The Other McCain

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

Massacre: Ronald Haskell Murders Six Members of Texas Mormon Family

Posted on | July 12, 2014 | 32 Comments

Ronald Lee Haskell was going through a divorce from his wife, Melannie Lyon. The couple had four young children, and Haskell had become increasingly violent. Lyon’s sister, Katie Stay, urged Lyon to leave Haskell in Utah and move to Texas, where Stay and her husband lived with their five children. Wednesday, Haskell went to the Stay family’s home in the suburbs of Houston:

Haskell, 33, was disguised as a FedEx delivery worker when he went to the suburban Houston home of his ex-wife’s sister, Katie Stay, on Wednesday afternoon, police said. Oldest child Cassidy was home alone and answered the door. She told Haskell her parents weren’t home. He later returned, forcing his way in and tying Cassidy up, police said.
Minutes later, her parents and her four siblings, ages 4 to 13, returned. Haskell allegedly tied them up as well, and demanded to know the whereabouts of his ex-wife, Melannie Lyon. They said they didn’t know, and they were each shot in the back of the head. The bullet for Cassidy only grazed her, and she played dead until the gunman fled, she told police.
The critically wounded teenager was able to identify him to police as her ex-uncle, and said he was planning to drive to her grandparents’ home and kill them. Police, however, tracked him down and he was arrested after a 20-minute police chase and a three-hour standoff.

The Stay family were among some 60,000 Mormons in the Houston area. Haskell was also Mormon and grew up in Alaska, where he was voted “class clown” his senior year in high school. Since the breakup of his marriage, Haskell had been living with his parents in California. He had a record of serious domestic violence:

One of his earliest arrests was in 2008 on suspicion of domestic violence, simple assault and committing an act of violence in front of children. Melannie Lyon told police her husband dragged her out of their bedroom by her hair and hit her in the side of the head.
Haskell said he had only pushed his wife, and that he was stressed from his job. Two of the couple’s children were ages 3 and 5 at the time. Haskell pleaded guilty to an assault charge in the case. . . .
Last October, a protective order filed by Lyon was dismissed when the couple agreed to a mutual restraining order and custody arrangements for their children. The judge said Ron Lee Haskell’s visits would have to be supervised by a psychologist.
Haskell had been living with his parents in San Marcos, California, before he traveled to Texas this week. He and his parents have a history of domestic disturbances, police records show.
As recently as July 2, Haskell allegedly choked his mother and threatened to kill her. Court documents say Haskell was upset that she was talking to his ex-wife. Karla Haskell reported to police her son “told me he was going to kill me, my family and any officer who stops him.” She filed a domestic violence protective order, and San Diego County Sheriff’s Department detectives looked for Haskell for several days but never found him, the department said this week. . . .

A sadly familiar story of escalating violence and the failure of law enforcement to recognize the danger signs. You might think when a man chokes his mother and threatens to kill her, when he has a prior record for assault and is already under a restraining order from his ex-wife, he would be locked up immediately. But no — it’s California: Turn him loose, so he can go kill six people in Texas.

 

Category: Crime

Stupid Vicious Criminal Scum

Posted on | July 11, 2014 | 49 Comments

Left to right: Marisela Pacheco, Ruben Archunde, Jessica Gallegos

Marisela Narango Pacheco’s boyfriend was in jail in Tucson, Arizona. Her boyfriend’s buddy Ruben Estevan Archunde had just been released from jail and was awaiting trial on an auto theft charge. They came up with an idea of how to get the money to bail out Pacheco’s boyfriend — armed robbery — and so they called for a taxi.

Timothy Royce, 27, was a driver for Yellow Cab. He was an Army veteran, and his fianceé was four months pregnant with their son. On the night of March 5, 2008, Royce picked up Pacheco, Archunde and his girlfriend, Marisela Narango Pacheco, a 16-year-old runaway. Archunde shot Royce twice with a .45-caliber pistol and left him in an alley. The trio of robbers got Royce’s wallet and $5.

Five dollars. He died for $5.

The murder was reported in the Tucson newspaper. Pacheco and Archunde “went to the jail to show her boyfriend the Arizona Daily Star’s article on the slaying so he could know what they had done for him.” On a digital recording of that meeting, Pacheco can be heard loudly proclaiming “I was there too!” Pacheco also told her sister-in-law about the crime, and the sister-in-law called the cops.

This murder was featured on the A&E network’s The First 48, a reality show that is actually about reality: Camera crews follow around homicide investigators as they obtain evidence and testimony, interrogate suspects and, usually, solve the murder.

The First 48 is fascinating to watch because the murders these real-life detectives investigate are nothing like the exciting, suspenseful thrillers that are the subject of fictional TV crime dramas. There are no mysteries, no elaborate conspiracies. No, the victims on The First 48 are usually people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got shot, beaten or stabbed to death by stupid, vicious criminal scum. Sometimes it’s a drug deal gone wrong. Sometimes it’s a beef between rival hoodlums. Other times, it’s just a robbery like the one that led to the murder of Tucson cab driver Timothy Royce.

Gallegos was sentenced to seven years in prison, Pacheco was sentenced to 22 years in prison, and Archunde got life without parole, spared the death penalty because he had a bad childhood:

Margaret DiFrank, a mitigation specialist hired by Archunde’s attorneys, David Basham and James Fullin, spent months collecting information on Archunde’s background. She found that:
• Archunde’s mother gave birth to five children between the ages of 14 and 21. Archunde was the second-eldest.
• Archunde attended four schools in kindergarten alone, the longest for three months.
• Archunde’s father was sent to prison when Archunde was 6, for child molestation.
• Archunde’s mother moved to New Mexico when Archunde was 8, leaving her children behind with a grandmother.
• Archunde became a ward of the state at the age of 12 and made his first suicide attempt.
In sentencing Archunde, [Judge Richard] Fields said Archunde “was abused and abandoned more than anyone would wish upon their least favorite creature,” and that led to his creating “street families” to fill the void.

Whatever. Why is it that it’s only after they kill somebody that we learn about the horrendous childhood experiences of stupid vicious scum like Ruben Archunde? Why can’t police figure out that some animals are too dangerous to be turned loose on the streets? They actually had this particular scum in custody, jailed for auto theft, and turned him loose just days before he shot Timothy Royce.

Unlike the suspense-filled TV crime dramas, there’s no moral to this story. Just a dead cab driver and his son — now nearly 6 years old — growing up without a father, because of stupid vicious criminal scum.

 

Category: Crime

Rape Without Context

Posted on | July 11, 2014 | 41 Comments

Perusing the #fem2 (feminist) hashtag, I found a post at @TheNib that tells the story of a woman’s rape, in a way that makes no sense.

Go read the whole thing and try to figure it out. The guy “hovered over” her — where? — and told her she was “pretty,” had sex with her after she said “no,” and she made the guy breakfast the next morning.

The End.

Who is this guy? When did this happen? How did they meet and where were they when he “hovered over” her? We could speculate that this happened while she was a college student, and the incident transpired in a coed dorm or a shared apartment. The guy was, maybe, a friend of one of her male roommates? But this is mere speculation — a wild guess — because the author does not provide enough facts to place the incident in context. What is omitted and why?

But enough with the deliberate obtuseness — we actually know why she’s telling this story. In the context of the “rape culture” discourse being promoted by feminists, we frequently encounter the situation where a drunk college boy is accused of raping a drunk college girl. In his defense, the boy says their sexual activity was consensual, and points out that in the immediate aftermath of the alleged crime, the girl didn’t say she was raped or act hostile toward him. Often times, in this scenario, the boy has text messages or emails from the girl showing that she continued to be friendly. Only later, perhaps many weeks or months later, did she say it was rape.

What the teller of the “I Made Him Breakfast” story intends to convey is that friendly post-coital gestures can mean something else. Just because she was nice to the guy the morning after, doesn’t mean the sex was consensual. And without arguing with her basic point, I remain troubled by the lack of context: What is omitted and why? If we knew everything — the whole story, the names, the date, the location, etc. — how would that affect our perception of her story?

Rape is a felony in every state. Such crimes should be prosecuted. Telling stories on the Internet is a poor substitute for prosecution, and probably won’t do anything to solve the problem.

 

Category: Crime, Feminism, Sex

Buy It Now: ‘The Last Falangist’ Review; Wombat Shows the Hard Face

Posted on | July 11, 2014 | 57 Comments

In case you don’t recognize the name Kevin Trainor, he is our very own Wombat, the co-blogger who compiles the daily “Live at Five” headline roundup and now the author of The Last Falangist: Essays on Culture and Politics in America — CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW.

Wombat points out in the introduction that he is not actually a member of the Franco’s Movimiento Nacional, just a very conservative Catholic from a military background. Nor is his book merely a compendium of reactionary nostalgia, despite the fact that much of it was written in the Good Old Days, when George W. Bush was president and almost nobody outside Chicago had ever heard of a guy named Barack Hussein Obama. It is a shock to realize that this time in history now seems almost as distant as the era of the Generalissimo’s rule in Spain.

How far back does The Last Falangist go, you ask? On Page 59, we find an entry from January 2005 that begins thus:

“I’ve been thinking about the long comment Allahpundit left on Michele’s old blog . . .”

Yes: In 2005, there was no HotAir.com and Allahpundit was just another dude hanging out in the blogosphere.

The Last Falangist: Essays on Culture and Politics in America
ONLY $1.99! CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW!

Excuse the heavy-duty sales hype, but the purpose of publishing an ebook is to sell the ebook to people who will read the ebook, and supporting our ethos of shameless capitalism compels me to point out that such a transaction requires that you actually click the link. (Although there are still a few old-timers like Wombat and me, the online world nowadays is crawling with noobz who don’t understand how this here innerwebs stuff works.) If living well is the best revenge, surviving long enough to tell the story of the people who f–ked you over is maybe the second-best revenge, and did I ever mention that Wombat is divorced?

Hate was not an option. Hate was the enemy. Hate had to be ruthlessly suppressed, choked off, buried so deep nobody outside my skin could find it. Hate was weakness, because to hate someone, you must care what happens to them, and I no longer cared. . . .
The only option was to soldier on, show the hard face, and cultivate apathy like a poisonous plant. F–k It. Drive On.

This is not just excellent prose, it’s also an expression of Stoic philosophy. To “show the hard face,” as Wombat so brilliantly describes it, is to deprive bad people of the sadistic pleasure they ordinarily get from f–king other people over. If you can “cultivate apathy” toward the Evil Lying Bitch From Hell, you win.

The Last Falangist: Essays on Culture and Politics in America
ONLY $1.99! CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW!

Of course, this isn’t Charlie Sheen-style “winning,” and if Wombat is cavorting with porn starlets half his age, he is being awful secretive about it, but what other options are available? Toward the end of The Last Falangist — Page 114, to be exact — we find Wombat returning to the subject to acknowledge the pain:

The whole point of having a mother and a father working together is so that you have backup when one of you drops the ball; the other one is there to quickly scoop up the errant pigskin or maybe make the catch and run it in. Unfortunately, divorce screws up that neat metaphor, because all of a sudden Mom and Dad aren’t really on the same team any more. . . .
When you and the Mrs. are constantly fighting over every little thing, when a lot of her energy is going toward building up the new boyfriend and tearing you down for not being a passive, enabling doormat, it becomes damn near impossible. Because the kids know what’s going on. They may not understand it, but they know.

If “the personal is political,” as the feminists insist, what is the politics of Stoicism? It might involve an indifference to the endless whining of self-declared Victims of Society, the people who insist that they are oppressed by the rest of us, as if we don’t have enough problems of our own to keep us busy, as if we had time to bother discriminating against them — Social Injustice as a hobby.

The Last Falangist: Essays on Culture and Politics in America
ONLY $1.99! CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW!

Did I mention that Wombat is not only Hispanic on his mother’s side, but also Jewish? Yep: His maternal ancestry is traceable to the Sephardic “crypto-Jews” of New Mexico, as we learn on Page 81 of The Last Falangist, so if you don’t buy his book, you’re not only a xenophobic anti-Latino yanqui bigot, but also a Jew-hater. Such is the logic of the Obama Age, where all opposition to the president’s policies is explained by the mainstream media as a byproduct of some kind of irrational hate. It is therefore amusing to read Wombat’s reaction (Page 73) to a Jay Rosen essay:

His point that bloggers rely on the MSM for news collection is very well taken, but he goes astray when he elides the distinction between bloggers who attack media bias because they can’t stand the hypocritical claim of objectivity and conservative bloggers who want the Gang of 500 taken out, shot, and impaled as a warning to others who cross the Right-Wing Death Beast Party. There are certainly bloggers in the latter category, but the former type can be found all over the political spectrum, and a lot of us agree that the problem would go away for us if ABC/CBS/CNN/NBC/PBS would just come out of the closet and admit they’re a bunch of Democrats.

That was written in 2004. Sic semper hoc.

Such flashback reminders of what has changed (and what hasn’t) in the past decade are scattered through The Last Falangist, and if you won’t spend $1.99 to enjoy the excellence of Wombat’s insightful analysis, you’re obviously an agent of the Comintern.

Do not smirk, Comrade — despite the title of Wombat’s book, there are probably still a few other Falangist holdouts, and you subversives will regret it if Movimiento Nacional gets their hands on you.

 

 

Category: Books

What Were They Thinking?

Posted on | July 11, 2014 | 55 Comments

Why would the editors of Esquire assign Tom Junod — or anybody else, for that matter — to write “In Praise of 42-Year-Old Women”? And, having made that assignment, why would they not demand a re-write after he turned in a horrifying mess that begins thus:

Let’s face it: There used to be something tragic about even the most beautiful forty-two-year-old woman. With half her life still ahead of her, she was deemed to be at the end of something — namely, everything society valued in her, other than her success as a mother. If she remained sexual, she was either predatory or desperate; if she remained beautiful, what gave her beauty force was the fact of its fading. And if she remained alone … well, then God help her.

What is the purpose of publishing this? Never mind. Here’s some advice for magazine publishers everywhere: Before you assign or publish an article, ask yourself, “Will this article be more enjoyable than the Gawker blog post viciously mocking the article?”

Tom Junod, according to Wikipedia, was born in the Eisenhower Administration, and is currently either 55 or 56 years old. Nevertheless, Tom Junod is gracious enough to admit he’s capable of wanting to f–k women who are within 13 or 14 years of his own age.
I, myself, by coincidence, am 42 years old right now. But I am male. As such, I would like to follow Tom Junod’s lead and reassure all the 28-year-old women of the world that I do not believe their advanced years should render them sexually unattractive to me.

Read the whole thing — the Gawker piece, I mean, not the Esquire article.

 

Category: Sex

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.11.14

Posted on | July 11, 2014 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Obama Offers To Broker Gaza Ceasefire

No comment from Netanyahu on when ground forces will join in

Palestinians claim most of the dead and injured are civilians
Rocket fire from Lebanon joins barrage from Gaza
Turkish PM Erdogan says Gaza offensive threatens rapprochement


Gov. Perry To Obama: Send Guard To Border Now
Criticizes President for not visiting border
Even Texas Democrats question Obama’s border no-show
Data suggest many illegal children will get to stay



POLITICS
Florida Judge Orders Gerrymandered Districts Redrawn

Districts may have to be redrawn for 2014 elections

FL-5, FL-10 found to be illegally affected by partisan lobbying


Boehner Announces Obama Lawsuit Will Focus On Healthcare Law Delays


Colorado Gay Marriages On Shaky Legal Ground

Federal Judge Orders IRS To Explain Lost Lerner E-mails Under Oath

Joint Chiefs Unanimously Supported Bergdahl Swap



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Mixed As Supply Fears Recede: WTI $102.91, Brent $108.73
Portuguese Bank Fears Rekindle Euro Market Tension
Reynolds Reportedly Near Merger With Lorillard
Family Dollar Posts Lower Profit As Icahn Presses For Sale
Inventor Pushes Solar Panels For Roads, Highways
UAW Won’t Take No For An Answer At VW Plant In Tennessee
FTC Sues Amazon For Allowing In-App Purchases By Kids
Can You Shun Facebook For 99 Days?
GameStop Wants To Fund Exclusive Video Content
Microsoft CEO Promises To Shake Up Company’ Culture: “Nothing Is Off The Table”
Box, Dropbox Brace For Impact Of Amazon’s Zocalo



SPORTS
Headley Homer Ends Kershaw’s Scoreless Streak

But the Padres lose anyway.

One dinger not enough as Dodgers win 2-1


Trout Homer Among Four Hits As Angels Rout Rangers 15-6


Tanaka Could Need Tommy John Surgery


Volquez Victorious As Pirates Thrash Cards 9-1

Tigers Maul Second-Place Royals 16-4

Carp Delivers For Red Sox As Pale Hose Fall In Extras

Tribe Scalps Yankees Again 9-3

M’s Get 12 Hits, Still Lose 4-2 To Twins

Kazmir Notches Win #11 As A’s Thump Giants 6-1

Colon’s Rough Start Costs Mets Win

Phillies Beat Brewers Again, 9-1

Cubs Beat Reds In Extras, Avoid Sweep

Sterling Trial On Hold Until July 21

Why Soccer In Brazil Is Better Than Cricket In India

O’s Hang On To Beat Nats 4-3



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Margot Robbie Doesn’t Consider Herself Particularly Attractive

We’ll be the judge of that, young lady.

“Wolf Of Wall Street” actress says her girlfriends are better looking

Teen Huntress Kendall Jones: There’s A Target On My Head Thanks To Facebook

Why They Were Emmy Snubs: “Girls”, “Homeland”, “Survivor”

“Glee” Star’s Boyfriend Found Dead In Philly Hotel Room

“Sons Of Anarchy” Star Kurt Sutter Feeling Kinda Susan Lucci

First Look At Yaya DaCosta As Whitney Houston In Lifetime Biopic

Complete Emmy Nominations List

Unspeakable Armenian, Vile Rapper Living Separate Lives After Wedding

More Details Emerge About Jeff Robinov’s Studio 8 Deal With Sony

Jimmy Kimmel, Molly McNearney – It’s A Girl!

Robin Thicke’s New Album Sells Just 530 Copies in UK, 55 In Australia

Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling Joining Cop Drama “Nice Guys”

Esquire Praises 42-Year-Old Women

Jimmy Fallon Spends Less Time Talking Than Jay Leno, Talk Show Peers

Joy Behar Slams Elizabeth Hasselbeck For Rosie O’Donnell Comments Amid “The View” Drama



FOREIGNERS
Four Servicemen, Five Miners Killed In Latest East Ukraine Violence
Kerry Hopes Solution Can Be Found To Afghan Vote Mess
Germany Expels Top US Intelligence Official
Seven Injured In 5th Running Of Bulls At Pamplona; No Gorings
Red China, US To Cooperate On Counterterrorism
Kerry To Join Iran Nuke Talks As Deadline Nears
Rupiah Lead Emerging Market Gainers On Indications Of Jokowi Win In Malaysia
“Looking Forward To Results-Oriented Visit,” Says Modi After Formal Invite From Obama



BLOGS & STUFF
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Another Reason Black People Might Be Nervous About Illegal Immigration
Doug Powers: Hey, Maybe Removing The Word “Illegal” From The ICE Lexicon Will Solve The Influx Problem
Twitchy: Dems, White House Attempt To Portray Obama As Man Of Action
American Power: MS-13 Actively Recruiting In Flood Of Illegals At Obama’s Shelters
American Thinker: L’Etat, C’Est Gay – Taking The New Sexual Fascism Seriously
BLACKFIVE: Trailer Talk – No Photo Ops, Obama’s Working (It)
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin Justifies Impeachment On Hannity’s Radio Show
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, July 10
Jammie Wearing Fools: President Selfie Not Interested In Photo Ops, Unless You Pay $5000 At Swanky Fundraiser
Joe For America: House Resolution Filed For Arrest Of Lois Lerner
JustOneMinute: LOL
Pat Dollard: IT REALLY IS A WAR – Mexico, Guatemala Sign Agreement To Invade US
Protein Wisdom: Coulter To MS Conservatives – Just Shut Up And Take It, Wingnuts
Shot In The Dark: Everyone’s A Racist!
The Jawa Report: CAIR Dumps Pretense, Posts Dead Babies In Support Of Hamas
The Lonely Conservative: Obama On Vacation For Half Of August
This Ain’t Hell: R. Lee Ermey Talks Military, Acting, And Reality TV
Weasel Zippers: Obama Laughs His Way Through Meeting With Governor Perry
Megan McArdle: Students Face Debt By 1000 Fees


Category: Live at Five

Atheist Progressive Makes Rape Threat About Conservative’s Teen Daughter

Posted on | July 10, 2014 | 143 Comments

Preston Smith (@common_alias) is an atheist progressive supporter of Hillary Clinton’s incipient 2016 presidential campaign. C. Steven Tucker (@CSteven) is a Chicago businessman, Tea Party activist and ObamaCare critic. Wednesday afternoon, Tucker sent out a Twitter message about calls to impeach President Obama. Smith responded with a sick comment — CC’d to Tucker’s wife Andrea — that appeared to be a rape threat directed at one of their teenage daughters:

Why? Beyond Smith’s perverse interpretation of an Old Testament passage, it seems Smith had devoted enough attention to his target to be able to locate Tucker’s wife’s account, showing her with the couple’s three children in the profile picture.

You can imagine how any parent would take alarm at such a comment. Tucker said he has reported Smith to law enforcement, but I’m afraid the Tuckers will be disappointed to learn that, from a legal standpoint, a comment like Smith’s is not be considered a “threat.” A threat, in the legal sense, requires that there be some reason for the target to fear that the person making the threat will actually carry it out.

In other words, if I say, “I’d like to beat Preston Smith to a bloody pulp,” that’s not a threat, legally. On the other hand, if I were to say, “I’ve got Preston Smith’s home address and I just booked my flight from Dulles to Miami tomorrow so that I can kill that vicious bastard with my bare hands” — well, the specificity of such a comment could be seen as a legitimate threat that might cause him to fear that an enraged redneck could show up at his front door with murderous intent.

The difference between these hypothetical scenarios may seem trivial legalistic hair-splitting to the layman. On the other hand, if I told you that Delta Flight 6224 left Dulles at 6:10 a.m., connnecting through Detroit via Flight 1829 to arrive at Miami International Airport before noon, you might believe I’d given it serious consideration. And if Steven Tucker posted a selfie of himself at O’Hare Airport boarding a non-stop flight to Miami, that could also be taken as indicating Preston Smith has reasonable cause to fear for his safety.

But these are just hypothetical scenarios, of course.

(Hat-tip: Big Fur Hat.)

 

Category: Progressivism

What Is Radical Feminism? ‘Make Deviance the Core of Our Identity’

Posted on | July 10, 2014 | 59 Comments

“Both femininity and masculinity are heteropatriarchal terms that establish the boundaries of what is ‘acceptable,’ ‘permissible’ appearance and behavior for females, Lesbians included. Heteropatriarchal semantics equates femininity with femaleness and masculinity with maleness, as though behaviors and personality traits were determined by biological sex. On the basis of that equation, heteropatriarchy values femininity in females and masculinity in males. . . .
“What is Lesbian identity? What does it mean to be a Lesbian, live as a Lesbian, think as a Lesbian, in a Lesbian context? So we have to begin by identifying how we differ from heterosexual women and bisexuals and make our deviance the core of our identity. Lesbians don’t fuck men. We are the only group in the world that refuses to place men at the center of our lives. We are the only group whose lives are focused on women.”
— Julia Penelope, Call Me Lesbian: Lesbian Lives, Lesbian Theory (1992)

Some people are ahead of their time, and Julia Penelope Stanley — who dropped her heteropatriarchal surname early in her career as a radical feminist academic, author and activist — was an angry lesbian man-hater before being an angry lesbian man-hater was cool.

Her eccentricities of style, grammar and orthography are very reminiscent of Mary Daly, and make her work difficult to quote because apparently freedom from heteropatriarchal oppression requires that nobody is permitted to edit your work for ease of reading. Admirers of the late Ms. Penelope’s radical feminist work will therefore take umbrage at the tiny bits of editing I’ve done to the quote above, but her abbreviation of “heteropatriarchy” as “HP” struck me as silly, and at least I didn’t change her habitual capitalization of “Lesbian,” a quirk that seems to have had some significance  to her.

She described herself as a “fat, butch dyke who never passed,” which is to say she was the perfect stereotype of a feminist, and thus viewed as something of an embarrassment to the movement. Despite the fact that her writings were (and to some extent, still are) influential within radical feminism, that she participated in the founding of important feminist organizations and suffered in her academic career on account of her early status as an “out” lesbian, Ms. Penelope was largely forgotten by the time she died last year.

Born in 1941, she developed her lesbian identity at an early age and, by the time she was 16, was hanging around lesbian bars in her native Miami. Her lesbianism led to her being kicked out of college twice (first at Florida State and then at the University of Miami) before finally getting her bachelor’s degree at New York’s City College when she was 25, then getting a Ph.D. at the University of Texas. She taught English for more than a decade at the University of Nebraska, and blamed her lack of promotions on sexist homophobia, which we might accept as valid, except that (a) she was hired as an English professor and (b) apparently her publications consisted entirely of writing about lesbianism. This was many years before angry lesbians could get their Ph.D. in Women’s Studies and spend their academic careers publishing treatises on Queer Theory, so if Julia Penelope suffered the usual fate of those who are ahead of their time . . . Well, whatever.

Unlike some of the “political lesbians” of the 1970s — who became lesbian only after feminist “consciousness raising” convinced them they were oppressed by men — Julia Penelope was a “stone butch” lesbian for more than a decade before joining the feminist movement. Also unlike most Second Wave feminists, who were aligned with the antiwar New Left, Ms. Penelope’s politics were idiosyncratic and even right-leaning: She became a devotee of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism in the late 1950s and, in New York in the 1960s, was a libertarian conservative at a time when all her close friends were either Communists or Socialists. Furthermore, unlike most feminists, she had a sense of humor and a reputation as a joker, describing herself as a “cunning linguist.” Her friend Anne T. Leighton recounted an occasion when Ms. Penelope used LSD:

“Julia, delightedly addled on acid, standing mesmerized in the bakery section of a Midwestern supermarket, fondling a package of rolls. While we worried about security guards, Julia remained amazed. With a shyness she rarely let others see she gestured with the rolls, offering her pronouncement then beaming at our understanding. ‘Breasts’ she whispered. Julia: alive to the wonder of a world filled with breasts.”

Her lesbian separatism was rooted in a simple logic: Women’s oppression by men (i.e., patriarchy) was the result of heterosexuality, hence the term “heteropatriarchy” to describe the male-dominated system she opposed. Furthermore, anticipating the arguments of Third Wave feminist gender theory, Ms. Penelope saw the sex/gender categories of “masculine” and “feminine” as inherently related to women’s oppression. In an autobiographical essay from her book Call Me Lesbian, she wrote:

“I believe that, as Lesbians, instead of using our energies trying to transform what we’ve learned from heteropatriarchal cultures, trying to squeeze ourselves into their framework or bending it until it feels comfortable for us, we should be actively unlearning what we’ve been taught by heterosexuals, and busy transforming ourselves. . . . Everything we believe, we’ve learned from the heteropatriarchy — every single bit of it. We have no experience to call our ‘own,’ because, from the day we’re born, our experiences were described for us by heterosexuals, starting with our parents.”

Thus, according to Ms. Penelope, even the beliefs and attitudes of lesbians are shaped by the male-dominated system of heteropatriarchy, so that these attitudes must be unlearned. And this is especially true of femininity:

The United States is a heteropatriarchal society, a culture that assumes that heterosexuality is “natural,” that male dominance is “natural,” and that female subordination is “natural” . . . The words masculine and feminine exist only because they express concepts essential to the maintenance of heteropatriarchal reality. But the existence and continual use of these words doesn’t mean that they denote “real” or actual things. . . .
Sexual dimorphism is the foundation of heteropatriarchal semantics, politics, and personality. Personality, according to heteropatriarchy, is based on biological sex. Biology determines behavior, mannerisms, appearance, emotional style, and how one thinks. This is a monocausal ideology. . . . Contrary to popular thinking, it’s not at all obvious that biological sex or reproductive potential should be the basis of personality. . . .
If one is female, then one must be a heterosexual and a breeder, and behave in appropriate, “feminine” ways. If she doesn’t . . . she isn’t a “real woman.” . . .
It’s way past time for Lesbians to stop using heteropatriarchal words as though they were meaningful. Any Lesbian who defends femininity and compares another Lesbian to a man by labeling her “masculine” subscribes to heteropatriarchal “consensus reality.” . . .
If Lesbians want to deny the “naturalness” of heteropatriarchal categories, and assert the positive value of our deviance, adopting femininity doesn’t make any sense. . . .
Lesbians who can pass as heterosexuals must understand and admit that they acquire specific social privileges because they can hide their Lesbianism. The privileges and rewards of femininity, in addition to money and social approval, are a false sense of worth and self-esteem because they are grounded in hypocrisy and pretense. Furthermore, Lesbians who prize femininity either believe they are superior to “obvious” Lesbians or they sexualize the difference. . . . Because femininity in women is so highly prized by men, femininity cannot be positively valued in a Lesbian context.

This hostile rejection of the values of what we would call normal or traditional society — where the masculinity of men and the femininity of women are accepted as natural — is striking. Ms. Penelope’s claims make sense, however, if instead of viewing them as political analysis, we consider them as psychological symptoms.

Her theories were an elaborate, jargon-laden “sour grapes” rationalization: Being very un-feminine herself, she knew she had no access to the “privileges and rewards of femininity” she described. Within the context of “heteropatriarchy” (i.e., the normal world), these feminine qualities were “highly prized by men,” and her condemnation of “femininity . . . in a Lesbian context” was an attempt to prevent herself (a clearly “masculine” lesbian) from being reduced to an inferior status within her own community.

Feminism has always attracted malcontents and misfits, offering them political theories to explain their unhappiness with the normal world. Yet even as the influence of feminism has changed the world, the grievances of the malcontents persist. In order to explain this — why feminists remain unhappy, despite feminism’s success — the evils of men must be continually exaggerated, and insidious power must be attributed to the male-dominated system of patriarchy. Whatever women are unhappy about must ultimately be blamed on men, even the unhappiness of lesbians within their own lesbian culture.

Therefore, Julia Penelope accused some of her fellow lesbians of adopting the value systems of heteropatriarchy. Similarly, although for different reasons, Ms. Penelope was hostile to the arguments of liberal “mainstream” feminists:

Liberal feminists have made the word choice so attractive, as though all women were capable of acting as autonomous, self-determining beings. “We must respect all women’s choices,” they say, as though our choices are made in a vacuum, as though every single woman knows what her choices are or might be. Humanism ignores the fact that our choices, such as they are, are made in the context of heteropatriarchy. . . . If there is a “politics of liberal feminism,” it’s nothing more than a way of rationalizing the fact that women continue to choose men. . . .
Many Lesbians cannot “go back” to men because we didn’t start there. One can “go back” only to something she’s previously “left.” The metaphor of “returning” to men or heterosexuality reveals the heterosexism of liberal feminism, because it assumes that ALL women are or have been heterosexuals, first. Heterosexuality becomes the touchstone of their identity. . . .
We’re not engaged in a dialogue with heterosexuals. Most of us, however reluctantly, have decided that our energies must go to other Lesbians; attempts to talk to heterosexual feminists are usually frustrating and depressing. Lesbians are the focus of our lives. . . .
What does it mean to say that one “loves a man” and, at the same time, to acknowledge the male violence experienced every day by millions of women? What does it mean to “love our oppressors”? Women have been loving men for millennia, and I can’t see that it’s done anything but worsen our situation. What does it mean, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, to believe that men, now, today, can be “rehabilitated,” and to commit one’s life to that belief? . . .
Here’s what I believe I know: Men rule the world. Men rape women. Men rape all females, their daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, granddaughters, and any other female unlucky enough to be accessible to them when “the urge” strikes. Men beat women up, cripple them, maim them, starve them, kill them. Men make money and war. Heterosexuality ensures that men will always have a ready and willing supply of females for their uses.
That’s what I see around me every day I live, and some days are worse than others. I would welcome anyone who can demonstrate to me that I’m wrong, that my perceptions are distorted by where I stand in the world. But don’t trot out your “exceptional man” to show me; everyone has one or claims to have one, including me. But I’m not willing to base my entire political analysis on his existence. I wish I had a dollar for every heterosexual feminist who’s challenged my Separatism by claiming that “her man” is “different,” and, then, after she’d become a Lesbian, confided to me that he was a rapist, a batterer, a violent misogynist.

Well, gosh, ma’am, why don’t you tell us how you really feel about men? As extreme as Julia Penelope’s lesbian separatism was, though, isn’t her universal condemnation of men — written in 1985 — fundamentally the same argument promoted by the #YesAllWomen hashtag campaign? In case you’ve forgotten, #YesAllWomen was about making the deranged killer Elliot Rodger a symbolic representation of all men as complicit in misogynistic violence. It’s the same rhetorical abracadabra involved in “rape culture” discourse, where anyone who disputes feminist claims about the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses is accused of being “anti-woman,” if not indeed “pro-rape.”

That this mode of discourse has, in the past three decades, migrated from the extremist fringe of lesbian separatism to become a staple of “mainstream” feminism — and no one seems to have noticed the migration. Nor, for that matter, does any critic of feminism dare point out the source. If you mention that the anti-male rhetoric of feminism echoes the claims of radical lesbians, you will be accused of being a homophobic bigot recycling ignorant stereotypes — even if you cite your sources by name!

Is it “anti-woman” to tell the truth about feminism? Do I examine Women’s Studies textbooks and Women’s Studies curricula because I hate women? Is it ignorance, homophobia or misogyny that leads me to the conclusion that feminism is a journey to lesbianism? No, it’s simply a recognition of the undeniable truth that radical feminists reached by a process of intellectual circumnavigation. The unabashed male-hater Julia Penelope recognized that the differences between men and women — the masculinity of males and the femininity of females — are necessary to their normal relationships.

Ms. Penelope angrily denied that these traits are “natural” — a reflection of basic biological differences — even while paradoxically insisting that all men are naturally violent, oppressive and sexually predatory. She accepted that there is such a thing as male nature (evil!), but insisted that what is considered natural for women — “femininity . . . so highly prized by men” — is actually an artificial imposition of the heteropatriarchy. Yet if there is nothing “natural” about women’s femininity, why would a lesbian like Julia Penelope be attracted exclusively to women? If differences between men and women are just figments of our imaginations, imposed by society, shouldn’t all of us be basically bisexual? Why is it that only traditional heterosexual relationships — and the cultural and social norms associated with these relationships — are subjected to this kind of criticism by intellectual theorists?

Julia Penelope died in January 2013 without ever answering those questions, and probably never even thought to ask them. She also died a few months before the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision, which declared as a matter of law that a lesbian relationship is no different than the marriage between a man and a woman — and one wonders what Ms. Penelope might have said about that.

She was a critic of lesbians who sought to assimilate (to “pass”) within the context of a society she condemned as “heteropatriarchy.” It is therefore difficult to see how a lesbian separatist who urged lesbians to make deviance the “core” of their identity could have reconciled that philosophy with the Supreme Court’s declaration that lesbians are just like everybody else. But being a feminist means ignoring contradictions between radical theories and the reality of most women’s lives, and in that regard, Julia Penelope was quite typical. R.I.P.




 

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Category: Feminism, Gays
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