The Other McCain

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

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

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.10.14

Posted on | July 10, 2014 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Israeli Drones Hunt Hamas As Terrorist Rockets Strike Deeper In Israel

An Iron Dome battery fires an interceptor rocket in Ashdod

PGM strikes kill more jihadi leaders, but collateral damage deaths among civilians still high

Uttar Pradesh Hero Amit Shah Named BJP President
Expected to take the party to greater success

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin Sentenced To Ten Years For Corruption
Bribery, wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, tax evasion, armed robbery of citizens, state banks and post offices, the theft of sacred objects, arson in a state prison, perjury, bigamy, deserting his wife and children, inciting prostitution, kidnapping, extortion, receiving stolen goods, selling stolen goods, passing counterfeit money – no, just kidding, it stops with tax evasion.

POLITICS
Obama Challenges Rick Perry To Help With Border Boodle

And the President gets his photo op after all.

Wants Texas governor’s support for $3.7 billion funding request
Still no presidential visit to border

Government Making $100 Billion In Improper Payments Annually


Senate Democrats Finalize Bill To Reverse Hobby Lobby Ruling

Obama’s Counterterrorism Director Resigns

Chinese Hackers Crack OPM Networks

“We Need To Be Careful What We Say In E-Mails” – Lois Lerner, 2013

Utah Appealing Gay Marriage Case Directly To Supreme Court



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
WTI Drops For Tenth Straight Day On Expanding US Gasoline Stocks: WTI $101.81, Brent $108.03
Red China Trade Surplus Narrows In June
Fed Details End Of Bond-Buying Program
Dov Charney’s Sleazy Struggle To Control American Apparel
Colorado Completes First Legal Weed Market Study
Gold Nears High For The Week On Fed Minutes, Mideast Tension
Google Forms Patent Alliance To Ward Off Trolls
Dish Boss Criticizes TWC-Comcast Merger
Apple Loses Siri Patent Case In China
Report: Deleted Smartphone Data Can Be Easily Recovered
EU Begins Questioning Facebook Rivals Over Whatsapp Deal



SPORTS
Red Sox Snap Skid With Walkoff Win Against White Sox

Sox mob Brock Holt after his game-winning single brings Daniel Nava home

Pale Hose relief pitchers fail Sale


Grossman Breaks Out Of Slump Bigtime As Astros Beat Rangers 8-4, Sweep Series

Tanaka To The DL, Uehara To The All-Star Game


Perez Powers Royals Past Rays In Ninth

Blackhawks Sign Toews, Kane To Eight-Year Extensions

Hernandez Shines As Phillies Beat Brewers

Braves Fail In Clutch, Lose Fourth Straight

Simon Earns 12th Win As Reds Beat Cubs Again

Devils Sign Schneider To Seven Years/$28 Million

Bombs Away: Nats Jack Three Homers,  Beat O’s 6-2, Move Into First In NL East



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Lilly Ghalichi Axed From “Shahs Of Sunset”

“Boring”

“Persian Barbie” joined in season 2, cut before season 4


“Sharknado 2” Official Trailer


Stacey Dash: Kanye West Should Go To Rikers Island, Find Out What Rape Is


Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes Expecting First Child

Why “Transformers 4” Big Box Office In China Won’t Mean Big Bucks For Paramount

Justin Bieber Cops Plea Deal In Vandalism Case

“Orphan Black” Renewed For Season Three

George Clooney Responds To “Completely Fabricated” Daily Mail Report

Miley Cyrus Secretly Dating Her Producer

Poppy Montgomery Expecting Third Child…

…And So Is LeBron James’ Wife Savannah Brinson

Courtney Love Joins “Sons Of Anarchy” For Final Season



FOREIGNERS
Indonesian Leader Calls For Calm After Election Standoff
Over Fifty Bodies (Including Two Children) Found In Alexandria, Iraq
Tropical Storm Neoguri Slams Into Kyushu
Nork List Of Japanese Abductees Contains Thirty Names
US, Red China Begin High-Level Talks
EU Agrees To Add 11 Names To Ukraine Sanctions List
French Police Foil Jihadi Plot Aimed At Eiffel Tower, Louvre
Netizens Up In Arms Over Malaysian Legislator’s Hitler Tweet
Bahrain Questions Opposition Leader After Expelling American Diplomat
Taiwan Diplomat Fears “Explosive” China-Japan Incident



BLOGS & STUFF
Proof Positive: Remember When Republicans Were Trying To “Kill Big Bird”?
Michelle Malkin: Obama’s Immigration Lawyers Enrichment Act
Doug Powers: Patty Murray Authors “Not My Boss’ Business Act” To Exempt Obamacare From Law She Voted For In 1993
Twitchy: President Selfie McGlamourshots Claims “I’m Not Interested In Photo Ops”
American Power: As Bodies Of Illegals Stack Up, Obama Laughs It Up With Beer, Pool, And Gambling
American Thinker: Obama’s Tiresome Delusions About Peace In The Middle East
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Wynne’s War
Conservatives4Palin: Howard Kurtz’ Questionable Credibility
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, July 9
Jammie Wearing Fools: Dem Congressman Shreds Obama – “Aloof”, “Bizarre”, and “Detached”
Joe For America: Costco Surrenders To “America” Consumers
JustOneMinute: Deep De-Carbonization – Can We Get There From Here?
Pat Dollard: Senator McCain Blows Up At Border Patrol Chief Over Photo/Interview Ban At Detention Facilities
Protein Wisdom: “Dem Rep Cuellar: White House Called Me For Speaking Out Against President”
Shot In The Dark: The Ninny Elite
The Jawa Report: Annual Insult Omar! Open Thread (Fatwas Issued!)
The Lonely Conservative: EPA Plans To Garnish Wages Of Those They Deem Polluters
This Ain’t Hell: Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind
Weasel Zippers: Obama Claims “By Almost Every Measure” We’re Better Off Than When Bush Was In Office
Megan McArdle: Uber Makes Economists Sad


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Category: Live at Five

Obama Fails Again: Are We Surprised?

Posted on | July 9, 2014 | 54 Comments

“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

The escalating mess at Murietta and the general bankruptcy of President Obama’s “immigration policy” — the scare-quotes necessitated by its haphazard and improvised nature, so that it isn’t actually a policy at all — isn’t something I’ve said a lot about, because the disaster is so obvious that everyone sees it without me feeling any need to point it out. Whatever there may be left to say about this catastrophic situation, Adriana Cohen says it pretty well:

The massive crisis of tens of thousands of illegal children and hundreds of thousands of illegal adults flooding over our borders is, no surprise, not President Obama’s fault. It may have been entirely preventable, and certainly was highly predictable. But as usual, six years after he took office, the blame belongs elsewhere.
It’s the Republicans, blocking immigration reform, the Obama administration wants you to believe. They’re even trying to hang it on Obama’s favorite blame target, George W. Bush . . .
The crisis is in fact wholly owned by the Democrats.
Democrats . . . have been pushing for years to let people without Social Security numbers have driver’s licenses and welfare benefits. They’ve pushed for in-state university tuition for people who don’t belong here. Obama himself acted to dramatically reduce deportations — specifically of children — and has broadly signaled he wants to legalize the estimated 12 million illegals.
Who can blame the hundreds of thousands flooding across our borders for thinking they are welcome? The Democrats told them so. Never mind that 92 million Americans are unemployed or no longer looking for jobs. . . .

Read the whole thing.

 

Category: Immigration

Fire Can’t Melt Steel, and ‘The View’ Can’t Possibly Become More Ludicrous

Posted on | July 9, 2014 | 69 Comments

They’re bringing back Rosie O’Donnell, because there obviously aren’t enough celebrity conspiracy theorists on network daytime TV, and no one is happier about this news than Allahpundit:

To celebrate the occasion, take my arm and stroll with me down memory lane, back to Rosie’s finest hour. Watch the whole clip if you can — she mentions impeachment around halfway through, a topic not unknown to would-be “View” panelists — but if you can’t take the full seven minutes, at least skip to 5:50 and watch from there. The line about how fire’s never melted steel before always makes me wistful for the show’s heyday. Sigh.

“I do believe it is the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Tower Seven — building Seven, which collapsed in on itself — it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved, World Trade Center Seven. . . . Miraculously, for the first time in history, steel was melted by fire. It is physically impossible.”
— Rosie O’Donnell, March 29, 2007

Good times, my friends. Good times.

 

Category: ABC, Celebrities, Conspiracy Theories

Exhausting the Blitzkrieg Metaphors

Posted on | July 9, 2014 | 19 Comments

Everyone who watched Tuesday’s World Cup semifinal match between Germany and Brazil was astonished by the historic 7-1 destruction the Germans inflicted on the host squad:

It is not Brazil, alone, that is in shock after the greatest humiliation in World Cup history.
Those of us who have held the 1970 Brazil team of Pelé, Gérson, Tostão, Carlos Alberto and others as the pinnacle of how soccer can and should be played must now put Brazil’s capitulation on Tuesday as the nadir.
Germany was good — very, very good in trouncing the Seleção 7-1 in one of its own stadiums Tuesday. But we cannot yet know how good because this was not, as some have said, a ruthless German exhibition of modern soccer. It is a Germany team that has been six years in the making, a squad that has coasted through this World Cup so far.
In Belo Horizonte, Germany met no opposition. Brazil, shorn of its poster boy Neymar because of an injury and deprived of its defensive leader Thiago Silva because of a suspension, simply rolled over like a puppy afraid at the sight of a Rottweiler.

By halftime, Germany was ahead 5-0 and the humiliation of Brazil was so intense it sparked fears of rioting and political instability:

The aftermath of Brazil’s defeat could turn ugly. There were reports of a mass robbery at a fan party in Rio de Janeiro and of fans setting fire to Brazilian flags in the streets of São Paulo even before the match was over. Local organizers and government officials have been concerned for weeks about the possibility that demonstrations — which have, for the most part, been subdued — would become more intense if Brazil were to be eliminated.
Many Brazilians have been upset about the billions of dollars spent on new stadiums and other World Cup-related projects. The success of the national team provided a natural balm, but now those emotions may become more inflamed.
“The time of bread and circus is over,” said Lisa Rodrigues da Cunha Saud, who attended the game with her brother. “Instead of stadiums, we need hospitals and schools,” she added.

Anyway, another occasion for Twitter sarcasm.

 

Category: Brazil, Germany, Sports

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.09.14

Posted on | July 9, 2014 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Israel Launches Gaza Offensive As Hamas Continues Rocket Barrage

An air strike in Rafah, one of fifty targets hit by the IDF

Despite reserve callup, Israel sees ground offensive as last resort

Ukraine Moves On Separatists While Russia Stands Aside
Ukrainian forces surround Donetsk, Lugansk; Russian FM Lavrov calls for cease-fire

Abdullah Abdullah Stops Short
Walks up to brink of forming parallel government in protest of election results, asks supporters for more time



POLITICS
President, Governor Perry To Discuss Border Crisis After Tarmac Snub

No photo-op handshake for YOU!

Gov. Perry refuses to greet Obama at Austin airport today; gets meeting instead
No Deportation Changes, But Crisis Funding Request Balloons to $3.7 Billion



Priebus Announces Cleveland As Site Of 2016 GOP Convention

Study: Oklahoma Spends Least In Nation On Prison Healthcare

Obama Gets Cold Shoulder In Colotado

Hundreds Line Up For Legal Weed In Washington State

Trial Lawyer Bruce Braley Slammed For Claiming He’s A Farmer In Iowa Senate Race



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Brent Falls To Almost $110 In Asian Trade: WTI $103.56, Brent $110.10
Alcoa Crushes Q2 Earnings Targets, Stock Up 1.5%
Asian Stocks Slip, Dollar Slumps
Citigroup May Pay $7 Billion To Settle Mortgage Probe
Amazon Courts Hachette Authors, Offers 100% Of E-Book Revenue
Democrats Consider Linking Ex-Im Bank Funding To BUdget Reauthorization
“Weaponized” Exploit Can Steal Cookies On eBay, Tumblr, Other Sites
Larry Page’s Vision Of The Future Looks Strangely Like Lord Keynes’
With Passport Phone, BlackBerry Argues It’s Hip To Be Square
Scientists’ Finger Device Reads To The Blind In Real Time
Brazilian Bandits Hit Samsung Factory, Steal $6.3 Million Worth Of Mobile Devices



SPORTS
Rookie DeGrom K’s 11 As Mets Rout Braves

DeGrom leaves with a smile in the seventh

Braves’ Teheran knocked out in the fourth

Beatdown In Brazil: Germany Routs Brazil 7-1, Covers Spread And Over/Under

Longoria And The Rays Hold Off The Royals

Tigers Beat Down The Dodgers 14-5

Red Sox Skid Continues As Pale Hose Win 8-3

Home Run Derby Participants Announced

Wong Delivers For The Cards With Sayonara Homer

Tribe Scalps Tanaka, Yankees 5-3

Snoozing Yankees Fan Sues ESPN Announcers

Sterling Defiant In Trial Testimony

O’s, Nats Postponed By Rain, Makeup Day August 4



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Katie Holmes Topless For Glamour

Scorching hot at 35

Talks dating after Tom Cruise split, prioritizing being a mom


Pamela Anderson Files For Divorce From Rick Salomon – Again


Pixar, LucasFilm, Dreamworks In Alleged Wage-Fixing Cartel


Live-Action “Dumbo” In The Works

Sony Pictures Losing Its Faith-Based African-American Exec

Beyonce’s Dad Hit With Second Paternity Suit

Dave Walks Out On Joan Rivers

J.K. Rowling Writes New Story About Adult Harry Potter

“Housewives” Star Apollo Nida’s Prison Sentence Shortened For Informing

Angelina Jolie Caught On Video In Drug Den

Joan Rivers Explains Her CNN Walkout

John Cleese To Star In “Baywatch” Movie Remake

Zooey Deschanel Shows Her “Fiery Feminist Side”

Sylvester Stallone To Star In Mob Tale “Scarpa”

Jennifer Lawrence: May The Bras Never Be In Your Favor



FOREIGNERS
Red China Inflation In Line, Unlikely To Affect Policy
Vatican Bank Chief To Step Down
Indonesians Head For The Polls In Tight Race
Weakened Typhoon Leaves Two Dead As It Heads From Okinawa To Japan
Great Successor Limping, But Nobody Knows Why
Jihadis Seize Iraqi Chemical Weapons Site
Eric Holder Urges EU Nations To Stop Flow Of Young Jihadis To Syria
Officials Claim Obama Didn’t Know Anything About Spying On Germany
Former Soviet FM, President Of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze Dies, 86
Northern Ireland Bakery Refuses To Make Gay Bert & Ernie Cake
Former Indian Railway Ministers Slam Rail Budget



BLOGS & STUFF
First Street Journal: A Man For Whom The Gates Of Hell Await
Doug Powers: NOW’s Pitiful Attempt To Kick The Habit – Little Sisters Of The Poor Included On “Dirty 100” List
Twitchy: Laura Ingraham Has Housing Solution For Flood Of Illegals
Chicago Boyz: TWANLOC
American Power: Sarah Palin – It’s Time To Impeach President Obama
American Thinker: Is The Border Crisis Obama’s “Katrina Moment”?
BLACKFIVE: Free Kurdistan On The Radio
Conservatives4Palin: Obama To Skip Border Visit To Attend Fundraiser With Pro-Amnesty Filmmaker
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, July 8
Jammie Wearing Fools: Democrats Feign Outrage Over The Cost Of Investigating Obama’s Scandals
Joe For America: Jennifer Lopez Pushing Amnesty With “Los Jets” TV Show
JustOneMinute: Some Borderline Statistical Analysis
Pat Dollard: Border Doctor Says Previously-Deported Illegal With Active TB Ignored By Feds
Protein Wisdom: Violent MS-13 Gang Members Leave Graffiti On Bathroom Walls Of Nogales Processing Center
Shot In The Dark: How To Do Transit
The Jawa Report: War Pr0n – Baywatch IDF
The Lonely Conservative: How Bureaucracy Is Bleeding Us Dry
This Ain’t Hell: Why Not Costa Rica?
Weasel Zippers: Chicago Stuck With $1 Million Legal Tab After Losing Gun Store Lawsuit
Megan McArdle: Who’s The Real Hobby Lobby Bully?


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Category: Live at Five

Crazy: #RadFem Announces ‘Major Shift or Breakthrough in My Feminism’

Posted on | July 8, 2014 | 59 Comments

 

Regular readers remember Witchwind, the radical feminist that commenters have nicknamed “Windy.” She’s a wacky man-hating disciple of Mary Daly and Dee Graham, and inspired worldwide laughter with her anti-intercourse rant: “PIV is always rape, OK?”

Last week, Witchwind made an announcement:

After a succession of intense and mind-blowing discussions with friends, recent events and several weeks of trying to get to the bottom of why I find radical lesbianism so misogynist, I’ve just experienced a major shift or breakthrough in my feminism. One thing led to another, and I realise that the essential problem i’m trying to talk about is much larger than radical lesbianism, and relates to separatist communitarianism as a liberation strategy — the idea we should form a small, elitist community separate from women as much as from men, rather than focus on our potential to bond with all women and on all women’s potential to wake up to our reality. . . .
I do have the impression of having having found a missing link which now helps me to see the whole picture with much more clarity and depth. Therefore my focus will no longer be on radical lesbianism and identity politics as such, but on the wider phenomenon of separatist communitarianism, whether it be radical lesbian, lesbian feminist, radical feminist, “intersectionalist”, etc.
When our bonding with women is based on the exclusion of other women, then we aren’t really bonding with women but erecting a fictitious shield of “us” vs “them” to protect ourselves from persecution (a threat in which we include women), but which prevents the spreading of feminism to other women by preventing our contact and bonding with such women. . . .

If that makes sense to you, seek psychiatric help immediately.

You can read the entire 2,500-word excursion into lunatic gibberish, but it doesn’t become any more coherent. Insofar as it is “about” anything, it is about Windy trying to find an anti-male ideology that, while understanding female heterosexuality as women’s brainwashed cooperation with their own oppression, does not have the effect of blaming/shaming women for their heterosexuality.

To-may-to, to-mah-to.

Having spent the past six months plowing through the radical feminist syllabus (“Fun With #RadFem: ‘You Magnificent Lesbians — I Read Your Books!’“), I could imagine an effective manifesto/agenda for their movement, and might even be worried about their potential for success — if they weren’t so hopelessly batshit crazy.

This has been an impediment to feminism for decades: It is a movement organized around the grievances of neurotic misfits, and has attracted to its banner every type of kook, weirdo and nutjob imaginable.

In this sense, a mentally ill Women’s Studies professor is simply following in the insane footsteps of Women’s Liberation pioneer Shulamith Firestone, who suffered a nervous breakdown after publishing the 1970 feminist classic The Dialectic of Sex and eventually died alone as a 67-year-old schizophrenic.

Majoring in Crazy Studies

One of the reasons that radical feminism is so influential on university campuses, but generally disdained outside academia, is that the campus environment is a consequence-free unreality. Tenured professors can (and do) preach all manner of impractical nonsense and, on campuses that are home to thousands or tens of thousands of impressionable young women, it is fairly easy for the tenured radicals to attract scores or hundreds of misfit followers.

For example, there are nearly 30,000 women enrolled at Ohio State University’s Columbus campus. How many of those students are majoring or minoring in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, or pursuing graduate degrees in that department? Suppose that the WGSS department enrolls just 2% — one in 50 — of women at OSU. That’s almost 600 students, a drop in the bucket relative to the total enrollment, but still a substantial force, if they can be organized and deployed as activist “shock troops” in protests, etc.

Anyone who questioned the legitimacy of Women’s Studies as an academic discipline would be shouted down as a misogynistic Neanderthal, and so this department is protected from outside criticism by a sort of force-field of political correctness. Within that protective cocoon, fanatical ideologues are permitted to promulgate the most astonishing radical nonsense. Consider, for example, the freshman-level course “Gender, Sex and Power” (WGSST 1110), which is the prerequisite to all other courses in Ohio State’s Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies department. A recent section of WGSST 1110, taught by Varsha Chitnis (a graduate student pursuing her Ph.D.) included in the course syllabus Andrea Smith’s article “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy”:

Heteropatriarchy is the building block of US empire. In fact, it is the building block of the nation-state form of governance. . . .
As I have argued elsewhere, in order to colonize peoples whose societies are not based on social hierarchy, colonizers must first naturalize hierarchy through instituting patriarchy. In turn, patriarchy rests on a gender binary system in which only two genders exist, one dominating the other. . . . Just as the patriarchs rule the family, the elites of the nation-state rule their citizens. Any liberation struggle that does not challenge heteronormativity cannot substantially challenge colonialism or white supremacy.

From there, Smith goes on to complain about “the family being conceived of in capitalist and heteropatriarchal terms,” so that rhetoric about protecting the family leads to “increased homophobia.” Smith argues for challenging “the concept of the family itself,” in order to “reconstitute alternative ways of living together.” In case you were wondering about Andrea Smith, she is on the faculty of the University of California-Riverside, having received a Ph.D. from the infamous “History of Consciousness” program at UC-Santa Cruz (“The Worst School in America”). So, through the content of this Women’s Studies course, the crackpot radicalism of a fringe figure (Smith was denied tenure at the University of Michigan) is imported from California to Ohio, at taxpayer expense.

Lest any reader think that I have cherry-picked an isolated and anomalous example, let’s look at the syllabus for another recent section of WGSST 1110, this one taught by graduate student Sonnet Gabbard, who awards 15% her course grade for students’ “Transgressive Digital Art Project,” whatever that means. Among the assigned readings is “Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism” by lesbian activist Suzanne Pharr, and “Desire for the Future: Radical Hope in Passion and Pleasure,” by Amber Hollinbaugh, who is (I’m not kidding) Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice.

Paying the Radical Tax

Keep in mind that we are discussing the freshman level introductory c0urse, taught to 17- and 18-year-olds, and required — a mandatory prerequisite — for any Ohio State student who wishes to major or minor in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Examine the syllabus for any section of this OSU course, and you will find it crammed with the writings of radical lesbians, inspiring any outside observer to wonder if any heterosexual woman has ever gotten a Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies degree from OSU.

Yet within the force-field of political correctness that surrounds this academic cocoon, there is no one who finds this radicalism unusual. The lesbian inmates are running the feminist asylum, and the fact that taxpayers are footing the bill for all this is something that apparently no one at OSU — nor anyone in the Ohio state legislature — can be bothered to notice. So it is nearly everywhere. When the Women’s Studies program at a state university in South Carolina was abolished after hosting a conference  that featured the performance of a one-woman play called “How to Be a Lesbian in 10 Days of Less,” everyone was shocked because this had never happened anywhere else before.

In case anyone wondered why Ohio State University was singled out for scrutiny, the answer is: My choice was entirely random. Pick any major university, look up their Women’s Studies program and look up the syllabus for the introductory course, and compare your findings. This kind of radicalism is ubiquitous in Women’s Studies curricula, and it is no surprise that the most popular anthology of feminist writings — Feminist Frontiers, widely used as a standard textbook — is edited by radical lesbians.

Inside their taxpayer-funded campus sinecures, then, Women’s Studies professors are handsomely rewarded for promoting an ideology that strikes most people as fringe extremism. Yet the supply of Women’s Studies majors vastly exceeds the demand and, outside the elite circle of tenured professors and celebrity feminist authors, those who have spent their collegiate careers soaking up “gender theory” nonsense find themselves marginally employable, even as they are confronted with a reality harshly at odds with the worldview into which they were propagandized as undergraduates.

From this clash between academic theory and the reality of ordinary life emerges the ranting lunacy of radicals like Witchwind. What kind of jobs can these intellectual cripples find outside academia, if they can’t find some non-profit “activist” group to hire them? One imagines such women, disheveled and ill-groomed, standing at intersections and holding up crudely lettered cardboard signs:

“Gender Studies Major: Will Criticize Patriarchy for Food”

The saddest part is that this miserable man-hating madness is funded by taxpayers who have no idea what is being taught inside the Crazy Factories of the Feminist-Industrial Complex.

If the heteronormative patriarchy were as all-powerful as feminists claim, then surely there would Republican legislators calling attention to how tax dollars are being used to subsidize this nonsense at state universities across the country. There would be hearings to investigate this and committee reports to expose the truth: What is cost and what are the benefits of Women’s Studies programs? For example, what is the annual cost to Texas taxpayers of The Center for Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin? What is being taught in this program, and what kind of careers are pursued by alumni of the program? I’d be willing to bet the average Texan doesn’t have the slightest clue what’s going on in Austin.

When we see occasional eruptions of madness — not just insane pronouncements by bloggers, but radical feminists unleashing anarchy in state capitols — there is no need to wonder where this craziness originates: It is acquired in the classroom, where it is taught by academic kooks who would be locked up in insane asylums if they weren’t tenured university faculty members.




 

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