The Other McCain

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

The Vagina as Commodity: What Does the Pubic Depilation Phenomenon Mean?

Posted on | September 25, 2013 | 88 Comments

“This particular cosmetic trend — I’ve dubbed it the Deforestation of the Pubic Delta — is really a byproduct of the pornification of culture. In the same way, trends like breast augmentation, body piercing and tattoos for women have been mainstreamed by the pervasive porn aesthetic.
“When you turn sex into a commodity, the marketing mentality takes over.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Feb. 22, 2010

In recent years, anecdotal testimony has suggested that “sexually active” young American women are more or less expected to shave or wax their pubic regions to a condition of utter hairlessness.

Exactly when this trend began, and when it gathered such momentum that the unshaven woman is considered a bizarre novelty, I’m not sure. But further confirmation arrived this morning on Twitter when, responding to a “who to follow” recommendation, I stumbled into this conversation involving several young people:

Everyone who has written about this phenomenon agrees that the hairless vulva trend began in the world of pornography, and there are many observers who see this as a matter of women trying to live up to erotic expectations created by the porn industry.

As such, you might expect feminists to denounce this trend, but the ethos of “pro-sex feminism” seems to require that they endorse every manifestation of hedonistic promiscuity as “empowerment.” So the spectacle of women rendering their crotches as hairless as a fourth-grader’s in order to satisfy the porn-influenced expectations of their boyfriends — no, feminists don’t want to criticize that trend.

We must view this trend in the context of a shift in which traditional norms have crumbled in a comparatively short time frame.

The venerable ideal of pre-marital chastity, for example, has given way to the expectation that everyone will participate in the Hook-Up Culture. A person who is not sexually active by the time they’re old enough to get a driver’s license is considered abnormal, and no one seems to imagine it possible that a virgin could graduate college. If everybody is screwing around promiscuously, it becomes impossible even to discuss promiscuity as a phenomenon, because it’s simply what everybody does. Screwing around becomes a normative expectation.

Attendant to this expectation is the understanding that sex is now a matter of competitive performance: In an environment where everyone is presumed to have had multiple previous partners, lovers are striving to out-do their partner’s previous lovers in a sort of erotic sweepstakes pageant, with the goal of impressing one’s partner as exceptionally skilled at various sexual routines.

Only in such an environment can there be a ubiquitous fashion in genital grooming, and one wonders why young women — who otherwise are taught to emulate feminist ideals by resisting male demands — go along with this trend so compliantly.

Increasingly, it seems, women are encouraged to view their sexuality as a commodity in the consumer marketplace, and this attitude has become so common that no one even stops to consider just how weirdly unnatural and unhealthy this attitude is.

 

 

Category: Sex

Ted Cruz Goes All Night; Vendors of Conventional Wisdom Say This Is Bad

Posted on | September 25, 2013 | 40 Comments

Readers may have noticed that I have been ignoring the ObamaCare “Don’t Fund It” dramatics, along with the “government shutdown” threat and the punditry gabfest that have accompanied it. Depending on who you listen to, either Ted Cruz is the future of the Republican Party or else Ted Cruz is the harbinger of the final collapse of the GOP.

I hate ObamaCare and like Ted Cruz, but the reason I’ve ignored all the “Don’t Fund It” drama is because it’s a legislative process story.

And I hate legislative process stories.

For an entire decade, my job at the Washington Times required me to edit legislative process stories, including the interminable debates over budget bills during the Clinton and Bush presidencies. Day after day, our Capitol Hill reporters would file their stories about the latest developments in the process — the hearings, the debate, the amendments, etc. — and I had to pay close attention to every detail of this stuff, even though it was as boring as watching paint dry.

The glamour! The excitement! The journalistic thrill of formatting another roll-call graphic on a Senate cloture vote.

The Politics of Gesture is also something with which I’m familiar, having watched Congress and President Bush enact federal law to keep Terry Schiavo alive, which turned out to be futile symbolism.

So I’m pro-Cruz and anti-ObamaCare, and therefore supportive of Cruz and the “Don’t Fund It” movement, but I simply haven’t been able to bring myself to submerge into the day-by-day coverage that would have us believe this is anything other than a legislative process story and an exercise in the Politics of Gesture.

Spare me the “What It Means” punditry. Spare me the GOP Establishment denunciations of Cruz, and also spare me Tea Party denunciations of Republicans who don’t support Cruz. Most of all, spare me those “Republican Divided” chyrons on MSNBC, and spare me the umpteenth network Sunday show roundtable discussion.

Via Memeorandum, here is your “Don’t Fund It” headline stack:

Cruz Quotes ‘Duck Dynasty,’ Toby Keith
in Night-Long Attack on Obamacare 
— ABC News

How Ted Cruz’s Anti-Obamacare Filibuster
Could Cost Him Millions<
— BuzzFeed

Reid’s office: Cruz filibuster is fake 
— The Hill

Democrats see GOP shutdown threat
as opening for 2014 election gains
—  Washington Post

So, is this a “win” for Republicans? Or is this a public-relations nightmare that will help Democrats? I don’t know, and neither do any of the pundits who are claiming to know What It Means.

The significance of such things is never apparent except in hindsight, because the future is unpredictable. Many of the pundits who are blabbering away on cable TV news are engaged in “wishcasting,” predicting the future as a way of trying to influence the future.

Far be it from me to suppose that my influence is such that anything I say about this will make the slightest bit of difference either way.

Next week, there will be another LOOMING CRISIS we’re all supposed to care about, and everyone will have forgotten this week’s crisis.

UPDATE: TC Lynch at Leather Penguin:

Listening to the timbre of his voice, he doesn’t sound gassed. And his wingman, Utah’s Mike Lee, is still there, able to give him an occasional breather by “asking a question.” He’ll probably still be going strong when Mika and Scarborough — who has hammered Cruz at every opportunity — fire up “Morning Joe.” That alone is enough reason for me to maybe tune in to that trainwreck for the first time in years. (UPDATE-6:00AM: Took a look; still a trainwreck (see Geraghty).

Speaking of Joe Scarborough, do you realize he’s like 6-foot-4?

When I met him at the National Review Institute event earlier this year, I realized that being The Big Guy is part of Scarborough’s problem. There is such a thing as “Short Man’s Syndrome” — the pipsqueak who feels a need to overcompensate — and there is also such a thing as “Big Man’s Syndrome,” the guy whose sheer size habituates him to domineering behavior. Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson, both of whom were tall guys, had this tendency, and I think Joe Scarborough’s arrogant domineering attitude has similar origins.

 

Category: Budget, Health Care, Senate

Woman Lawyer Offers Helpful Career Advice, Gets Slammed by Feminist

Posted on | September 25, 2013 | 57 Comments

Vanessa James is a British lawyer who wrote a column for the Guardian newspaper with the headline, “Formal complaints over sexism should be last resort for women,” which included this:

The point is that everyone has boundaries and communicating these to colleagues through behaviour is key to avoiding unnecessary offence.
It is also important to ensure that when a women is subject to treatment that falls outside her boundaries she can identify that and decide how to address it and move on.
If you do not define your own boundaries then you cannot expect others to be able to either.

This seems like good advice, as does her conclusion: “The formal route should be seen by women seeking career progression as a last resort, as the outcome is not always a happy one for the complainant.”

In other words, if a woman’s goal is to advance her career, filing a complaint for harassment is likely to be harmful, resulting in her being labeled a complainer — “not a team player” — and harassment may be more easily avoided or discouraged if a woman makes clear what behaviors are unacceptable to her.

However helpful this may be as career advice, it offended the feminist sensibilities of Katie Halper, who sees this as victim-blaming, and winds up ranting about rape and gay rights and stuff:

Given that rape survivors often face humiliation, intimidation, disbelief, and hostility from law enforcement and the criminal justice system in general, is the solution not to report rape? Should women just focus on setting boundaries that prevent their rapes in the first place? Does that mean no dirty jokes, no flirting, no short skirts, no leaving the house? This seems like the logical conclusion. In all seriousness, the advice James doles out isn’t that surprising, given the nature of her work. The Guardian just says she’s a lawyer at SA Law. But if you look at her website, she boasts  that she has successfully defended corporations from being sued for discriminating  and bullying against workers based on their gender, sexual-orientation, disabilities, and race. So, I guess it makes sense that a woman who makes her living defending employers who are accused of pay discrimination, abuse, and prejudice, wouldn’t have the best advice for women.  Well, that’s not entirely fair. I’m sure she’s an equal opportunity offender, whose advice for LGBTI people, people of color, and people with disabilities is just as sound.

Vanessa James is a successful lawyer — and that’s a bad thing, says Katie Halper, who writes for a feminist blog.

This is the difference between pragmatism and ideology: Do you want to solve your problem, or do you want to construe every problem to fit political categories and intellectual abstractions?

If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, and if the only tool you have is feminism, every problem looks like heteronormative patriarchal oppression and “rape culture.”

 


Category: Feminism

LIVE AT FIVE: 09.25.13

Posted on | September 25, 2013 | 13 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Senator Ted Cruz Filibusters Obamacare Funding

Opposed by GOP leadership

Texas senator’s tactic seen as quixotic


HHS Report Claims Obamacare Premiums “Less Than Expected” In 36 States
Non-government analysts disagree



Kenyans Mourn As Mall Siege Ends With 61 Dead
Five Al-Shabaab jihadis dead, 11 captured



POLITICS
Inhofe Says UN Gun Treaty Already “Dead In The Water”

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)

Kerry set to sign treaty; Sen. Corker warns administration against trying to implement any part of the treaty


Lonegan Closing The Gap Against Booker In NJ


California Lawmakers Move To Shield Illegals From Deportation

Raymond Cardinal Burke Says No Communion For Nancy Pelosi

Obama No Longer Cash Cow For Democrats

Polls Show Disdain For Obamacare, Fewer Back Shutdown

Soldiers Told New Regs On Tattoos And Grooming Standards On The Way



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Crude Oil Mixed In Asian Trade Ahead Of US Stockpile Report: NYMEX $103.29, Brent $108.76
Fiat Threatens Chrysler Pullback With Union-Backed IPO
Feds Seek Deal With SAC, Fine May Reach $2 Billion
Dow, S&P Extend Slide To Fourth Day
Twitter Reportedly Picks NYSE For $1.5 Billion IPO
Freddie Mac Failed To Pursue Defaulters For $4.6 Billion In Shortfalls
Amazon Unveils New Tablets With Live Help Desk
Apple Updates The iMac
YouTube Gets The Yuck Out In Comments Cleanup
RealNetworks Aims For Comeback With New Video Software
BBM For Android, iOS Not Launching This Week



SPORTS
Tigers Clinch Playoff Spot With Win Against Twins

One more win to clinch AL Central

4-2 victory over Twins soured by Tribe victory


Giambi’s Two-Run Dinger In 9th Shocks Pale Hose; 5-4 Win Keeps Tribe In Playoff Hunt


Fans Go Wild As America’s Cup Defense Goes Down To Last Race

Rockies Rock The Red Sox 8-3 As Lackey Struggles

Shutout By M’s Endangers Royals’ Playoff Hopes

Rangers Still In Hunt, Astros Drop 11th In A Row

Pirates Take Wildcard Lead, Thrash Cubs 8-2

Jays Snuff O’s Playoff Hopes With 3-2 Win

Ryan Zimmerman Spoils Wacha’s No-Hit Bid



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Kaley Cuoco’s Sister Briana Scores Audition For “The Voice”

Briana and Kaley

Big Bang Theory co-stars also happy about Briana’s big break



Lamar Odom’s Dad Speaks Out: “The Kardashians Are To Blame For All My Son’s Problems”

Amanda Bynes Not Mentally Competent To Stand Trial

Miley Cyrus Goes Topless For Rolling Stone


Kanye West Claims “Glass Ceiling” For Black Artists In BBC Interview

Gerard Butler Circling Summit’s “Gods Of Egypt”

Britney Spears Talks Miley Cyrus Duet, Her Hot Bod, And Her Vegas Show

Killer Doctor Drew Pinsky Reveals Prostate Cancer Treatment

Fox Nabs Gotham City Origins Drama About Commissioner Gordon

Dina Lohan Pleads Not Guilty To DWI

Gere, Lowell Calling It Quits

Drake, Brown Bury Hatchet

DeLesseps’ Lips Are Loose

Branson Preps For Orbit With Space-Suited Go-Go Girls

Lady Gaga, Elton John And Johnny Depp Dine Amicably At Craig’s



FOREIGNERS
Pakistan Earthquake: Hundreds Dead In Baluchistan
Iranian President Brushes Away Obama’s UN Olive Branch
Egyptian Minister Delays Court-Ordered Dissolution Of Muslim Brotherhood
At UN, Brazil’s Rousseff Blasts NSA Snooping As Breach Of Law
Four-Year-Old British Boy Spared In Mall Massacre After Telling Jihadi “You’re A Bad Man”
Mexico Storm Death Toll Rises To 130; More Rain On The Way
PRC To Execute Man Who Killed Child Over Parking Row Spat
Labour’s Miliband Targets Energy Companies To Help Britons With Bills
Lebanon Calls For “Safe Zones” To Protect Syrian Refugees
How It Went Wrong For Nawaz Sharif
Greece Investigates Police In Neo-Nazi Crackdown



BLOGS & STUFF
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Poll – 61% Of Americans Are Hating Haters
Michelle Malkin: “Hide Out”?! Furious Army Wife Protests DHS Advice In Case Of Active Shooting
Twitchy: “Nightmare” – Senator Cruz Reads Teamsters Letter Protesting Obamacare On Senate Floor
American Power: Al-Qaeda’s Minnesota Recruiting Blows Lid Off Obama’s “The War Is Receding” Propaganda
American Thinker: Why The Establishment Is Wrong And The Defund Gambit Can Work
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – Look On The Bright Side! Incoherently!
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, September 24
Jammie Wearing Fools: CAIR Asks “Who Cares If Americans Were Involved In Kenya Terror Attack?”
JustOneMinute: The Man Who Knew Too Much
Pat Dollard: Lerner’s Lawyers Negotiating With Oversight Committee For Immunity
Protein Wisdom: A serious set of questions for establishment Republicans in the Senate and their GOP media enablers
Shot In The Dark: Somewhere In The Moral Swamps Of Jersey
The Jawa Report: Actual Science! Man-Made Global Warming Hypotheses False
The Lonely Conservative: DeBlasio Is ACORN’s Candidate For New York City Mayor
Megan McArdle: Who’s That Knocking Again At The Door?


Category: Live at Five

Obligatory ‘Miley Cyrus Topless’ Post

Posted on | September 24, 2013 | 29 Comments

You’d hate me if I didn’t do this one.

The piercings, the tattoos, the butch haircut — if you find that look attractive, seek professional psychiatric help immediately.

In her Rolling Stone interview, Miley says stupid stuff:

The 20-year-old says she’s well aware of how ridiculous she looks twerking, but guess what? She couldn’t care less.
“People are like, ‘Miley thinks she’s a black girl, but she’s got the flattest ass ever,’” she says. “I’m like, I’m 108 pounds! I know! Now people expect me to come out and twerk with my tongue out all the time. I’ll probably never do that s*** again.”
As for comments being thrown around that she’s trying to be “black”, the self-aware singer says: “I’m from one of the wealthiest counties in America … I know what I am. But I also know what I like to listen to. Look at any 20-year-old white girl right now — that’s what they’re listening to at the club.”
She had a few choice words for the haters of her VMAs dance with theBlurred Lines singer also: “No one is talking about the man behind the ass. It was a lot of ‘Miley twerks on Robin Thicke,’ but never, ‘Robin Thicke grinds up on Miley.’ They’re only talking about the one that bent over. So obviously there’s a double standard.”

In related starlet-meltdown news, Amanda Bynes is still crazy:

Amanda Bynes is mentally unfit to stand trial … this according to her lawyer in her DUI case … TMZ has learned.
Amanda was supposed to appear in court today for her DUI arrest in West Hollywood back in April, 2012. Amanda’s lawyer, Rich Hutton, told the judge Amanda did not have the mental capacity to understand the nature of the legal proceedings.
The judge apparently had concern … and transferred the matter to the mental health court. The judge in that court will conduct a hearing to determine Amanda’s mental competency.

If you’re too crazy to understand a DUI hearing, you’re just too damned crazy. Miley Cyrus probably isn’t that crazy . . . yet.

 

Category: Celebrities

Complementarity vs. Androgyny

Posted on | September 24, 2013 | 40 Comments

“If Americans can be divorced for ‘incompatibility of temper’ I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.”
— G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With the World (1912)

The beginning of economics is the division of labor. If we were all hunter-gatherers, there would little for us to exchange in the marketplace. Hunter-gatherer societies are universally poor. Agriculture and the domestication of livestock were the first steps beyond subsistence and those steps were attended by the development of sex roles. It is only with the affluence and convenience provided by advanced industrial market economies that any idea of “sexual equality” becomes feasible.

Our pioneer ancestors never could have conquered the frontier if the men had stayed home cooking, while sending the womenfolk out to hunt, plow and fight off savage Indians.

A great problem of young people today is that they have been so indoctrinated in the gospel of Equality (capitalized, to signify its status as a quasi-religious belief) that they lack even the vocabulary to discuss ideas like sex roles and complementarity.

Young people are afraid of acknowledging the natural differences between male and female — which are evident to everyone — and this fear leads them into a timid artificiality of discourse, trying to tiptoe around the truth that no one is supposed to mention: Insofar as men and women are different, they are not equal, and all attempts to equalize things which are inherently different are doomed to fail.

This comes to mind after I noticed David Covucci’s article, “New Rules for Women” at BroBible.com, which is a response to an article at the feminist site Jezebel, “New Rules for Men.” Some of what Covucci writes is useful and clever, but he cedes far too much to feminism:

There are horrible males out there who believe a woman should literally be chained to the stove because if she leaves the house her tiny brain will forget she put a pot pie in the oven and then the crust might be slightly overdone. These men are 65. Most of us — even if we hate burnt dough — believe in equality and women’s rights. So while I apologize for old, white males, remember they are our fathers. And they ingrained in us their shitty beliefs. We are fighting to overcome them, so realize that occasionally defaulting back to them isn’t MISOGYNY. We are aware when we are wrong. We don’t need to be hit in the head for it.

David, do you think anyone is deceived by your white-knight gesture? “Oh, there are horrible misogynistic Cro-Magnons out there perpetuating the patriarchy, but I’m not one of them.”

Don’t be that guy who denounces Those Hateful Sexists Over There as a way of touting your own egalitarian bona fides. That’s creepy.

Egalitarianism itself is creepy. No sane person desires to live in that androgynous asexual utopia where men and women are the same, but this is the future to which feminism proposes to lead us.

Also, why do you feel the need to “apologize for old, white males”? What have I done that you need to apologize for? Am I such a boor? For that matter, were my own father and grandfathers really such awful misogynistic monsters?

And, while we’re at it, why “old white males”? Are black men, Hispanic men or Asian men more-feminist friendly than white men?

I think not.

A few years ago, when I had written a denunciation of feminism, someone tried to categorize me as a “men’s rights advocate,” a label I wholeheartedly reject. I don’t believe in “men’s rights” for the same reason I don’t believe in “women’s rights,” because the entire concept of collective “rights” is misguided, especially when applied to the relations between men and women. Each couple must negotiate their own terms of cooperation, their own division of labor, and this individual arrangement cannot be dictated by ideology.

It is my own observation and experience that couples are generally happier, and their unions more durable, the more their relationships approach the traditional arrangement of husband-father-breadwinner/wife-mother-homemaker. That is to say, the more successful a man is in his career, the less pressure his wife feels to enter the workplace. Assuming that the wife has any aptitude for domesticity and motherhood, she really doesn’t want to have to work outside the home just to pay the bills. The two-career household is inevitably afflicted with more stress and conflict after children arrive, because the wife resents her need to abandon her children and return to a job, while the husband feels like a failure because his income is insufficient to support the entire household.

Marriage is the object of courtship, and the purpose of marriage is to create a stable household for child-rearing. The more traditional household is structurally more stable, which is not to say that two-career families are doomed to failure, but rather to say that the basic bond between man and woman is stronger where there is something more to their union than the transient emotion of “love.”

Men and women need each other, and the reason for this need is that men and women are different. Insofar as feminism is about encouraging men and women to be more the same — to be androgynous and sexless — then feminism makes marriage less desirable as an object, less durable and more prone to conflict.

David Covucci apparently believes that he can negotiate with feminism, but this is impossible. Feminism is a totalitarian ideology that acknowledges no limits to its ambitions. Men who seek to negotiate a compromise with feminism are like Neville Chamberlain, supposing he could have peace by handing over the Sudetenland to Hitler.

David, where does your policy of compromise with feminism lead us?

If this is the future, you don’t want to go there, man.

 

Category: Feminism

Goldman Sachs Banker Charged With Raping 20-Year-Old Irish Student

Posted on | September 24, 2013 | 33 Comments

Meet Jason Lee, 37, an Ivy League-educated managing director of the equity capital markets department at Goldman Sachs. One weekend in late August, Lee was celebrating his birthday at a bar in the Hamptons when he met a 20-year-old student from Ireland. He bought her and her friends drinks, and invited them to a $33,000-a-month house he was renting in East Hampton.

A sort of pool party ensued and, the woman told police, Lee was naked when he followed her to the bathroom, forced open the door, pinned her to the floor and raped her. Lee is married. His wife was in Manhattan at the time of the alleged assault. Lee’s lawyer admits his client had sex with the woman, but says it was consensual.

I wanted to point out this alleged crime, allegedly perpetrated by a wealthy member of the elite, in case anyone thought sex crimes were only committed by trash like the Alford brothers of Nebraska.

 

Category: Crime, Sex

Nebraska Sex Offender Re-Offends (And His Brother Is a Sex Offender, Too)

Posted on | September 24, 2013 | 24 Comments

Clintus Alford (left); Cletus Alford (right)

Clintus J. Alford, 37, was sentenced to 40  to 60 years in prison Monday for raping two girls, ages 12 and 14. He had previously been convicted in 2004 of false imprisonment for a case involving an 11-year-old girl, and served two years in prison for that offense. The Omaha World-Herald reports that perversion seems to be a family trait:

Alford’s brother, Cletus Alford, is serving an 11-year sentence for assault and for manufacturing child pornography. He took video of a girl he was dating.
That girl, 16-year-old Sarah Neal, was fatally shot in June 2005. Authorities have called Cletus Alford a person of interest in her death, but he has never been charged.

You can read more here about the murder of Sarah Neal.

 

Category: Crime, Sex
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