was not crammed with radical anti-male/anti-heterosexual readings from lesbian feminists like Charlotte Bunch, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Janice Raymond, Judith Butler and others. Within the campus environment of Women’s Studies, where today’s feminist intellectuals train tomorrow’s feminist spokeswomen, it is normal heterosexual women who are the intimidated and oppressed minority.

“There is a deep recognition in culture and in experience that intercourse is both the normal use of a woman, her human potentiality affirmed by it, and a violative abuse, her privacy irr­edeemably compromised, her selfhood changed in a way that is irrevocable, unrecoverable. . . . She, a human being, is supposed to have a privacy that is absolute; except that she, a woman, has a hole between her legs that men can, must, do enter. This hole, her hole, is synonymous with entry. . . . By definition, as the God who does not exist made her, she is intended to have a lesser privacy, a lesser integrity of the body, a lesser sense of self, since her body can be physically occupied and in the occupation taken over. . . .
“There is no analogue anywhere among subordinated groups of people to this experience of being made for intercourse: for penetration, entry, occupation. . . . Intercourse is a particular reality for women as an inferior class; and it has in it, as part of it, viola­tion of boundaries, taking over, occupation, destruction of privacy, all of which are construed to be normal and also funda­mental to continuing human existence.”
— Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse (1987)

“I am Female. This means I have a Female reproductive system and am vulnerable to impregnation, like all Females, by Males . . .
“What are the behaviors and roles considered appropriate for one’s sex? . . .
“If you are a Feminist . . . the answer to this should be ‘There are no behaviors and roles considered appropriate for my sex because Females can be and do anything.’
“If you are not a Feminist, your answer might be ‘My role as a women is to be a Wife (fuckhole) and Mother (breeder).'”
— Cathy Brennan, December 2012

Fear and Loathing of the Penis is the esoteric doctrine of feminism. Whatever feminists say in popular media — their exoteric discourse, intended for dissemination to the larger public — when these intellectuals speak to each other in academic journals, in classrooms and conferences and in online discussions, it is impossible to ignore their profound hostility toward men, and toward women’s role in normal relationships with men. Women who relate to men in the context of traditional relationships, who find satisfaction in their roles as wives and mothers, are viewed by feminist scholars with a mixture of suspicion, pity and contempt. The woman who enthusiastically enjoys sexual relations with her husband, and who views motherhood as an achievement of greater ultimate importance than anything she might do in her paid work outside her home, is a mystery to the man-hating lesbians whose theories prevail in the world of academic feminism. Normal women’s lives and beliefs must be deconstructed, analyzed and theorized in the context of her oppression within a patriarchal society.

This intellectual scrutiny is expressed in scholarly jargon that seems deliberately designed to prevent the reader from discovering the plain-English meaning of these academic arguments. Any careful reader of feminist literature will perceive the bias against men that pervades these arguments, and the advocacy of a lesbian alternative to oppression under “heteronormative patriarchy” is equally evident whenever the subject is addressed. Yet the critic of feminism who calls public attention to these esoteric doctrines, who translates the academic jargon into plain English, is automatically accused of fomenting prejudice. If you say these professors are man-hating lesbians who have made their selfish grievances the basis of a philosophy, you are a homophobic sexist.

Such is the fate of the truth-teller in an age where intellectual dishonesty has become standard practice in our news media, in popular culture and especially in our most prestigious institutions of elite higher education.

Truth cannot be forever suppressed, and lies cannot ultimately prevail, so long as honest people have the courage to withstand the insults and indignities that will always be heaped upon them by the enemies of truth. So I have begun a series of essays I call “Sex Trouble”:

If you are a first-time reader — if you are not among the regulars who have followed all the previous blog posts in which I began compiling my research into radical feminism — those two articles can serve as an introduction. Regular readers already have some sense of how this series may develop, and several have urged me to compile these essays into a book, which is of course my hope. Yet for now there is before me only many more hours of research and writing, on top of all the work I have already done as I have surveyed the terrain of the battlefield on which will be contested the future of human society.

My lifelong habit of sarcastic humor should not deceive anyone as to the seriousness of my purpose, because the enemy’s seriousness should never be underestimated.

While academic feminists are usually careful to conceal their purposes with scholarly jargon and politically correct euphemisms, their activist disciples are not always so careful when expressing their contempt for normal women. Read their blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, and you quickly learn that radical lesbians routinely disparage heterosexual wives and mothers as “fuckholes,” “dick receptacles,” “slaves” and “breeders.” When speaking amongst themselves, unrestrained by concern that their words may inspire political opposition, feminists quite routinely speak of normal women in such obscene and insulting terms, demeaning wives and mothers as ignorant victims who cooperate in their own oppression. Despite feminists’ willingness to use such hateful anti-female rhetoric to insult normal women, however, it is always and only the opponents of feminist who are accused of misogyny.

“Well, you’re quoting them out of context,” say feminism’s defenders, who automatically assume that anyone who does not agree with them is (a) ignorant and (b) motivated by hatred of women. However, as someone who has spent years reading and analyzing feminist literature, and having spent the past several months immersed in an in-depth exploration of radical feminism, I certainly cannot be accused of ignorance in this matter. To say that all critics of feminism hate women is a sort of tautology, by which mere disagreement with a specific group of writers is magically transmogrified into categorical hatred of women. This is like saying that a critic of Maoism is anti-Chinese, or that those who disagree with radical Islam are anti-Arab.

As for the frequently made claim that any excerpt from a feminist treatise cited by feminism’s opponents must have been quoted “out of context,” I invite skeptical readers to examine for themselves Andea Dworkin’s Intercourse. On Pages 155-156 of the 20th anniversary edition of Ms. Dworkin’s most famous book, she compares women’s condition to that of prisoners at Auschwitz, insisting women’s oppression is actually worse than the deadly fate of victims of Nazi genocide. Dworkin’s use of the phrase “the God who does not exist,” borrowed from a 1964 poem by Edna O’Brien, is repeated six times in Chapter Seven of Intercourse (Pages 153-182). Dworkin is not only at war with nature, but at war with God, a militant atheist who rejects any claim of a divine purpose in human life. It is impossible to mistake her meaning, or to claim she has been taken out of context, when one reads the words with which she concludes Chapter Seven, which is titled “Occupation/Collaboration”:

Maybe life is tragic and the God who does not exist made women inferior so that men could fuck us; or maybe we can only know this much for cer­tain — that when intercourse exists and is experienced under conditions of force, fear, or inequality, it destroys in women the will to political freedom; it destroys the love of freedom itself. We become female: occupied; collaborators against each other, especially against those among us who resist male domina­tion — the lone, crazy resisters, the organized resistance. The pleasure of submission does not and cannot change the fact, the cost, the indignity, of inferiority.

Any reader can see that, in this analogy, men are the totalitarian invaders, sexual Nazis whose “occupation” of women is coercively imposed “under conditions of force, fear, or inequality.” All women are victims of male oppression, but some women — those who willingly participate in heterosexual relations with men — are collaborators against their fellow women. Extending this metaphor, Dworkin insists that women “who resist male domina­tion” (i.e., lesbian feminists) are the heroic female resistance fighting against the hostile male invaders.

Confronted with this argument, an honest person has no alternative but to take the bull by the horns, to say that if feminism is anything other than a meaningless phrase — if it is not merely a partisan slogan of the Democrat Vagina Caucus — Andrea Dworkin is right.

If indeed the existence of our society is founded on the inferiority of women, if our laws and customs and beliefs are nothing but the expression of male domination, then it is foolish to speak of women’s “consent” to sex with men. Her choice in the matter is an illusion and, by pretending to take pleasure in her role in this “reality for women as an inferior class,” she is collaborating not only in her own subordination, but also assisting in the male oppression of all women. Her “consent” is a betrayal. She is a traitor to womanhood.

Obviously, I don’t believe this, because I am not a feminist. If you don’t believe Dworkin’s claims, you’re not a feminist, either.

It is not just so-called “mainstream” feminists who must ignore the inherent paradoxes of the radical anti-male ideology which is taught as official feminist philosophy in Women’s Studies courses, where the syllabus for even an introductory class for freshmen usually relies on the works of unapologetic man-haters like Dworkin.

Ironically, even many lesbians find that they cannot fully reconcile their sexuality with feminist ideology. Lesbians whose preferences are expressed in “butch” and “femme” roles complain that their identities and behaviors are impugned as inauthentic by feminist theory. After all, if a man is a metaphorical Nazi for desiring to penetrate a woman’s vagina, and if a woman who desires penetration is cooperating in her own “occupation,” then there are many lesbians who enthusiastically “oppress” each other every night.

Expecting feminists to follow their premises to a logical conclusion is a futile hope. (Facts and logic are weapons of the patriarchy.) Nevertheless, insofar as feminism can be reconciled with logic, it is the man-hating radical lesbians whose arguments are more consistent with the fundamental premise of their ideology, namely that all men (collectively) oppress all women (collectively). The slogans of liberal feminists, who want women to believe they can have both equality and heterosexuality, are intellectually dishonest. “Sexual equality” ultimately means androgyny, the elimination of both men’s masculinity and women’s femininity — this is what feminists mean when they speak of “gender roles” — so that all humans are essentially identical, neither masculine nor feminine. No sane person desires this androgynous egalitarian utopia that is the ultimate teleological destination toward which feminism’s core ideology would lead us. Whether we are male or female, gay or straight, conservative or liberal, the vast majority of people understand that human nature — the basic difference between men and women — is one of the most delightful aspects of life.

Feminists have declared war on human nature. They are at war not only with men, but against women who love men, and also against all that is beautiful about the love between man and woman. Every love song, every kiss, every walk in the moonlight — insofar as anything in our culture and customs celebrates the love of man and woman, somewhere a Woman’s Studies professor is “deconstructing” it and subjecting it to a gender-theory analysis that interprets our love stories in the context of male oppression. When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When the only ideology you have is feminism, every problem looks like heteronormative patriarchy.

Just as psychotics cling to their delusions despite any fact that a sane person may present to them, no one can ever hope to persuade a feminist that she is wrong. There is no point arguing with the tenured professors and professional activists who devote their careers to destroying whatever aspect of human happiness excites their angry resentment. All we can do is to reveal their beliefs, to make sure that anyone deceived by the superficial slogans of “mainstream” feminism understands the dangerous ideology behind the slogans. And yet we need not doubt that feminists are inspired by good intentions.

How else do we expect them to pave the road to Hell?

 

 

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What You Can Do
Did you find this article informative and useful? Why don’t you copy it in an e-mail and send it to your friends, family or church members? You can also e-mail it to your favorite local or national talk radio host. Also, you can help spread the word by sharing it via Twitter or posting it to Facebook. Thanks in advance for your help, and I am always deeply grateful for contributions through PayPal ($5, $10, whatever) as support and encouragement. — RSM

 





 

Category: Feminism, Sex Trouble
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