The Other McCain

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

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?

 

 

* * * * *

What You Can Do
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Category: Feminism, Sex Trouble

“Sorry, Barack: I Can’t Give The Israeli People ‘The Stevens’,” Said Bibi

Posted on | July 28, 2014 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

You can almost forgive #OccupyResoluteDesk for wanting the Israelis to pull their punches, given Obama’s oblivious non-command of leadership:

President Barack Obama phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late Sunday, demanding that he agree to an immediate ceasefire “that ends hostilities now and leads to a permanent cessation of hostilities, based on the November 2012 ceasefire agreement.”

I don’t know, the last time Bibi met a U.S. Administration official, it looked like he was about two show ol’ Three Purple Hearts a fourth one, red, still beating, albeit briefly:

If I was Bibi, I’d put up a brief YouTube clip in reply to the rodeo clown, simply saying “AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!”

Category: Barack Obama, Israel

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.28.14

Posted on | July 28, 2014 | 9 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Gaza Truce Efforts Go Up In Smoke

Burn Gaza Strip Burn

Hamas allegedly accepts UN truce, continues rocketing Israel
UNSC calls for immediate ceasefire
Kerry’s unique artistry: he came, he saw, he muddled



Two Americans Stricken With Ebola In Liberia
Doctor, aid worker test positive for deadly virus

Westerners Urged To Leave Libya As Country Descends Into Civil War (Again)
British, US embassies both closed



POLITICS
Congress Reaches Tentative Deal To Help Fix VA

The Phoenix, Ariz. VA medical center

Getting some help for vets’ health care before recess


DC Seeks Stay On Judge’s Order Striking Down Public Handgun Carry



Virginia’s Ex-Governor, Wife Go To Trial On Corruption Charges

Sarah Palin Begins Own Internet Channel

FLOTUS Complains About Money In Politics, Then Asks For “Fat Check”

Former Seattle Mayor Paul Schell Dies, 76

Border Agents Say Violent MS-13 Gang Recruiting In Arizona Detention Facility

House Ethics Panel Investigating Reps Rush, Whitfield



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Drops As Truce Breaks Out In Gaza: WTI $101.57, Brent $107.89
Red China’s Food Crisis Spreads To Foreign Brands
Amazon Loss Widens As Bezos Alarms Investors With Spending
“Ace” Greenberg, Wall Street Titan, Dies At 86
Danone Reportedly In Talks To Sell Medical Unit To Hospira
Gold Slips On Stronger Dollar But Holds Above $1300
JD.com Launches XBox One Sales In Red China
Bose Sues Beats Over Noise-Cancelling Patent
Google’s Next Smartphone, “Shamu”, Could Be Gigantic
Inventions-based Maker Faire Celebrates 5th Anniversary
Watch Ubisoft’s New Parkour-Powered Promo for “Assassin’s Creed: Unity”



SPORTS
Flood Of Emotions As Six Greats Enter Cooperstown

From left to right: Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, Greg Maddux, Joe Torre

50,000 look on as three great managers and three great players enter the Hall of Fame


Jeff Gordon’s Drive For Five Gets Boost With Brickyard Win



Braves Cap Hall Of Fame Day With 8-3 Blowout Of Padres

Machado, O’s, Beat M’s In Extras

Phillies Top Snakes 4-2

Ozuna, Jones Lead Fish To Victory And Sweep Of Astros

Tribe Administers 10-3 Beatdown To Royals

Big Papi Carries Red Sox Past Rays, 3-2

Fister Handcuffs Slumping Reds As Nats Win 4-2



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Stephen Bauer (57) Dating Lyda Loudon (18)

Involved with Tea Party Youth

“Scarface” actor and self-described wild child stepped out together at “Magic In The Moonlight” premiere

Weekend Box Office: Lucy Tops Hercules

“Fury Road” Director George Miller Talks “Mad Max” Prequel, Mel Gibson


Comic-Con Crapfest: Movies

Sources Say Kendra Wilkinson Is Done With Hank Bassett

Homeless Man Stalked, Threatened Rihanna At Her $14.6 Million SoHo Apartment

Jenny McCarthy Says She Never Criticized Cousin Melissa Over Her Weight

Mark Hamill: Star Wars Return “A Gift”

Adam West Shares His Thoughts On Ben Affleck As Batman



FOREIGNERS
Fighting Intensifies Near Malaysian Airlines Crash Site, Police Cancel Visit Over Security Concerns
Boko Haram Kidnaps Wife of Cameroon’s Vice-PM
Pope Francis Pleads For Peace In Gaza
Sri Lankan Asylum Seekers Arrive In Australia After Weeks Held At Sea
Norks, ROK Mark 61st Anniversary Of Armistice
Surveillance Photos Show Russia Supplying Ordnance To Ukrainian Rebels
Student Survivors Of Korean Ferry Disaster Testify Against Crew
Aruba Releases Former Venezuelan General Wanted By US On Drug Charges
Philippine Congress Opens With Calls For Greater Government Accountability
India Threatens To Derail WTO Deal, Stands Firm On Food Security



BLOGS & STUFF
Doug Powers: Eleanor Holmes Norton Vigorously Defends Obama Administration’s Right To Privacy
Twitchy: Paul Ryan Posts Pic From Goat Milking Contest, Liberals Outraged
American Power: Think Progress, Karoli Punk’d By Parody Claiming Michele Bachmann Wants Illegals In “Camps”
American Thinker: Moses The Unaccompanied Minor And The Ten Plagues
BLACKFIVE: A Tribute Long Delayed
Conservatives4Palin: Stephen Moore – A Future Without Electricity
Don Surber: Guillotine Climate Change Skeptics?
Jammie Wearing Fools: “I Have Not Entered One Home That Did Not Have Weapons, Suicide Belts, Or Booby Traps In It”
Joe For America: NYT Declares War On Christians, Moslems
JustOneMinute: State And Federal Exchanges – Gruber On Both Sides
Protein Wisdom: Earth To Feds – It’s Called Camping
Shot In The Dark: The Kill Cult
STUMP: Pension Watch – Followup On UC Borrowing
The Gateway Pundit: Mexican Immigrant With Drug-Resistant TB Goes Missing In California
The Jawa Report: Total Sluts For IDF
The Lonely Conservative: Democrats Tie Funding For Israel’s Iron Dome To Immigration Bill
This Ain’t Hell: Real Warriors And PTSD
Weasel Zippers: Iraqi Christians Chant For Help In Front Of White House – “Obama, Obama, Where Are You?”
Megan McArdle: Obamacare’s Smoking Gun Fires Again


Shop Amazon Fashion: New for Men

Category: Live at Five

Rule 5 Sunday: Mind The Gap

Posted on | July 27, 2014 | 13 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Yes, it’s time once again for us to take a break from the misery of politics and the cesspool of popular culture (well, except for this, of course) to contemplate the glory of God’s creation, especially as it’s expressed in the female form. As the Loyal Readers should know by now, some of the links below are to pictures of attractive women, frequently with few (or no) clothes, and if viewing these where you are would cause problems, you may want to exercise discretion in your clicking.

First Street Journal is an exception to the warning above, since he’s all about women in uniform. This week: On Active Duty. Ninety Miles from Tyranny chips in with Morning Mistresses, Hot Pick of the Late Night, and Girls with Guns; Laughing Conservative introduces Ella Milano, while Animal Magnetism serves up Rule 5 Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon (includes hi-rez bonus!) and Blackmailers Don’t Shoot offers Rule 5 In Honor Of Comic-Con 2014, which includes plenty of tasty links to go with the cosplay pics.

EBL’s herd this week includes Feminist Fashion (and Catherine Zeta-Jones), Rip Tide, and Bill Clinton’s Energizer.

At A View from the Beach, it’s Z is for Zelyaeva, Northern Lights, Secret of Happy Marriage Revealed, Midnite Music, Drained! (Again), Did “Girly” Cave Men Lead to Civilization? (has cave girl content), Luck Was the Lady That He Loved the Best. Berlusconi Beats the Rap, and Little Surfer Girl Take On the Sharks.

Soylent Refuge serves up your Morning Coffee Creamer, Sunday Seduction, I Love Rock & Roll, Overnighty, Tuesday Titillation Twofer, Humpday Hawtness, Happy Hour Hawt, Falconsword Fursday Fillet, Corsets Etc., T-GIF Friday Gisele, Overnighty Adrienne, Weekender Hayden, and Bath Night Bubblicious.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Coco Ho, his Vintage Babe is Mariette Hartley, and Sex in Advertising is covered by Adriana Lima this week. At Dustbury, it’s A.J. Cook and Mindy Kaling.

The DaleyGator’s DaleyBabes this week included Barbara de Regil,Amanda Seyfried, Samantha Cutaran, Claire Coffee, Camille Chen, Meisa Kuroki, and Women that make you say DAYUM!.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox for next week’s Rule 5 Sunday is midnight on Saturday, August 2.


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Category: Rule 5

Death by Misadventure

Posted on | July 27, 2014 | 56 Comments

Brooke Slocum (left); Charles Oppenneer (center); Brady Oestrike (right).

You meet the creepiest people on Craigslist.

That’s probably the only lesson to be learned from the tragic deaths of Brooke Slocum and her boyfriend Charles Oppeeneer. Slocum, 18, was eight months pregnant when Oppenneer posted an ad to Craigslist offering to let other men have sex with her for money while Oppenneer watched. Brady Oestrike, 31, responded to the ad.

Oestrike was a crazy weirdo who collected guns and swords and was into some kind of strange medieval stuff. His former roommate, Rachel Morris, said she moved out two years ago after Oestrike told her he was having fantasies about killing her:

“Knowing what tormented him, knowing the bad dreams and bad things he saw in his dreams and the depth of pain in his poetry, I wasn`t surprised that something traumatic and violent like this happened in his life,” she said. . . .
“He described a lot of bad dreams,” Morris says. “He described a lot of thoughts that were dark and disturbed him.” She says Oestrike was very intelligent and worked a lot.
Though the house was filled with guns and swords, Morris says she wasn’t frightened of him until he made a horrific confession one day.
“He told me that he was having thoughts about killing me and that he was warning me,” she said.
“He’s like, ‘These thoughts are happening to me.’”
Morris says she prepared to move out and encouraged Oestrike to see a mental health professional. “He had said he studied it and believed that he was schizophrenic,” she said.

So this was the psycho who responded to the ad in which Oppenneer offered his girlfriend Slocum for sex. You have to figure the guy who sells his pregnant girlfriend on Craigslist is a certain kind of crazy, but the guy who pays to do it with a pregnant woman while her boyfriend watches? Yeah, he’s operating at a higher level of crazy.

Oppenneer and Slocum went missing. Four days later, on July 16, police found Oppenneer’s headless body in a park. Police found e-mails between Oppenneer and Oestrike, and staked out Oestrike’s house July 17. When he drove away, there was a high-speed pursuit that ended when Oestrike committed suicide, shooting himself in the head. Police found Slocum’s body in the trunk of Oestrike’s car. Police say they believe that after Oestrike beheaded Oppenneer, he then held Slocum captive for days before strangling her. And now the saddest part of the story:

As the details emerged, the slain woman’s father revealed that he knew about the couple’s schemes and said that his daughter was desperate to do anything her boyfriend insisted so that they would stay together to bring up their child.
Greg Slocum said that his daughter was going to move in with her mother two weeks before her disappearance because she had broken up with Oppenneer – but instead, they got back together.
His daughter was desperate to get back with her child’s father ‘no matter what it took – and she paid the ultimate price for it’, Slocum told WOOD-TV.
‘Even to meet men on Craigslist to make some money because her boyfriend was manipulative,’ he said. ‘She would put herself through hell just to make sure her family didn’t get divorced.’
He added that she had written letters to her unborn child about why she met men for sex, and explained that she simply wanted to be loved.
The devastated father said he had warned her against meeting strangers for sex but that she was a teenager with a mind of her own, WOOD-TV reported.

Police still have not found Charles Oppenneer’s head.

 

Category: Crime

FMJRA 2.0: An Extra Girl (Ape)

Posted on | July 26, 2014 | 17 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Daily Kos Founder Markos Compares Arizona to ‘Apartheid South Africa’

Rule 5 Sunday: Electric Avenue

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VIDEO: The Brilliant @EvanSayet Explains How Liberals ‘Think’

FMJRA 2.0: Big Mess

Andrew ‘The Nailgun’ O’Hehir Calls Israel America’s Frankenstein Monster

Progressives Cheer: Sterilizing Poor People Is Totally Awesome!

Sharia Schools in England

Commies in Anaheim?

Tales of the Mission Gone Wrong

‘I Got Him in a Bloody Puddle for You’: Father Beats Gay Teen Molesting Son

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Is MSNBC Too Pro-Israel?

The New Feminist Fashion

The Gaza Jihad Is on Twitter

Ditch Mitch?

Canadian Candidate Drops Out After Masturbation Video Surfaces

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.22.14

‘This Is How Bullies and Abusers Function. … They Will Stop at Nothing to Silence Their Victims’

Did ObamaCare Just Die?

Schools of Privilege

Trannies Keep Harassing Feminists

Feminist Prostitution in Canada?

ObamaCare: Fake It and Take It

Radical Lesbian Feminism: Coming Soon to a Public School Classroom Near You?

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.24.14

Democrats: The Party of Theft

Bring Back the Firing Squad

HORROR IN IRAQ: Islamists Order Genital Mutilation for All Females

‘Splatter From an Execution’

Where Feminism Comes From

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.25.14

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Multimedia Hijinkery

Top linkers this week:

  1. Batshit Crazy News (29)
  2. That Mr. G Guy (21)
  3. Regular Right Guy (12)
  4. A View from the Beach (7)

…and as usual, a couple of folks who just missed the cutoff. Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!


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Category: FMJRA Award

Sex Trouble: Feminists Worry That Disney Movies Are Making Girls Heterosexual

Posted on | July 26, 2014 | 115 Comments

Jasmine was a victim of Aladdin’s magic patriarchal carpet.

Is your daughter a victim of male oppression? Blame Aladdin — as well as The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, The Lion King and Toy Story 2.

Disney cartoons and other G-rated children’s movies are full of “gendered sexuality,” subjecting women to the male “objectifying gaze,” as “heterosexuality is constructed through hetero-romantic love relationships as exceptional, powerful, magical, and transformative.”

These were the conclusions of Women’s Studies professors Karin Martin and Emily Kazyak in their 2009 research paper, “Hetero-Romantic Love and Heterosexiness in Children’s G-Rated Films.” The sociologists examined “all the G-rated films grossing $100 million dollars or more between 1990 and 2005” and found that these movies convey what feminists call “heteronormativity”:

Heteronormativity includes the multiple, often mundane ways through which heterosexuality overwhelmingly structures and “pervasively and insidiously” orders “everyday existence” . . . Heteronormativity structures social life so that heterosexuality is always assumed, expected, ordinary, and privileged. Its pervasiveness makes it difficult for people to imagine other ways of life. . . . Anything else is relegated to the nonnormative, unusual, and unexpected and is, thus, in need of explanation. Specifically, within heteronormativity, homosexuality becomes the “other” against which heterosexuality defines itself. . . .
Heteronormativity regulates those within its boundaries as it marginalizes those outside of it. . . .
Heteronormativity also rests on gender asymmetry, as heterosexuality depends on a particular type of normatively gendered women and men.

The feminist critique of heteronormativity and gender roles dates back to the earliest years of the Women’s Liberation Movement (so-called “second-wave” feminism) of the 1960s and ’70s. Radical lesbian manifestos by Artemis March (“The Woman Identified Woman,” 1970) and Charlotte Bunch (“Lesbians in Revolt,” 1972) denounced heterosexuality as part of a “sexist society characterized by rigid sex roles and dominated by male supremacy,” which “denigrates and despises women,” where women’s “subordination” as inferiors is central to a “sexist, racist, capitalist, imperialist system.” (For more, see Part One of this series, “Radical Feminism and the Long Shadow of the ‘Lavender Menace’.”)  Feminism’s anti-male theories were further advanced by Adrienne Rich’s influential 1980 essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”, which has been so widely cited that lesbian scholars like Professor Judith Butler invoke Rich’s phrase “compulsory heteorsexuality” without bothering to credit its originator. (See “Reading ‘Heterophobia’: Adrienne Rich and ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality’.”)

Martin and Kazyak’s critique of heteronormativity and gender roles in children’s movies relies on the work of radical feminists, including Gayle Rubin, a controversial lesbian activist whose treatise “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality” is cited as authority for how heterosexuality is part of a system of “inequalities, like race and class, [that] intersect and help construct what Rubin calls ‘the inner charmed circle’ in a multitude of complicated ways.” Readers of Rubin’s 1984 essay may be shocked to learn that she favorably cited the pedophile group NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) in opposition to laws against child pornography:

For over a century, no tactic for stirring up erotic hysteria has been as reliable as the appeal to protect children. The current wave of erotic terror has reached deepest into those areas bordered in some way, if only symbolically, by the sexuality of the young. . . . In February 1977 . . . a sudden concern with ‘child pornography’ swept the national media. In May, the Chicago Tribune ran a lurid four-day series with three-inch headlines, which claimed to expose a national vice ring organized to lure young boys into prostitution and pornography. Newspapers across the country ran similar stories, most of them worthy of the National Enquirer. By the end of May, a congressional investigation was underway. Within weeks, the federal government had enacted a sweeping bill against ‘child pornography’ and many of the states followed with bills of their own. . . .
The laws produced by the child porn panic are ill-conceived and misdirected. They represent far-reaching alterations in the regulation of sexual behaviour and abrogate important sexual civil liberties. But hardly anyone noticed as they swept through Congress and state legislatures. With the exception of the North American Man/Boy Love Association and American Civil Liberties Union, no one raised a peep of protest.

It is perhaps unnecessary to point out the ironic contradiction: In 1984, Gayle Rubin was citing NAMBLA to denounce a “child porn panic” as a menace to “important sexual civil liberties”; twenty-five years later, Rubin’s radical treatise was cited by two university Women’s Studies professors who see G-rated children’s films as a menace.

“Don’t worry about perverts and kiddie porn, Mom. It’s those heteronormative Disney movies that are the real danger!”

The “erotic terror” Karin Martin and Emily Kazyak want to protect girls from is heterosexuality and normal gender roles portrayed in movies like Aladdin, Pocahontas and Beauty and the Beast:

These films repeatedly mark relationships between cross-gender lead characters as special and magical by utilizing imagery of love and romance. Characters in love are surrounded by music, flowers, candles, magic, fire, ballrooms, fancy dresses, dim lights, dancing, and elaborate dinners. Fireflies, butterflies, sunsets, wind, and the beauty and power of nature often provide the setting for — and a link to the naturalness of — hetero-romantic love. For example, in Beauty and the Beast, the main characters fall in love frolicking in the snow; Aladdin and Jasmine fall in love as they fly through a starlit sky in Aladdin; Ariel falls in love as she discovers the beauty of earth in The Little Mermaid; . . . Pocahontas is full of allusion to water, wind, and trees as a backdrop to the characters falling in love. The characters often say little in these scenes. Instead, the scenes are overlaid with music and song that tells the viewer more abstractly what the characters are feeling. These scenes depicting hetero-romantic love are also paced more slowly with longer shots and with slower and soaring music.
These films also construct the specialness of hetero-romantic love by holding in tension the assertion that hetero-romantic relationships are simultaneously magical and natural. In fact, their naturalness and their connection to “chemistry” and the body further produce their exceptionalness. . . . These formulations include ideas about reproductive instincts and biology, and they work to naturalize heterosexuality. We see similar constructions at work in these G-rated movies where the natural becomes the magical. These films show that, in the words of Mrs. Pots from Beauty and the Beast, if “there’s a spark there,” then all that needs to be done is to “let nature take its course.”

Translation: “Damn those patriarchal oppressors and their hateful heteronormative ‘ideas about reproductive instincts and biology’!”

This kind of gender-theory deconstruction of popular culture is now ubiquitous in Women’s Studies programs, and it is certainly no accident that the most widely used anthology of feminist literature is edited by three lesbian professors. Academic feminists are hostile to any claim that heterosexual attraction is natural, as I observed three months ago:

If you consider sexual desire and romantic love between men and women to be natural and healthy, you are not a feminist. . . . There is nothing natural about sex, according to feminist ideology, no biological urge that causes women to be attracted to men.

Because feminists view heterosexuality as intrinsic to  “male supremacy,” they argue that women’s romantic interest in men is “socially constructed” — a delusion imposed on them by patriarchal brainwashing — and Karin Martin blames mothers for encouraging girls to be heterosexual. In the anti-Disney screed she co-authored with Kazyak, Martin cited her own research from another 2009 paper titled “Normalizing Heterosexuality: Mothers’ Assumptions, Talk, and Strategies with Young Children.”

Obviously, mothers are letting their daughters watch Disney movies as part of these “strategies” to teach their girls how to be victims of male heterosexual oppression. Being beautiful, so as to attract “the male gaze” as sex objects, is what Martin and Kazyak condemn as the “heterosexiness” of female cartoon characters:

Heteronormativity requires particular kinds of bodies and interactions between those bodies. Thus, as heterosexuality is constructed in these films, gendered bodies are portrayed quite differently, and we see much more of some bodies than others. Women throughout the animated features in our sample are drawn with cleavage, bare stomachs, and bare legs. . . .
[In the 1996 Disney feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame] Quasimodo accidentally stumbles into Esmeralda’s dressing area, and she quickly covers up with a robe and hunches over so as not to expose herself. She ties up her robe as Quasimodo apologizes again and again and hides his eyes. However, as he exits, he glances back toward her with a smile signifying for the viewer his love for her. A glimpse of her body has made her even more lovable and desirable. . . .
[W]omen’s bodies become important in the construction of heteronormative sexuality through their “sexiness” at which men gaze. Much of the sexuality that these gendered bodies engage in has little to do with heterosexual sex narrowly defined as intercourse or even behaviors that might lead to it, but rather with cultural signs of a gendered sexuality for women.

So, for all these years American parents thought their daughters were just watching kiddie cartoons, when instead these Disney movies are actually part of how “heterosexuality is constructed” by the patriarchy to impose “gendered sexuality” on little girls. Please, professors, tell us more about this animated misogynistic oppression:

The best example of the representation of sexiness appears in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Esmeralda, the Gypsy female lead, is drawn with dark hair, big green eyes, a curvy body, cleavage, and a small waist. She is also drawn with darker skin than other lead Disney characters like Belle (Beauty and the Beast) and Ariel (Little Mermaid). Darker skin and hair and “exotic” features are part of the representation of heterosexual sexiness for women. Moreover, Esmeralda spends much time in this film swaying her hips and dancing “sexily” while men admire her.
Not all scenes with the signification of sexiness are so elaborated. When the candlestick and duster are turned back into people in Beauty and the Beast, the now-voluptuous maid prances bare-shouldered in front of the chef who stares. Throughout Aladdin, especially in fast-paced musical scenes, sexy women prance, preen, bat their eyelashes, shake their hips, and reveal their cleavage. When Genie sings to Aladdin, he produces three women with bare stomachs and bikini-like outfits who dance around him, touch him, bat their eyes at him, and kiss him. He stares at them sometimes unsure, but wide-eyed and smiling. When Prince Ali comes to ask Princess Jasmine for her hand in marriage, his parade to the castle is adorned with writhing, dancing women with bare stomachs and cleavage. Later, Jasmine sees Prince Ali as a fraud and tricks him with similarly sexy moves. Heterosexiness in Aladdin is delivered through the bodies of women of color who are exoticized.

Translation: “Those heteronormative Disney oppressors aren’t just sexist, they’re racist, too! How dare they ‘exoticize’ women of color!”

Esmerelda gets exoticized in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

This is perhaps a good place to mention that Christian conservatves — despite our hateful enthusiasm for patriarchy — have frequently criticized the messages embedded in Disney products. Often, the same “hetero-erotic” themes that offend feminists offend conservatives, but for different reasons. Youthful rebellion against parental authority by the pursuit of forbidden love is fairly common in these movies. Ariel’s romance in The Little Mermaid is a rebellion against her father Poseidon, and forbidden romances are also central to the stories in Pocahontas and Aladdin. The use of magic — which Bible-believers must condemn as sorcery and witchcraft — is another common Disney plot device. (Did you say “Magic Kingdom”? And do we know who rules this kingdom, boys and girls? Satan!) Pocahontas is particularly egregious to conservative sensibilities, depicting English colonists as violent, greedy predators, while portraying the natives as peaceful proto-environmentalists who live in harmony with nature. Any conservative Christian theologian would see the “mystical” elements in Pocahontas as a celebration of pagan nature-worship.

Likewise, the “heterosexiness” that Martin and Kazyak view through the prism of gender theory is offensive to many conservative parents, although for different reasons. Conservatives don’t think their daughters should have to bare their cleavage or make “sexy moves” to attract male interest. Nor, for that matter, do conservatives think that our daughters are apt to find healthy relationships by becoming slaves to “chemistry” and acting on every magical “spark” that might persuade them to “let nature take its course.” Mature adults understand that “chemistry” — especially wild hormonal impulses of adolescence — often leads young people to irresponsible and reckless behavior. Whether we are Christians who oppose fornication on moral grounds, or rationalists who wish our children to learn responsible restraint on their potentially harmful erotic impulses, conservative parents reject permissive attitudes about letting children pursue their “feelings” and “instincts” in romance.

Paradoxes abound when comparing feminist and conservative critiques of popular culture. Martin and Kazyak condemn the heteronormative “gendered sexuality” expressed by the costumes and gestures of female Disney characters. Most traditionalist parents would be appalled if their daughters dressed and behaved like the Hunchback‘s Esmerelda, Aladdin‘s Jasmine or The Little Mermaid. (“If you think you’re leaving the house dressed like that, Ariel, you’ve got another think coming! Wearing those seashells like a little beach tramp! Now march yourself back upstairs and put on a sweater, young lady!”) While it is acceptable for two Women’s Studies professors to condemn the “heterosexiness” of Disney princesses, however, any conservative who criticized these characters’ cleavage-bearing outfits would be denounced by feminists for engaging in “slut-shaming.”

Ariel shows off her half-fish “heterosexiness.”

The question of whether Disney cartoon features are entirely “family friendly” in one that thoughtful conservatives have often discussed. Yet the parts of these G-rated movies that are most wholesome, from a conservative perspective, are predictably singled out for criticism by the feminist professors Martin and Kazyak:

[T]here is much explicit heterosexual gazing at or ogling of women’s bodies in these films. . . .
When the main characters refrain from overt ogling and sexual commentary, the “sidekicks” provide humor through this practice. For example, in Toy Story 2, Rex, Potato Head, Slinky Dog, and Piggy Bank drive through aisles of a toy store and stop at a “beach party” where there are many Barbies in bathing suits, laughing and dancing. As the male characters approach, a jackpot sound (“ching”) is heard, and all four male characters’ jaws drop open. Then “Tour Guide Barbie” acrobatically lands in their car and says she will help them. They all stare at her with open eyes and mouths. Mr. Potato Head recites again and again, “I’m a married spud, I’m a married spud, I’m a married spud,” and Piggy Bank says, “Make room for single fellas” as he jumps over Potato Head to sit next to Barbie. They remain mesmerized by Barbie as she gives them a tour of the store.

Barbie was objectified by the male potato gaze.

Anyone who has seen Toy Story 2 — at least, anyone except lesbian Women’s Studies professors — knows that this is one of the funniest scenes in the whole movie. The reactions of the four male characters are so funny because they are so true-to-life. And the reaction of Mr. Potato Head, reminding himself that he is married when unexpectedly finding himself seated next to vivacious young “Tour Guide Barbie,” is exactly what any Christian pastor — or any wife, for that matter — would expect a married man to do in such a situation. If only Bill Clinton had remembered he was a “married spud,” the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Clinton’s impeachment could have been avoided.

Marital loyalty requires that both husbands and wives strive to resist the temptations of “heterosexiness,” but this obligation — a sacred duty, as Christians would say — is most often breached by men. Bill Clinton certainly wasn’t the first middle-aged married man to discover that career success could be leveraged as sexual access to misguided young women for whom male power had the effect of an aphrodisiac. This is not to deny that the reverse scenario occurs, as when female teachers like Mary Kay LeTourneau and Debra Lafave engage in illegal sex with underage males. However, for every sex-crazed female “cougar” stalking young male prey, there have always been many more married men willing to take advantage of foolish young women. In fact, this was the subject of one of the most famous musical quarrels in history. Hank Thompson had a Number One country hit in 1952 with this lament:

I never knew God made honky-tonk angels.
Should have known you would never make a wife.
You have lost the only one who ever loved you,
And went back to the wild side of life.

To that, Kitty Wells famously replied with her own Number One hit:

It wasn’t God who made honky-tonk angels,
As you wrote in the words of your song.
Too many times married men think they’re still single.
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong.

Amen, sister! Complaints about double-standards and an endless finger-pointing blame game in the War of the Sexes long pre-dated the rise of the feminist movement, and there is more wisdom in those Grand Ole Opry classics than in all the “gender theory” treatises ever published by Women’s Studies professors. The true classics in our popular culture endure over time precisely because they reflect important truths about human nature. Take it away, Elvis:

Well, a hard-headed woman,
A soft-hearted man,
Been the cause of trouble
Ever since the world began. . . .
Samson told Delilah
Loud and clear,
“Keep your cotton pickin’ fingers
Out of my curly hair!”
Oh yeah, ever since the world began
A hard-headed woman been
A thorn in the side of man

Is that song an example of patriarchal heteronormative misogyny? Certainly. Why do you think they called him the “King,” huh?

We laugh as we imagine the feminist critique of old rock-and-roll songs, but Ph.D.s in Women’s Studies expect to be taken seriously when they tell us Disney cartoons are part of a male-supremacy plot to brainwash girls into becoming heterosexual. But nothing would horrify parents more than if their daughter were to become “heterosexual” in the generic sense — that is to say, becoming sexually available to all men.

Strippers, porn performers, and prostitutes are “heterosexual” in that sense, and yet it is conservatives, not feminists, who most frequently criticize women’s degradation in what is euphemistically called “sex work.” Conservatives are condemned for “slut-shaming” — and Republicans are accused of waging a “War on Women” — when they criticize the reckless promiscuity defended by many feminists.

Duke University Women’s Studies major Miriam Weeks (“Belle Knox”) insists it is an “empowering” expression of her “sexual autonomy” for her to perform oral sex, let men ejaculate on her face, and be penetrated every possible way in the teen porn videos where she is paid to endure sexual humiliation. Miriam Weeks is not strictly heterosexual, and has enacted numerous lesbian scenes in her brief porn career. She describes herself as bisexual and has said she started watching porn videos when she was 11 or 12. By the time she was a college freshman, the Duke feminist told one interviewer, she was already so jaded she could only “get off” watching videos in which females perform oral sex on men.

Like the old song says, it wasn’t God who made honky-tonk angels. And whatever academic feminists may theorize, it isn’t Disney movies that turn girls into pathetic creatures like Miriam Weeks.

 

 

* * * * *

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: Culture, Feminism, Movies, Sex Trouble
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