The Other McCain

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

Call It the ‘Post-DTF Stroll,’ Maybe?

Posted on | May 4, 2014 | 70 Comments

Feminism is, among other things, a totalitarian attempt to tell us what to think by controlling what we are allowed to say. For example, we cannot be permitted to disapprove of promiscuous women, and so the language of disapproval must be suppressed.

Which predictably brings us to the latest from Amanda Marcotte:

The “walk of shame” is a slang term that usually describes a person, usually a woman, who is making her way home from spending the night at someone else’s house for a sexual encounter.
The iconic image of a woman doing the walk of shame is disheveled hair and party-ready clothes that look sadly comical in the cold light of day. But it’s not her appearance that makes her trot home one of “shame.” No, as far as most people who use the phrase, her “shame” is that her appearance lets everyone know that she probably had sex, and for some reason, she is supposed to be ashamed of that.
“Walk of shame” is a phrase that’s widely understood to have originated on college campuses, since people who spent the night at a lover’s place often do have to walk on foot home to their own place, and usually in front of other people who recognize them and might recognize that their clubbing clothes don’t exactlymatch the casual wear that’s more common for mornings on campus. It’s expanded since then to encompass urban dwellers who often travel on foot or by public transportation and, in fact, has become so ubiquitous that you’ll often hear people who get to drive home say they were taking the walk of shame. (Drive of shame?)
But while the “walk” part of the phrase is understood flexibly, in many ways the “shame” part isn’t. . . .

You can read the whole absurdly censorious thing. Here we are, on the eve of sixth annual National Offend a Feminist Week, and Amanda Marcotte decides to give us a lecture on the need to remove “shame” from the dictionary insofar as it refers to sluts, tramps, hussies, floozies, man-traps, wenches, trollops and Women of Dubious Virtue?

Are we not to describe such women as “easy,” “cheap” or “loose”? Do the Enlightened Arbiters of Acceptable Discourse mean to banish from our lexicon every possible synonym for “promiscuous”? Can we no longer be allowed to remark that the dolled-up bimbo making goo-goo eyes at every man in the bar is hot to trot, on the prowl, looking for some quick action and down to fuck?

Well, it’s still more than four hours before midnight EDT, but I can wait no more: National Offend a Feminist Week begins early!

Take that, you dirty lowdown harlots!

 

Category: Feminism, National Offend a Feminist Week

Rule 5 Sunday: The Portland Double-Dip Edition

Posted on | May 4, 2014 | 11 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Welcome back once again to the weekly collection of links that provide welcome relief from the daily barrage of sickness, politics (but I repeat myself) and just plain weirdness that provides the bulk of our content here. As usual, some links are NSFW, so you should exercise some discretion in when and where you click.

Goodstuff leads off this week with Mary Anne and Ginger (also, Retro Madonna!),  followed by Randy’s Roundtable with Katrina Bowden  (also, Genevieve Morton helping celebrate his 5th blogiversary!), Fishersville Mike with some Big Bang Theory, and Ninety Miles From Tyranny featuring Morning Mistress, Hot Pick of the Late Night, Is This G-String Too Small?, Hot Cameltoe Pick, and Girls With Guns (encore!). Animal Magnetism chips in with Rule Five Friday (encore!), an Asian Invasion, and the Saturday Gingermageddon, Blackmailers Don’t Shoot serves up more Jennifer Lawrence, and First Street Journal brings the military-grade hotness From Norway. Subject To Change provides a view from the top, and The Dividist debuts with CNBC anchor Amanda Drury.

EBL as usual has a herd of links, this time including Sheryl Attkisson, corsets, Kirsten Dunst, Game of Thrones, Lesbian Big Love, Vintage Retro Playboy Bunny Costumes (via Instapundit), Postmodern Jukebox, Harsh Conditions/Pretty Faces, Baristas, Asa Akira,  and Lesbian Pulp Fiction.

Soylent Siberia submits the weekly coffee creamer, more whining about the lack of football, Overnighty Osmary, Mystery Monday Motivationer, Tuesday Titillation In Scarlet, Bodypaint Awesome, the Coxswain’s Report, Humpday Hawtness Elvish Magic, Evening Awesome Aglow, Falcosword Fursday Keisha, Fursday Overnighty Mariana, Corset Conflagration, T-GIF Friday, Weekender Mia, Header For Irish, and Bath Night. In Week 2, it was seconds on the coffee creamer, an Overnighty Auburn Awesome, Monday Motivationer Dani, Tuesday Titillation: Nice Beads!, Humpday Hawtness Luci, Fursday Super Hero Edition, Today In Fursday Furnishings, Corset Caliente, Happy Hour Hawtness, and Weekender Keisha Grey.

A View From The Beach contributes Caprice – Not Your Mommy’s Chevy, Context is Everything, Why Can’t We Go On as Three?, Bad Rap From the Russians, Special IRS Issue, It’s Not Porn!, It’s HBO!, About That “New Earth” (with space girls), Happy Easter!, Vida Guerra, Gratuitous Kate Upton, Giant Tsunami Destroyed Europe’s Lost Land (cave girls), Why Good People Should Have Guns, “Idiocracy” Turns History (cave girls), Cheerleading for the Minimum Wage, Best Campaign Ad Ever, My Eyes Are Up Here!, “Let it Out”, and Avril Puts Her Foot In It.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Toni Garrn, his vintage babe is Vivian Austin, and the Sex in Advertising feature provides some uplifting reading about Wonderbra. Also, Jenny McCarthy, Colleen Townsend, and more Sex In Advertising. At Dustbury, it’s Gretchen Wyler, Tammi Terrell, Christina Hendricks, and Rihanna, while at The Camp of the Saints, it’s Sara Willis, the Rule 5 News, and Sarah McDonald.

The DaleyGator’s DaleyBabes included Emmanuelle Vaugier, Reika Miki, Fibi Love, Tia Carrere, Cyneitra Copeland, Nichelle D, Beverly Sade,
Vanessa Nina, Vanna Black, Baje Fletcher, Rachel Mullins, Jessica Marais, Rosemarie Calloway, Marina Victoria, Keiko Agena, Viantha Foxx, Wendy Calio, Dishad Vasaria; also, Ebony Hotness and
Babe in Bikini gets tasered for charity.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox is Saturday, May 10.

Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop

Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Jackson, Mississippi

Posted on | May 3, 2014 | 9 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Remember When @RaniaKhalek Played ‘Count the Jews at the Nation’?

Goldberg Misses His Own Punchline

It’s 2014: Why Aren’t You Racist Yet?

Lies, Errors, and Tendentious Mischaracterizations of Facts

Teen Killer ‘Just Wasn’t Right’

Brandeis Brownshirt Talia Lepson Hurls Crude Insults at Pro-Israel Student

25 Years, Sexy Lady!

Report: ‘No Regrets’ Sex Teacher Said She Had Sex Dreams About Teen Boy in 2008

A Typical ObamaCare Nightmare

Pedophile ‘Schemed to Elude Justice’

She Was Buried Alive

Barrett Brown Pleads Guilty

Thank God for the ‘Pay Gap’!

White Guilt Passes Its Expiration Date

Majoring in Minimum Wage

Wombs for Rent, Babies for Sale: TV Promotes Gay Surrogate Business

Tommy Vietor: Van Driver, NSC Spokesman, Hipster At Large

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.02.14

It’s Come to This


Top linkers this week:

  1. Batshit Crazy News (11)
  2. Regular Right Guy (6)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links for next week’s FMJRA is noon on Saturday, May 10.


Kid Rock

Category: FMJRA Award

The Left’s Mob Rule on Campus

Posted on | May 3, 2014 | 57 Comments

Scarcely a day goes by that we don’t hear some report of the increasing turn toward totalitarianism by the campus Left. Progressive hegemony on university faculties, a humanities curriculum heavily influenced by crypto-Marxist “theory,” and the radicalization of students through an identity-group Culture of Grievance, all contribute to this growing climate of intolerance. Administrators, when not actually in sympathy with the radicals, abdicate authority in the face of intimidation tactics employed by the militant Left at universities and colleges.

We are therefore not surprised that left-wing smears of Condoleezza Rice as a “war criminal” have led the former Secretary of State — arguably the most powerful black woman in American history — to withdraw as commencement speaker at Rutgers University:

In a statement to be released this morning, Rice says,

Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families. Rutgers’ invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time.
I am honored to have served my country. I have defended America’s belief in free speech and the exchange of ideas. These values are essential to the health of our democracy. But that is not what is at issue here. As a Professor for thirty years at Stanford University and as it’s former Provost and Chief academic officer, I understand and embrace the purpose of the commencement ceremony and I am simply unwilling to detract from it in any way.
Good luck to the graduates and congratulations to the families, friends and loved ones who will gather to honor them.

Opposition to Rice had focused on her support for the Iraq War and Bush policies in the War on Terror. Rutgers faculty at the New Brunswick campus approved a resolution calling for Rice to be disinvited, citing her role in the Bush administration’s alleged “effort to mislead the American people about the presence of weapons of mass destruction.”

Insofar as this is not simply a reflection of raw partisanship — studies have shown university faculties to be dominated by Democrats by at least a 4-to-1 margin over Republicans — it is further proof (as if more proof were needed) of the profound, poisonous and pervasive spirit of anti-Americanism now prevalent in academia.

Via Memeorandum, with further reporting by the Associated Press, and commentary by American Power, Legal Insurrection and Patterico.

 

Category: Education

Feminist Theory Ruins Everything: @AmyGoodloe’s Lesbian Sedative

Posted on | May 3, 2014 | 81 Comments

 

“Allison eased herself carefully across the slippery sheets to the edge of the bed. Her feet dangling off the edge, she groped for the floor. She felt the slick, fur-like material of the rug between her toes. For a moment she played with it, enjoying the sensual tickling sensation on her barefoot. Then she sat up slowly, careful not to wake the girl sleeping on the other side of the bed.”
— first paragraph of Unnatural, by Sloan Britton (1960)

“One of the fundamental tenets of postmodern theory is that all identities are socially constructed, and that, throughout history, dominant groups have had the power not only to construct their own identities, which they disguise as ‘innate’ or ‘natural’ rather than created, but also to construct the identities of groups the dominant group has a vested interest in marginalizing. The appeal of postmodern theory lies in its method of ‘deconstructing’ the power relationships inherent in constructions of identity so that it becomes possible to articulate a counter-ideology which has as its aim the liberation and de-objectification of marginalized groups. The irony in this is that those most often attracted to and who are in a position to utilize postmodern methodology are themselves members of a dominant group, even if only in terms of level of education, and in the attempt to give voice to those who have been historically silenced and oppressed, they frequently run the risk of further marginalizing some members of these groups.”
— first paragraph of “Lesbian Identity and the Politics of Butch-Femme,” by Amy Goodloe (1993)

It is probably unnecessary to say that, given the choice between a lurid pulp novel about lesbianism and an academic treatise about lesbianism, most of us would choose the novel. Academia is overcrowded with bad writers, so it may be unfair to single out the field of Women’s Studies, and even more unfair to pick on the University of Colorado’s Amy Goodloe, simply because hers was one of the first articles that turned up on a Google search: “lesbian + feminist + butch + gender + role.”

(This was utterly random, Ms. Goodloe, and my apologies at your shock to discover your 1993 paper made the subject of online mockery, compared unfavorably to a steamy 1960 pulp novel. After writing about the butch “gender role” thing on Friday, I had in mind to do a follow-up, and you drew the short straw, so to speak.)

Goodloe is clear that her “postmodern” critique is about power. Because “all identities are socially constructed, and . . . dominant groups” possess the power to construct not only their identities but also “those who have been historically silenced and oppressed,” therefore the “method of ‘deconstructing’ the power relationships” aims “to articulate a counter-ideology which has as its aim the liberation and de-objectification of marginalized groups.”

This is less interesting than the plight of Allison, the good-girl-gone-wrong protagonist of Sloan Britton’s 1960 novel Unnatural. Her story — as tacky, vulgar and stereotypical as it may be — is about human emotion. Goodloe’s treatise is about political power:

For the past two decades [i.e., 1973-93 ], the dominant form of feminist discourse has, in attempting to “liberate” lesbian identity from patriarchal control, instead imposed its own identity politics on the lesbian community, with the result that those lesbians whose behaviors or “styles” do not conform to the feminist agenda have been doubly-oppressed — once by the dominant patriarchal culture, and again by the movement that claimed to seek the liberation of all women. This is perhaps most obvious in the feminist critique of role playing among lesbians, which is considered by the dominant feminist discourse to be a barrier to one’s “true” identity as a woman (assuming that there is such a thing). . . .

(Again, this is about who is “dominant” — not in the sexy sense of “dominant,” but in the less interesting political way.)

[I]f theorists make the whole notion of lesbian identity so problematic as to suggest that there can be no such thing, on what grounds then are lesbians to come together in the fight against oppression and homophobia? Deconstructing lesbian identity in such a way perpetuates the “divide and conquer” strategy of the dominant ideology, which has historically been used to deprive oppressed groups of the unity needed for power, by failing to recognize the agency of lesbians in resisting dominant constructions of their identity in favor of ones that more accurately reflect their lived experience.
It is the task of lesbian theory, then, Wolfe and Penelope argue, to both resist a kind of deconstruction that would render lesbians even more invisible, and to work towards the (re)construction of a lesbian identity as it is “experienced through a collective history and culture” . . .

(Checking Goodloe’s curriculum vitae, I don’t see any awards for “Most Boring Thing Ever Written About Lesbianism,” but . . .)

One of the problems with the construction of lesbian identity that is often noted by theorists is that it most often takes place within the terms of the dominant discourse, which has established heterosexuality as the “natural” or normative expression of human sexuality against which all other expressions are considered deviant and deficient. One of the first academics to challenge the naturalization of heterosexuality was Adrienne Rich, in an important and controversial essay entitled “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (1980). Rich’s main argument is that heterosexuality is not only not natural or innate, it is in fact an institution designed to perpetuate male social and economic privilege, which means that the ideology of difference as the natural basis for sexual attraction is, in fact, a construction. . . . Rich goes on to argue that it is the primary bonding between women that is, in fact, natural, but which is disrupted by the imposition of compulsory heterosexuality in all women’s lives — or rather, in all but those few who resist heterosexuality in favor of the more “natural” state of woman-identification, which is the broader definition Rich gives to lesbianism. . . .

(We hashed out Rich’s “Compulsory Heterosexuality” argument at great length here last weekend.)

The critique most often leveled against role-playing in the lesbian community comes, as we have just seen, from the feminist belief that all role-playing replicates the very (hetero)sexual structure from which lesbians are supposedly free. The idea that one’s sexual identity might depend on or evolve from such role-playing is considered “unenlightened,” and a sign of one’s successful socialization into the dominant ideology. But there is also a growing body of lesbian-feminist scholarship that attempts to shed new light on our understanding of the function of role-playing within the lesbian community, arguing that lesbian roles not only challenge the constructed nature of heterosexual roles but are, in fact, subversive of the sex/gender system as a whole. . . .

(Here we are getting to the core of why feminism ultimately requires lesbianism. Feminist theory holds that it is “the sex/gender system” which is the source of women’s oppression under patriarchy. If, as Goodloe says in summarizing Rich, “heterosexuality is not only not natural or innate, it is in fact an institution designed to perpetuate male social and economic privilege,” then this “dominant ideology” of heterosexuality is key to women’s oppression. That which is “subversive” of the system — i.e., lesbianism — is therefore liberating.)

According to [feminist Esther] Newton, in “The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman” (1984), the figure of Stephen Gordon [in Hall’s novel, The Well of Loneliness] “was and remains an important symbol of rebellion against male hegemony” . . . because of the way she challenges the “natural” relationship between sex and gender. . . . According to Newton . . . the character of Stephen Gordon is not “mannish” because she wants to be a man, but for the more complicated reasons of resistance to the dominant construction of “femaleness,” and decision to publicly announce and act on her desire for other women — which, in a phallocentric culture, means appropriating the male role.
The claim Newton is making for Hall’s character is that, rather than capitulating to the dominant construction of lesbian identity as a defect of nature, she instead destabilizes gender categories by exposing them as roles that can be assumed by either sex. Masculinity then becomes nothing but a social role, albeit one accorded power and dominance in the culture, and therefore women who reject the prohibitive and dehumanizing role of “femininity” symbolize this rejection by “cross-dressing,” appropriating the codes and symbols of masculinity while remaining fully female. Role-playing then becomes, at least for the “butch” woman, a challenge to heterosexuality rather than a replication of it. . . .

OK, enough with the italic interpolations. You can go read the whole thing. Where you see Goodloe’s article going — and the destination was clear from the start — is toward justifying butch-femme roles among lesbians as an attack on male “power and dominance.” Women who exercise “power and dominance” in their relationships with other women, however, are OK because they’re women, and if femininity is “prohibitive and dehumanizing” for heterosexual women, somehow being submissive toward a butch lesbian is also OK, because it “destabilizes gender categories.” Amid the academic jargon, Goodloe makes this pretty clear:

Because it is butch women who visibly disrupt the dominant ideology of gender roles with their seeming appropriation of masculinity, scholarly attention tends to focus on “butchness” when addressing issues of lesbian identity. The equally important role of femme women in the construction of lesbian identity is ignored, often because of the misconception that femme women are attempting to disguise their homosexuality by “passing” as straight — which is to say, by buying into rather than rejecting the dominant culture’s construct of “femininity.” What [feminist Joan] Nestle suggests, however, is that the femme role is just as threatening to the institution of heterosexuality because of the way it co-opts the conventional female role in order to signal desire for other women, which of course runs counter the very purpose behind the social construction of femininity. What the femme role makes perhaps even clearer than the butch is the performative nature of all roles, which makes it possible for a biological female to “play at” being a woman by exaggerating what the culture has defined as “womaness.”

Does this involve a strap-on dildo by any chance, Ms. Goodloe? Because we’re all tired of theory about butch-femme roles, which we are certain must be less interesting than the reality. But the same is true, actually, when feminists write about heterosexuals — all they see is male patriarchal hegemony and the presumed victimhood inherent in “the conventional female role.”

Has no feminist ever considered the possibility that not all heterosexual women are clueless? Are there no happily heterosexual women who are as aware as any feminist of “the performative nature of all roles,” and who take an unembarrassed pleasure in performing “the conventional female role” with conventionally masculine men?

Once you discard the power-obsessed collectivist ideology of feminism, what purpose is served by this demonization of men and this contemptuous disdain for “conventional” women?

Feminism’s critique of gender roles (“all identities are socially constructed”) is fundamentally an ideology of selfishness, embraced by perpetually disgruntled women whose inability to find happiness in traditional relationships is turned into a “sour-grapes” rationalization — the argument that traditional relationships are inherently bad. And to hell with Goodloe’s claim that “the dominant discourse” is what “has established heterosexuality as the ‘natural’ or normative expression of human sexuality.” If heterosexuality is not natural, why are there more than 6 billion people on the planet? Maybe Ms. Goodloe wasn’t paying attention in biology class when mammalian reproduction was explained, but her ignorance of the procreative process is not our fault.

Meanwhile, back in Sloan Britton’s 1960 world . . .

She had often thought of leaving. There were too many times when Lydia made life hell for her. Nothing was worth those hours and days of anguish and despair. Lydia was a sadistic bitch who delighted in tormenting Allison.
But Allison would never leave her.
Allison loved Lydia.
She loved her so much that sometimes she thought it was wrong. Human beings weren’t supposed to love each other so much. There must be something sinful about a love so strong it blotted out everything else, including decency and self-respect.

Yeah, that’s hot — and I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet!

Oh: Sixth annual National Offend a Feminist Week begins Monday and continues through May 11 — Mother’s Day, because where would the heteronormative patriarchy be without dear old Mom?

 

Category: Feminism, National Offend a Feminist Week

It’s Completely Out of Control Now

Posted on | May 2, 2014 | 74 Comments

Having previously noted a guy who got fired — fired! — for a Tweet — a Tweet! — now we can report that a black Christian minister may lose his day job in California because of his sermons:

Pasadena city officials placed Public Health Director Eric Walsh on temporary paid administrative leave Thursday after they learned of controversial statements he had made about homosexuality and evolution in online videos and audio clips.
In sermons uploaded to various websites, Walsh, a Seventh-day Adventist preacher, calls evolution “a religion created by Satan,” compares Disney to a “dark empire” of superstition and witchcraft, and criticizes homosexuality.
Walsh’s comments came to the city’s attention after he replaced Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black as Pasadena City College’s commencement speaker, said city spokesman William Boyer.
College officials said they replaced Black because they found stolen photographs of him and an ex-boyfriend engaged in sexual acts on Internet gossip sites, according to the school newspaper, the PCC Courier.
“With the porno professor and the sex scandals we’ve had on campus this last year, it just didn’t seem like the right time for Mr. Black to be the speaker,” PCC Board of Trustees President Anthony Fellow told the Courier.
Fellow was referring to former professor Hugo Schwyzer, who invited adult film stars to speak in a class on pornography and admitted to affairs with his students.
In a letter to the school newspaper, Black accused college administrators of attempting to shame him for his sexuality. He urged students to speak out, and soon a member of the group Students for Social Justice found some of Walsh’s videos online.
“We very quickly realized that there were a lot of communities that would be offended by Dr. Walsh,” said Sarah Belknap, a fourth-year student and member of Students for Social Justice.
The group compiled a list of Walsh’s controversial public statements, then published excerpts on Facebook and emailed them to media outlets.
“We were just so shocked that he was saying these things,” said Kelly Camacho, another student in the group. “This was even worse, to have this person as [Black’s] replacement, of all people.”

“Of all people”! In case you don’t know, Dustin Lance Black’s name has been mentioned in connection with the Hollywood pedophile scandal swirling around X-Men director Bryan Singer. Just “mentioned,” I say, and any suspicion of criminal activity is only a matter of allegations at this point. However, a notorious fondness for gay sex with teenage boys is less controversial in California now than, say, being a Christian who believes that homosexuality is a sin.

Obviously, “Students for Social Justice” prefers the boy-banging Hollywood guy to the black Christian preacher and, in raising a ruckus about it, managed to get the black guy suspended from his job — yeah, that’s a big win for “Social Justice” there.

(Hat-tip: Evil Blogger Lady.)

 

Category: Culture, Gays, Racism, Religion

It’s Come to This

Posted on | May 2, 2014 | 37 Comments

Ace saw this and could scarcely believe it, but it’s true: Some guy with an online gaming site got fired — fired! — for a Tweet — a Tweet! — about L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling:

Josh Olin, the community and eSports manager at Evolve developer Turtle Rock Studios, is no longer with the company in the wake of a series of remarks related to vilified Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
Olin, a former community manager at Treyarch Studios (Call of Duty: Black Ops) and Riot Games (League of Legends), said on Twitter on Wednesday, “Here’s an unpopular opinion: Donald Sterling has the right as an American to be an old bigot in the security of his own home. He’s a victim.”
The tweet was in reference to Donald Sterling’s private racist remarks being made public, the ensuing media attention and punishment meted out by NBA league commissioner Adam Silver. The commissioner announced on Tuesday that Sterling was banned for life from NBA events and would pay a fine of $2.5 million. Silver is also attempting to force a sale of the Clippers.
After Olin’s remarks hit Twitter, some of his followers — he has some 142,000 — challenged the original tweet. “When you were raised in an era where segregation was perceived as ‘right’, that will stick with some people,” Olin later said. “Doesn’t make him a monster.”
Olin later clarified that he believed Sterling was a victim because of “illegal wiretapping resulting in a MASSIVE, life altering breach in privacy.” Today, Olin tweeted he was “expressly not defending [Sterling’s] remarks or actions.”

This is insane: Person X says foul and offensive things in private conversation, which is recorded by Person Y. When the recording is made public, vehement condemnation descends on Person X. Everyone agrees his comments were offensive, but when Person Z says merely that Person X has a right to privacy and the right to his own opinion, unlimited personal destruction must be unleashed against Person Z because . . . ? Well, why, exactly?

It’s insane, like I said, but don’t start me talking. I could talk all night.

 

 

Category: Ace of Spades, Racism

Gay Baby Merchant Boasts: ‘My Vast Wealth and Contacts Will Crush Anyone’

Posted on | May 2, 2014 | 114 Comments

British couple Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow with two of their surrogate babies.

A British millionaire who stars in a Sky TV reality show about his surrogate baby business responded to an e-mail from a critic by boasting about his £18 million London mansion and threatening to use his influence to “crush anyone” who opposed him.

Barrie Drewitt-Barlow is CEO of the British Surrogacy Centre and, along with his gay partner Tony, stars in the series The Parent Makers that began airing last month on the Sky 192 satellite channel. Publicity for the show drew a hostile online reaction from Luke McKee, an Australian exile living in Asia. McKee posted a message full of anti-gay slurs (“queers,” “faggots,” etc.) at a right-wing online forum, suggesting that Drewitt-Barlow’s surrogate business may be violating British and U.S. laws. After a lengthy e-mail exchange with McKee, Barrie Drewitt-Barlow sent a message Friday morning calling McKee a “stalker” and “trailer trash,” and bragged that his wealth would protect him from investigation or adverse publicity. An excerpt of that e-mail:

From: Barrie Drewitt-Barlow <[email protected]>
To: Luke McKee
. . .
Sent: Friday, May 2, 2014 9:26 AM
Subject: RE: i always have the last word

. . . This time, you have met someone who is not only wealthier than you who can fight your pathetic attempt to blacken their name, but someone who is far more intelligent then you and someone who actually, does not give a shit about what anyone else in the world thinks of him! . . .
Do yourself a big favour and move on, you cannot win a fight against me, I’m far too well respected for some little idiot like you to do anything to. And as far as using other people to do the job for you as you say, hahahhahahaha I laugh in your face, and say to you, BRING IT ON, my vast wealth and contacts will crush anyone you bring onto your team! . . .
[T]onight, I will sit in my 16 bedroomed, £18 million pound London mansion, sipping champagne and eating the finest foods available to me, cooked by the house keeper and served by one of our three live in maids, before tucking my stunningly good looking 5 children up in their amazing bedrooms! After which, I will go for a swim in my swimming pool with my husband and talk about how much money we have made over the past 48 hours whilst YOU, sit in the poverty of your own making! Now do something worthy with your miserable life and get a job!

You prick! lolol

Drewitt-Barlow has often been controversial. Last year, he and his partner sued the Church of England demanding religious recognition of same-sex marriage. That lawsuit provoked criticism of Prime Minister David Cameron from conservatives like Colin Hart of the Coalition for Marriage, who told the London Daily Mail: “The ink’s not even dry on the [new marriage law] and churches are already facing litigation. We warned Mr. Cameron this would happen, we told him he was making promises that he couldn’t possibly keep. He didn’t listen. He didn’t care. He’s the one who has created this mess. Mr. Cameron’s chickens are coming home to roost and it will be ordinary people with a religious belief who yet again fall victim to the totalitarian forces of political correctness.”

The commercial surrogacy business is a growing international trade that has been criticized as  a form of “human trafficking,” especially by women’s rights advocates who say the lucrative practice — which is outlawed in many countries — enables wealthy people to exploit poor women as “breeders.” Reuters reported last year:

India opened up to commercial surrogacy in 2002. It is among just a handful of countries – including Georgia, Russia, Thailand and Ukraine – and a few U.S. states where women can be paid to carry another’s genetic child through a process of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and embryo transfer.
The low-cost technology, skilled doctors, scant bureaucracy and a plentiful supply of surrogates have made India a preferred destination for fertility tourism, attracting nationals from Britain, the United States, Australia and Japan, to name a few. . . .
A U.N.-backed study in July 2012 estimated the surrogacy business at more than $400 million a year, with over 3,000 fertility clinics across India. . . .
India’s surrogacy industry is vilified by women’s rights groups who say fertility clinics are nothing more than “baby factories” for the rich. In the absence of regulation, they say many poor and uneducated women are lured by agents, hired by clinics, into signing contracts they do not fully understand.
In May [2012], surrogate mother Premila Vaghela, 30, died days after delivering a child for an American couple at a clinic in Gujarat. It was recorded as an “accidental death” by police.

Negative attention was also focused on surrogate parenthood last year by the highly-publicized case of a gay couple whose son — which they said was produced by a Russian surrogate impregnated by one of the men’s sperm — was exploited by an “international syndicate” of pedophiles known as the “Boy Lovers Network”:

Mark Newton, 42, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison last week by U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker. Authorities say Newton and his partner, Peter Truong, 36, paid a Russian woman $8,000 to give birth to a boy they said was conceived using artificial insemination with Newton’s sperm. The men began sexually abusing the boy before he was two weeks old, recording the acts on video they shared online with other pedophiles.
“What can be said? What can be done to erase some of the horror of this?” Judge Barker said Friday in giving the maximum sentence to Newton, an American who had become an Australian citizen. Prosecutors said the case was tried in Judge Barker’s U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana because images of the boy were found on the computer of an Indiana man who was arrested as part of a larger child-pornography investigation.
Records in the case had previously been sealed, the Indianapolis Star reported. Newton and Truong made the boy available for molestation by other men in France, Germany and the United States, according to prosecutors. “For more than one year and across three continents, these men submitted this young child to some of the most heinous acts of exploitation that this office has ever seen,” said U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett.

Barrie Drewitt Barlow is @Gaydads on Twitter. The Sky TV show has its own Twitter account, @TheParentMakers. Luke McKee is  @gaysabovethelaw on Twitter.

 

Category: Gays, Great Britain
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin