The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 12.29.17

Posted on | December 29, 2017 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Will 2018 Be an Excellent Year?
Twitchy: Believer In Science Elizabeth Warren Quizzed On Gender, Life, And DNA
Louder With Crowder: Female Comedian Sued Over “No Boys Allowed” Show
Reason: “Sensitivity Readers” Are The New Thought Police (h/t NeoWayland)


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Rebirth Of The Study, also, Friday Links & Hawt Chicks
American Power: So Totalitarian Leftists Want The Vanity Fair “Hillary Knitting” Writers Fired? also, Ben Shapiro, Primetime Propaganda
American Thinker: The Republican Red State Is Dead
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Amazing 2017 Friday
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For December 29, 2017
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid, also, OK – So I’m Worse Than Melania
Don Surber: Joe Manchin, Trumped
Dustbury: From The Top Center Square
The Geller Report: Freedom Protests Spread Across Iran, also, Russian Woman Stabbed To Death By Jilted Muslim Boyfriend
Hogewash: Programming Reminder, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Joe For America: Chinese Honor Trump With Statue As They Ring In The Year Of The Dog
JustOneMinute: Yes, We Will Have No Bananas, also, He Died A Hero
Legal Insurrection: Trump Tells Dems – You Want 800K “Dreamers” To Stay? Build The Wall! also, Can Someone Check On CNN?
Power Line: The Year In Journalsim – Mainstream Media Flunks The Trump Challenge, also, The Dossiad
Shark Tank: DeSantis Expected To Announce Run For Governor In January
Shot In The Dark: Berg’s Seventh Law Is Universal And Inviolable
Sister Toldjah: Doug Jones Says It’s Time To Move On From Trump Sexual Harassment Allegations
STUMP: To Prepay Or Not to Prepay Taxes, That’s The Question
This Ain’t Hell: Friday Morning Feelgood Stories, also, Nork Nuke Defector Kills Himself
Weasel Zippers: Dem Congressman Outraged That Trump Tweets While People Die From Global Warming, also, Trump’s Ratings At End Of First Year Same As Obama’s
Mark Steyn: Collusion And Covfefe, also, The Wall Is All


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Category: Linkagery

The Problem With ‘Gender Equality’ and How SJWs Reached Their Stalingrad

Posted on | December 29, 2017 | 6 Comments

 

Feminists who have raised concerns about the transgender cult deserve the support of all decent people, and conservatives ought not to withhold that support because of ideological differences. When you’re at war, you need allies, and if Churchill could make an alliance with Stalin for the sake of defeating Hitler, then I see no reason why conservatives and feminists can’t make an alliance to defeat the transgender cult.

How many issues do I agree with Magdalen Berns about? Probably very few, but THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A LESBIAN WITH A PENIS!

 

“Lesbians don’t have penises. . . . If you’re born with a penis and [testicles], you’re male. You don’t get ‘assigned’ reproductive organs. Males are defined by their biological sex organs. Likewise, a homosexual is someone who’s attracted to members of the same biological sex. . . . Males can’t be lesbians.”
— Magdalen Berns

Where do weirdos like Riley Dennis and Zinnia Jones get the idea, first of all, that they can “identify” as female and demand that the rest of us accept this identification as legitimate? But having once made that leap beyond the bounds of biological reality, how do these deranged people then have the effrontery to call themselves “lesbians”? Well, this is the logical conclusion of the “gender equality” argument.

Why did the Supreme Court rule that VMI could not continue as an all-male institution? Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s majority decision invoked the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment, but that amendment said nothing whatsoever about “gender equality.” The 14th Amendment was intended to protect the rights of the former slaves whose freedom had been won as a consequence of a war fought by all-male armies, and the amendment was ratified by all-male legislators in an age when women did not even have the right to vote. More to the point, when feminists had attempted to enshrine “gender equality” in the Constitution, legislators had rejected the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. What Justice Ginsburg and the Supreme Court majority were doing, in the case of United States v. Virginia Military Institute, was nullifying the democratic process for the sake of a “progressive” ideology that the American electorate had never embraced.

Let’s quote the opening paragraph of Justice Scalia’s dissent:

Much of the Court’s opinion is devoted to deprecating the closed mindedness of our forebears with regard to women’s education, and even with regard to the treatment of women in areas that have nothing to do with education. . . . The virtue of a democratic system with a First Amendment is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly. That system is destroyed if the smug assurances of each age are removed from the democratic process and written into the Constitution. So to counterbalance the Court’s criticism of our ancestors, let me say a word in their praise: they left us free to change. The same cannot be said of this most illiberal Court, which has embarked on a course of inscribing one after another of the current preferences of the society (and in some cases only the counter majoritarian preferences of the society’s law trained elite) into our Basic Law. Today it enshrines the notion that no substantial educational value is to be served by an all men’s military academy — so that the decision by the people of Virginia to maintain such an institution denies equal protection to women who cannot attend that institution but can attend others. Since it is entirely clear that the Constitution of the United States — the old one — takes no sides in this educational debate, I dissent.

Exactly so. At some point during the 20th century, those whom Justice Scalia called “the society’s law trained elite” reached a consensus that anything done in the name of “equality” was good, and that all opposition was bad. It is unjust “discrimination” to believe that all-male institutions serve a useful purpose, and if the state of Virginia cannot be permitted to maintain an all-male military academy . . .?

It may seem like a strange leap from the VMI case to a perverted idiot like Riley Dennis claiming to be a lesbian with a penis, but the premise of “gender equality” leads inevitably to such a syllogism. This was obvious to me in 2009, in regard to the same-sex marriage issue:

Are men and women equal in the fullest sense of the word? If so, then equality implies fungibility — the two things are interchangeable and one may be substituted for the other in any circumstance whatsoever. (La mort à la différence!) Therefore, it is of no consequence whether I marry a woman or a man. . . .
This is why so many of those who would defend traditional marriage find themselves unable to form a coherent argument, because traditional marriage is based on the assumption that men and women are fundamentally different, and hence, unequal. Traditional marriage assumes a complementarity of the sexes that becomes absurd if you deny that “man” and “woman” define intrinsic traits, functions, roles.
To declare men and women unequal, however, puts one outside the law — you are guilty of illegal discrimination if you say that there is any meaningful difference between men and women. Yet if you refuse to argue against sexual equality, you cannot argue effectively against gay marriage . . .

Far be it from me to dictate to others how they organize their domestic lives. My own marriage isn’t Ozzie and Harriet or Leave It to Beaver or any other 1950s situation-comedy model of “tradition,” yet the basic roles of husband and wife, mother and father have a way of scripting themselves according to circumstances and human nature. The idea of complementarity is to combine counter-balancing forces, male and female, in such a way that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Specialization, division of labor, economies of scale — these are logical advantages of a well-ordered family life, and it is a dangerous error to imagine that we can remodel family life in the name of “equality” without undermining the stability of the structure.

My oldest daughter married a wonderful man, who has devotedly performed his equal share of domestic duties. They recently had their first child, however, and I can confidently predict that, as my daughter stays home to care for their newborn, she will inevitably find herself doing a larger share of the household chores, while her husband works longer hours at the office to pay the bills, and their marriage will thus tend toward a more traditional division of labor, at least until such time as their baby (and any future offspring) is ready to start school.

No matter how committed a couple may be to an ideal of “equality,” the natural division of labor in family life is implicit in human biology, and only a fool would resent this arrangement as unfair. As pleasant as it might be to imagine a world where everyone can do whatever they please in a utopia where money grows on trees — where there are no electric bills or mortgage payments to worry about, no diapers to be changed or dishes to be washed — we do not live in such a world, and find ourselves constrained to live within limitations. We have duties we cannot escape, especially if we believe that the responsibility of caring for our children cannot be outsourced to government bureaucrats (which everybody should believe). As the welfare state has expanded, however, many have forgotten this sense of duty, which is why divorce is so rampant and 40% of the nation’s children are born to unmarried women.

“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, 1910

You may not see how this discussion of marriage is relevant to the claims of the transgender cult, or to the Supreme Court’s 1996 VMI ruling, but the elite’s commitment to radical notions of “gender equality” has opened Pandora’s Box, from which a spirit of chaos has emerged. Permit me to enunciate a simple truth of human nature:

Men and women are different
in ways that are socially significant.

Commit that sentence to memory — it rhymes, and is easy to remember — and you will never succumb to the error of “gender equality.”

A major reason why feminists battling the transgender cult find themselves in such difficulties is that the feminist movement has spent the past half-century arguing for an ideal of “gender equality” based on a belief that there are no meaningful differences between men and women. Having made equality the first premise of their syllogism, however, feminists claim to be startled by the conclusion — lesbians with penises! And they are further dismayed that young women are getting their breasts amputated and injecting themselves with testosterone in order to become a Frankenstein’s monster simulacrum of a “male.”

In a free society, I cannot forbid others from “the pursuit of happiness,” but neither can I be forbidden to call insanity by its right name. What has happened, under the regime of “equality,” however, is that our right to free speech is being infringed if we express sentiments (or make reference to facts) that contradict whatever fashionable notion of “equality” the progressive elite may endorse at any given time. We are supposed to condemn as “hate speech” the concerns of parents like Susan Nagel:

About a year ago my then 16-year–old daughter told us she believes she is transgender. Soon after, she began begging to take testosterone, to wear a breast binder, to have others call her by male pronouns, and to legally change her name. . . . Over the course of a month or two after coming out, she changed from a generally cheerful person to a morose one who spent hours crying and who told me to hide the knives.. . .
I am a liberal, and I fully support equal access to housing, employment, education, and healthcare for all marginalized people, including transgender people. I do not think being transgender is immoral or that gender diversity is disturbing. Still after spending many sleepless nights researching the transgender movement, I have come to be very afraid for my daughter. . . .
I encounter many well-meaning people who believe the transgender movement is simply a civil rights movement. They do not understand my concerns and assume I am ignorant or a bigot. I think it is because most people’s knowledge of the transgender movement is limited to mass media accounts focusing on discrimination against transgender people or on an individual’s struggle to be true to his or her self. . . .
I am shocked by how readily some friends accept the idea of using synthetic hormones for the purpose of transitioning teenagers. Some of these people avoid drinking milk from cows treated with bovine growth hormone and avoid eating inorganic vegetables or food tainted by genetically modified organisms. If teenagers ingest risky chemicals for politically correct reasons, is the harm is somehow reduced? . . .

You can read the whole thing. The point is that concerns about the transgender cult are spreading, as more and more young people are being recruited by a network of online sites that present “transition” as a panacea that can cure whatever it is an unhappy teenager is unhappy about. These concerns involve rapid-onset gender dysphoria and the ways in which peer pressure can create a transgender social contagion.

What we are witnessing is a new appreciation of enduring truths about human nature among women whose feminist commitment to progressive ideals of “gender equality” had blinded them to reality. It’s rather like the way the Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939 shattered the Popular Front.

This brings us back to Magdalen Berns, who holds a physics degree from the University of Edinburgh and describes herself as “a critic of religion, capitalism, identity politics, conservatism, neoliberalism and socially imposed gender norms.” She’s no right-winger, in other words, yet she is fighting the same “social justice warrior” (SJW) mentality that was exposed in 2014 by the #GamerGate activists. And what a pugnacious fighter she is! It would seem that SJWs have reached their Stalingrad, so to speak, and radical feminists like Magdalen Berns are the Red Army, ferociously defending the embattled city against the onslaught.

Give me such fighters as allies, I say, and I will not quibble with them over ideological differences, so long as the war continues.



 

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Category: Sex Trouble, The Transgender Cult

In The Mailbox: 12.28.17

Posted on | December 28, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.28.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Proof Positive: I Fought The Law (Of Gravity) And The Law Won
EBL: Rose Marie RIP
Twitchy: Sad! Drexel U Losing That Professor Who Just Wanted White Genocide For Christmas
Louder With Crowder: Flashback – The UN Puts Sanctions On Dave Chappelle
Quillette: Collision With Reality – What Depth Psychology Can Tell Us About Victimhood Culture (h/t NeoWayland)


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #69 – The Connection Episode
American Power: Josh Meyer Gets An Echo Chamber Beatdown, also, Joseph Heller, Catch-22
American Thinker: The Age Of Reflexive Antagonism
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Crooked Hillary News
BattleSwarm: Quick Impressions – Texas CD 5
BLACKFIVE: Book Review & Author Q/A – Anne Elizabeth, The Power of A SEAL
CDR Salamander: First Time Tragedy, Second Time Farce
Da Tech Guy: Stacy’s Women Owe Donald Trump & The GOP A Huge Thank You
Don Surber: #FakeNews May Cost Democrats The Mid-Terms
Dustbury: White Christmas, Red Ink
The Geller Report: Erdogan Expects Trump Administration To Reverse Jerusalem Decision, also, France allows Muslim Street Prayer But Bans Christmas Movie As “Too Christian”, also also Pigman Vs. SuperJihad In Pigman #3 – Now In Print!
Hogewash: Qapla’, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Joe For America: Vanity Fair Editors Attacked For Satirical Video
JustOneMinute: From The Department Of Good News
Legal Insurrection: AL SecState To Certify Jones’ Win Over Moore, also, Euro Nations Start Cutting Contributions To Pro-BDS/Pro-Terror Palestinian NGOs
Power Line: Who Was That Masked Source? also, The Indispensable Churchill Bibliography
Shark Tank: Florida’s Private Sector Pushes Hurricane Prep Ahead Of State
Shot In The Dark: Finally, People Are Learning
The Political Hat: Emasculation – Of Male Privilege, Of Male Pronouns, Of Masculinity Itself
This Ain’t Hell: Alex Nichols – The Absurd Conservative Obsession With “Stolen Valor”, also, Ramon Regalado, RIP
Weasel Zippers: Professors Claim Farmers’ Markets Cultivate Racism, also, Obama’s DOJ Suffered From Systemic Sexual Misconduct, also also, Cosmopolitan Tells Us How CPR Really Works (NSFW)
Mark Steyn: Numbers Game


Bosch Fawstin’s The Infidel, Featuring Pigman For Kindle
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In The Mailbox: 12.27.17

Posted on | December 28, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.27.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: #FakeNews From Newsweek And Slate
Twitchy: Actress Jenna Fischer Wins Applause For Retracting Her Incorrect Tax Bill Tweet
Louder With Crowder: Bernie Sanders Fakes Compassion For Middle Class On Tax Reform, Ted Cruz Calls Him On It
CoyoteBlog: The Government Loves To Make Us All Criminals (h/t NeoWayland)


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Bachelor Cooking – Chicken Stock
American Power: Shocking Scale Of Homelessness In Downtown LA, also, Alex Kershaw, The Liberator
American Thinker: Trump’s Momentous First Year
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: North Korea Mini News Roundup
CDR Salamander: SECNAV Makes A Statement
Da Tech Guy: Embassies In Jerusalem – Why Guatemala?, also, A Parting Thought On Jen Flanagan, A Democrat Class Act
Don Surber: CJR Is Making Journalism Worse
Dustbury: Lack Of Space – The Final Frontier
The Geller Report: UK Muslim No-Go Zones Heading For Disaster, also, Terrorist Bomb Attack In St. Petersburg (Russia) Mall
Hogewash: I’m So Old…, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Joe For America: Sunday Night Football Canceled
JustOneMinute: The NYT Questions Excessive Regulation?
Legal Insurrection: Bernie Backer James Zogby Accuses Israel Of “Culinary Genocide”, also, Poynter Survey – Almost Half Of Americans Believe Press Is Making Up Anti-Trump News
Power Line: Why People Hate The Media, Chapter 12,186, also, Sports – An Excuse To Talk About Politics
Shark Tank: Obama’s Military Policy Failed America, While Trump’s Rules of Engagement Crushed ISIS
Shot In The Dark: Sign O The Times?
This Ain’t Hell: Nork Defector Was Immune To Anthrax, also, Cities Deflecting Blame
Weasel Zippers: Desperate Dems May Call On Biden In 2020, also, Sheila Jackson Lee’s Long History Of Playing Race Card, Acting Like Entitled Queen
Megan McArdle: Bitcoin Is An Implausible Currency
Mark Steyn: Bouncing Along, also, Planet Of The Nanomoles


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Ex-Partner Accuses ‘Nonbinary Transfemme’ @EliErlick of Sexual Abuse

Posted on | December 27, 2017 | 2 Comments

Eli Erlick (left); Danielle “Danie Yun” Diamond (right).

In April 2017, Glamour magazine named Pitzer College senior Eli Erlick one of their “College Women of the Year,” the first time a transgender person (born male) was chosen for this honor. A few months later, one of Erlick’s former classmates, a woman who has since undergone “top surgery” (radical mastectomy) to become “transmale” wrote a Tumblr post accusing Erlick of rape — “fisting someone and making them bleed without their consent.” Erlick is co-founder of Trans Student Educational Resources (TSER), “a national youth-led organization dedicated to transforming the educational environment for trans students through advocacy and empowerment,” and a member of the national advisory council for GLSEN, “which works to create LGBTQ-inclusive schools.”

 

Erlick’s accuser, Danie Yun Diamond, says she “was a Board Member, Program Director, and Grant Writer for TSER during my year and a half+ long emotionally, sexually, and financially abusive relationship with its executive director Eli Erlick.” Diamond says she was “emotionally manipulated into a vulnerable position” and “pursued relentlessly” by Erlick, finally deciding “it was easier to give in to being raped than deal with your pursuit.” She told Erlick she “still has traumatic flashbacks and nightmares about what you’ve done,” and said Erlick exploited TSER, “preying” on other young members of the transgender community.

Somewhere, I’m sure, feminists are trying to blame “patriarchy” for this, but whose idea was it to create pro-LGBT “safe spaces” on college campuses, using claims of societal “homophobia” as an excuse to gather all the sexually confused students together in one group? No, you don’t get to blame “patriarchy” for the predictable consequences of such misguided policies. Celebrating deviance in the name of “progress” and “equality,” creating campus organizations that gave power to “student leaders” like Eli Erlick, and prohibiting criticism of these pro-LGBT policies as “hate” — what did college officials think would happen?

Sexual abuse can occur in every sort of environment, and the #MeToo movement has exposed such abuses in Hollywood, in politics, in media. However, even as these revelations have destroyed careers and shattered illusions of celebrity “glamour,” political correctness has continued to prohibit criticism of systemic problems in the LGBT community. Especially in the context of higher education, we have seen claims of a “rape epidemic” used to demonize male students and deny them due process in campus disciplinary proceedings, and even hoaxes (e.g., the fictional gang-rape at the University of Virginia) perpetrated as part of this feminist propaganda crusade. By promoting the myth that heterosexual males are universally complicit in sexual abuse, to such an extent that heterosexuality and “rape culture” are made to seem synonymous, feminists have helped foster an obverse mythology — the belief that abuse never occurs within the LGBT community.

Go read the accusations against Eli Erlick and ask yourself: Why would college administrators encourage psychologically disturbed young people to create campus groups to celebrate their mental illness? Doesn’t it seem obvious — as a matter of common sense — that allowing the lunatics to run the asylum, so to speak, creates inevitable risks? Such a vortex of insanity will attract dangerously unstable people. Yet this is what seems to have happened at Pitzer College, which is part of the Claremont Colleges network, along with Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, Pomona College and Scripps College.

Parents pay more than $65,000 a year to send their children to Claremont. For that price, you might expect administrators to protect students from a campus “leader” accused of “fisting someone and making them bleed without their consent.” However, the academic elite’s devotion to creating an “inclusive” campus means that sadistic perverts are protected from criticism in the name of “diversity.”

Perhaps readers will not be surprised to learn that one of the TSER projects that Erlick and Diamond worked on together was a “Model Admissions Policy on Transgender Students at Women’s Colleges.”

UPDATE: My friend Cynthia Yockey — please go hit her tip jar — called my attention to this account of a similar story:

I was 18 and a genderqueer-identifying man who had never pursued any kind of transition raped my best friend, a woman unacquainted with insular trans community politics. I had indirectly introduced her to this guy via mutual friends. After the rape, she told me what he did; I had been in the next room the whole night, awake, talking to someone I didn’t even like. I had no idea it was happening. When she let our mutual friends know, we both assumed they would have her back; after all, they referred to their apartment as a safe space for rape survivors. But instead, her rapist changed his pronouns on Tumblr, claimed to have schizophrenia, and then said that he couldn’t possibly have raped her, because of the power dynamics between a “cis” woman and a transwoman. He moved back to LA a few months later, without ever taking any steps towards transition. When he got there, he told his old friends he wasn’t schizophrenic or trans anymore.

Excuse me for being prejudiced in favor of good old-fashioned heterosexuality, but am I the only one who suspects what’s happening here is that so-called “pro-sex feminism” — which encourages promiscuity as “empowerment” — has yielded a predictable backlash? Girls are identifying as transgender and getting their breasts amputated because they don’t want to be what this kind of feminism tells them a woman must be. Furthermore, many boys become so confused and demoralized, haunted by a sense of sexual inadequacy, that they lose hope of ever having normal relationships with girls. Toxic cultural influences have left many young people, male and female alike, without the kind of healthy self-confidence necessary to social success.

 

Category: Education, The Transgender Cult

In The Mailbox: 12.26.17

Posted on | December 27, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.26.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Christmas Edition
EBL: They Call It VICE For A Reason
Twitchy: “United Has NOT Apologized” – Woman Who Accused Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee Of Stealing Her Seat Fact-checks Media
Louder With Crowder: Nikki Haley Announces YUGE Cut In What US Contributes To UN
Reason: Santa Calls It Quits (h/t NeoWayland)


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Merry Christmas
American Power: Despite Star Wars Surge, Movie Audiences May Keep Fading Away, also, Increase In Border Attacks, Smuggling, And Deaths In Texas’ Big Bend Region
American Thinker: Obama Was A State Sponsor Of Terror
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Tax Reform News
BattleSwarm: The Middle East In 2017 – Sucking Slightly Less
BLACKFIVE: Book Review & Q/A With W.E.B. Griffin, Death At Nuremberg
Bring The HEAT: “…Should We Not Inquire If America Sees Her Military Clearly?”
CDR Salamander: A Welcome Re-Militarization Of Japan
Da Tech Guy: Winning In The War On Christmas, also, The New Night Riders Are Just Like The Old Ones
Don Surber: Time To Admit Obama Failed
Dustbury: Strange Search-Engine Queries, also, The Fluffy Side Of Paranoia
The Geller Report: Pope Likens Muslim Migrants “Driven From Their Land” To Joseph And Mary
Hogewash: Making A Federal Case Out Of It, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Joe For America: Professor Argues “Algebra And Geometry Perpetuate White Privilege”
JustOneMinute: If Trump Can’t Carry The Suburbs Of Paris…
Legal Insurrection: Topless Feminist Steals Baby Jesus From Vatican Nativity Scene AGAIN, also, How India Threw “Ally” Israel Under The Bus At UN
Power Line: Panic At The Washington Post, also, Holiday Shopping Numbers Illustrate Success Of Trump’s Policies, Democrats’ Difficulties
Shark Tank: Florida State Debt Keeps Dropping Under Rick Scott
Shot In The Dark: Suddenly, The Strib Supports States’ Rights And Minnesota’s Permit To Carry Law
The Jawa Report: Up Side, Down Side
The Political Hat: Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! also, Twelve Posts Of Christmas, Day 11 & Day 12
This Ain’t Hell: A Soldier’s Christmas Poem, also, Commandant Neller Warns Troops “There’s A War Coming”
Weasel Zippers: Trump Puts Out “Full Christmas Spread” For Law Enforcement Protecting Him On Christmas, also, Professors Rave That Trump Saying “Merry Christmas” Promotes White Nationalism
Megan McArdle: Dispatches From The Frontiers Of Food
Mark Steyn: Christmas Day With Mark & Friends, also, Boxing Day Guest-Hostapalooza


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How About an ‘Insanity Studies’ Major? UPDATE: ‘Queer’ With ‘Psychotic Episodes’ and ‘Endless Mental Fog’

Posted on | December 25, 2017 | 2 Comments

It’s difficult to describe the cognitive dissonance I sometimes experience. Here at home, today was filled by a cheerful family holiday celebration. Meanwhile, however, the world is full of depravity and despair. Because my work involves searching through feminist blogs, I have a very pessimistic view of America’s future. If these people are our future, we’re hopelessly doomed. And after seeing a particularly weird column — never mind where — I went on a Twitter tirade:

Can anything be done to save our educational system? Or should we instead hope for the collapse of the system? Could anything possibly be worse than the madness our universities are currently producing?

UPDATE: OK, I’ll explain what and who inspired this rant. Rachel Sather graduated last year from CUNY-Hunter College. And she is crazy:

I’m very open about living with Borderline Personality Disorder. It’s a lot more common than people assume, with 1.6% of the general population living with BPD, most of whom are women. . . .
Between the psychotic episodes, addicting coping mechanisms, and the seemingly endless mental fog that comes with BPD, its incredibly difficult sometimes to maintain a healthy life. . . .
Thanks to social networks like Tumblr, there’s a whole network of bloggers that share their experiences with BPD. . . . The fact that I have learned more about my illness from Tumblr than someone with a Masters in psychology made me realize that not enough people were talking about it.

Great. You’re having “psychotic episodes” and “endless mental fog,” but you’ve got a college diploma and lots of friends on Tumblr. However, that’s not what inspired my rant. The inspiration was another article Ms. Sather wrote, “What is My Sexuality Anyway?”

When I was told by a psychiatrist that I had bipolar disorder, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. I needed that label. I needed to establish my identity. . . .
The concept of my sexuality is a much different thing than my mental affliction, but I’ve dealt with the same thing regarding labels. The mental illness thing was easy to pinpoint. My label as far as who I am in regards to who I’m attracted to, not so much.
I came out a bisexual when I was thirteen. My parents were very accepting of me and said they would support me no matter who I would eventually bring home, but they didn’t take it seriously.

Really? Who decided kids should “come out” before they’re legally old enough to have sex? Although the age of consent varies from state to state, I’m pretty sure 13 is illegal in all 50 states. But never mind that for now. Let’s continue to Page 2 of Ms. Sather’s article:

What a lot of people don’t understand about bisexuality is that who you end up dating does not void the fact that you’re attracted to more than one gender. Being with someone doesn’t mean you completely stop experiencing attraction. My mother understands this now. More people in general do, but there is still a big stigma surrounding the concept of bisexuality.
For years I thought I leaned more towards men. I would develop big, overwhelming, borderline unhealthy crushes. At least I thought they were crushes. I had my first sexual experience with a man when I was seventeen. I found out from the start that I hated blowjobs. I was very uncomfortable when it came to (cis) male genitalia. But my crushes continued regardless.
Since I started watching porn as a preteen, I had only watched lesbian porn. . . .

HOLY FREAKING CRAP! Preteen girls watching porn? Call the police! Arrest somebody! No, better idea — get a trial lawyer to file a class-action lawsuit against Internet porn sites that are feeding this poison into children’s minds. But meanwhile, back to Ms. Sather’s article:

My first real boyfriend came along when I was nineteen. He was extremely into sex . . . I would only really be able to [orgasm] during oral sex. And a lot of the time that was because I was thinking about ladies. I never told him this. . . .

Did you tell him you’d been watching lesbian porn since you were a child? Did you discuss how “male genitalia” made you “very uncomfortable”? Did you tell him about your “psychotic episodes”? Or are these subjects you only discuss with total strangers on the Internet? Never mind, let’s continue on to Page 3 of Ms. Sather’s article:

The fact that I wasn’t into penetration made me question my entire sexuality. That paired with the overall terrible experience I had with my ex-boyfriend led me to thinking I was asexual. . . . One thing I’m grateful for regarding society’s current view on sexuality is the number of labels I could attach to myself. So the label became biromantic asexual.
But after a while that didn’t seem to work either. I kept thinking about my sexual attraction to exclusively women. I realized most of the “crushes” I had on men were actually a BPD-related psychological attachment, with very little sexual attraction attached. So I started to think about the fact that I might be gay. I didn’t want to say I was definitely a lesbian, as I wasn’t sure if that label fit. I could still see myself falling in love with a man, but I also knew that if I did I wouldn’t be sexually attracted to him. I decided to forget about specifics and just use the blanket term queer.
I still feel a lack of definitiveness using this term. Labels are important to me, and I want to know specifics. But I’m coming to terms with the fact that I may not get one. Sexuality is fluid for me, and I know if I stuck to one label one day I would just begin to question it the next day. So I’m going to just stick with queer. That is a label I am happy with, and one that can effortlessly say that I am attracted to all genders in a wide variety of ways.

There is so much wrong here, I scarcely know where to begin, so let’s start with the obvious: Why do you need to tell the whole world?

“Hello, world, I’m a queer who has psychotic episodes!” Is that how you want to introduce yourself to every stranger with an Internet connection? Are there actually people who could read that self-description without thinking, “Wow, better stay away from that weirdo”? And what about the ex-boyfriend with whom she had the “overall terrible experience”? Does he realize that Ms. Sather’s interest in him was “psychological attachment” symptomatic of her mental illness?

Y’know, some people had problems with sex before the Internet existed. They either solved their problems or they didn’t, but few of them advertised their problems to the entire world because (a) they didn’t have the means to do so, and (b) they weren’t completely crazy.

Nowadays, we have the Internet and everybody’s crazy. Or so it seems, when you notice how many college-educated lunatics feel compelled to divulge every detail of their sexual desires and practices for public consumption. Honestly, I’m grateful the Internet didn’t exist when I was a crazy college kid, because . . . Well, what’s great about the Constitution is that, in addition to our First Amendment right to free speech, we also have the Fifth Amendment, which protects our right to shut up.

On the other hand, I suppose if all the weirdos and lunatics want to advertise their depravity, at least we’ll know who to avoid.



 

Category: Education, Sex Trouble

‘Girls Can Rape Girls’: @MelanieLBBH and Why Some Stereotypes Are True

Posted on | December 25, 2017 | Comments Off on ‘Girls Can Rape Girls’: @MelanieLBBH and Why Some Stereotypes Are True

 

Melanie Martinez is a singer who skyrocketed to fame at age 17 when she appeared on the NBC talent-show series The Voice, making it through eight episodes before being eliminated. She released her first single in 2014, released an album in 2015 and then went on tour, where one of her opening acts was a duo called The Dresses, consisting of Jared Maldonado and a female singer named Timothy Heller. Why anyone would name their daughter Timothy is a mystery, but that’s what the Hellers did, and Timothy Heller says she became “best friends” with Melanie Martinez. Did I mention that Melanie Martinez is mentally ill?

In fact, both Ms. Heller and Ms. Martinez have openly admitted to being mentally ill. In September, Ms. Martinez lashed out at those who say her work “glamorizes mental health issues”:

If you have issues with my music and art and judge it so harshly to the point of making up your own reason as to what my intentions [were] when making it, you should just stop watching it. Because quite frankly, you. Just. Don’t. Get. It.

See? The 22-year-old pop singer claims to be Beyond Judgment. Ms. Martinez’s 2015 album Crybaby has been interpreted as a celebration of borderline personality disorder. Martinez “paints a picture of herself as a sensitive soul among ignorant ‘normals’ who cannot understand her,” and sings: “I’m f***ing crazy, need my prescription filled.”

This is the kind of person that any sane parent would warn their children not to hang around with, but Ms. Heller’s parents — well, they named their daughter “Timothy,” see? She became “best friends” with the self-described “crazy” singer and, as the kids say, Ms. Martinez was “thirsty”:

Many powerful men have been accused of sexual misconduct ranging from harassment to rape, but former The Voice contestant Melanie Martinez has been accused of rape by her former best friend. In breaking news, Martinez has a second accuser.
Timothy Heller, whose Twitter profile reads “yes I’m a girl named Timothy,” accused Martinez of performing non-consensual oral sex and penetration with a sex toy via a #MeToo-inspired tweet [Dec. 4].
“The only reason I do this now is because I’m hoping because of recent events, people will believe me,” musician Heller wrote in her statement. “If you begin to doubt the abuse taking place in this story, I beg you to imagine her role in this being a man. Girls can rape girls.”

Having read the entirety of Ms. Heller’s account, I’ll spare you the details, but during a two-night sleepover, Ms. Martinez (allegedly) refused to take “no” for an answer to her sexual interest in Ms. Heller.

For the sake of argument, let us cede Ms. Heller’s point — the feminist #MeToo movement’s reaction would be merciless if a male had been accused of doing anything like what Ms. Martinez (allegedly) did. There is no need here to plead in defense of typical heterosexual male behavior (cf., “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”) because that is not what is at issue in Ms. Heller’s account. No, what her account highlights is a certain harmful stereotype — the predatory homosexual.

This was what enraged many in the gay community about Kevin Spacey’s reaction to the accusation that he had, uh, seduced teenage boys. Spacey chose that occasion to finally “come out” as gay and, as Gabriel Malor said on Twitter: “Hey, way to be a stereotype for the gay predator, @KevinSpacey. Really helping.” Here, it might be helpful to quote radical feminist Andrea Dworkin: “Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine.”

No? Not helpful, you say? Then perhaps my friends in the LGBT community should consider how feminist rhetoric demonizes heterosexual men simply for being (a) male and (b) heterosexual. More or less anything a man might do in pursuit of heterosexual activity is condemned by feminists, who then mock men as “clueless” when we complain about their relentless demonization of males:

Is there any way men can speak up about sexual harassment and the #metoo movement without sounding stupid, sexist and part of the problem? . . .
It’s this same attitude that posits it is now “dangerous” to flirt with women, or to offer female colleagues compliments, lest you be “accused” of harassment. . . .
[F]lirtation is an unserious, usually verbal, dance between two equals. Harassment is the unwelcome imposition of one person’s desire on another. If you can’t tell the difference, you shouldn’t be playing the game.

That’s from one feminist’s reaction to Matt Damon’s complaint that the current discourse around “harassment” has conflated comparatively minor offenses with serious crimes like rape. Jacqueline Maley doesn’t give a damn about the harm done by this discourse because (a) she imagines only heterosexual males will suffer as a result, and (b) anything that is harmful to heterosexual men is good, according to feminism. Ms. Maley’s column mocking Matt Damon serves the broader purpose of shaming any other man who expresses concern that the feminist crusade against harassment actually does make flirtation “dangerous.” Every intelligent man knows the answer to this question:

Q. When is it safe for a man to flirt with a female co-worker?
A. Never.

And the same is increasingly true on university campuses, where many male students are now afraid to speak to their female classmates for fear of the accusation of “harassment.” God forbid a college boy should actually try to get laid, and run the risk of a sexual assault inquisition. It is disingenuous of man-haters like Ms. Maley to pretend that the harmful effects of their anti-male rhetoric are unintentional. Feminists expect us to believe that they don’t know what they’re doing and, when men object to this insult to our intelligence, we are accused of being “clueless.” Well, I’ve got a few clues about the feminist agenda, but I digress . . .

What happened when Ms. Heller accused Melanie Martinez of sexually assaulting her? Ms. Martinez claimed she was the real victim, first suggesting that Ms. Heller had lied about the key issue of “consent”:

“She never said no to what we chose to do together.”

Translation: “She’s lying! She never said no! I’m not a predatory lesbian who took advantage of my heterosexual friend! This was ‘what we chose to do together’ — she’s as gay as I am!”

You see that the question of consent in this incident, which occurred in June 2015, involves Ms. Martinez — who had not, to my knowledge, previously acknowledged her homosexuality — implying that Ms. Heller is similarly inclined. However, Ms. Heller says otherwise:

“One night during a sleepover, she became increasingly interested in my sexual preferences. . . .
“She began asking me while in bed if I would have sex with her. . . . I had a boyfriend at this time, and she knew that. ‘He doesn’t have to know, it’s not a big deal!’ . . .”

Ms. Heller was in a heterosexual relationship, but says that Ms. Martinez responded to her protestations by invalidating the significance of that relationship, telling her, in effect: “Just because you’ve got a boyfriend doesn’t mean you’re not gay.” And isn’t this exactly the argument we would expect from a predatory homosexual? Oh, wait . . .

“Bisexual,” you say? You’re telling me that it is unfair to depict Ms. Martinez as a lesbian, because she’s actually bisexual? You say that I’m just a homophobic bigot trying to blame the entire gay community for the (alleged) wrongdoing of this one mentally ill pop singer? Gosh, what a coincidence — that’s how most heterosexual men feel when feminists implicate us as collectively responsible for Harvey Weinstein!

Guilt-by-association is a dirty game, and if feminists are going to demand that every man share the blame for “rape culture,” I don’t see why it’s unfair to say that the entire lesbian community has to answer for Melanie Martinez’s (allegedly) predatory behavior. If lesbians don’t want to take the blame, however, they can throw bisexuals under the bus.

So far as I know, Ms. Martinez has never labeled her sexuality, but her admission of having sex with Ms. Heller (“what we chose to do together”) certainly indicates she’s not heterosexual, and I think most people reading Ms. Heller’s account of this incident would interpret Ms. Martinez’s behavior as PFG — Pretty F***ing Gay. And do you think that Ms. Heller is the only person in human history to encounter a horny homosexual who didn’t want to take “no” for an answer? Do you think the “gay predator” stereotype just invented itself?

Far be it from me to engage in guilt-by-association smears, but now that the #MeToo hashtag is looking like the #YesAllMen hashtag — a universal collective indictment of every heterosexual man on the planet as complicit in “rape culture” — do you expect me to pretend that the scenario described by Ms. Heller is an extreme rarity? No, I’m not going to play along with that kind of make-believe game. Let me tell you what I believe is the real reason why there aren’t more same-sex harassment/assault stories on the #MeToo hashtag:

  • Shame — Most victims of homosexual molestation identify as heterosexual, and are ashamed to admit their same-sex experiences.
  • Political correctness — The victim might be accused of “homophobia” if they speak out about such an experience.
  • Fear — What if a victim accuses someone of same-sex harassment and/or assault, and the person they accuse retaliates?

This isn’t hypothetical, you see. Ms. Heller waited two years before speaking out about her experience with Ms. Martinez (shame) and she went to great lengths to avoid being “judgmental” about Ms. Martinez’s sexuality (political correctness). And her fear of retaliation was well-grounded, as Ms. Martinez’s fans viciously attacked Ms. Heller, and then Ms. Martinez applauded them for doing so:

“I want to thank my fans who took the time to research the timeline, analyze past Instagram photos, and question the story being told, which reveals her false statements. I trusted so many people i9n my life who took advantage of that trust for their own personal gain. Please know that my intentions with everything that I do in my life are always pure and I would never be intimate with someone without their absolute consent.”

Translation: “Thank you for exposing that greedy lying slut.”

Not only did Melanie Martinez double-down on her insistence that Ms. Heller enthusiastically consented to their liaison (i.e., she implies Ms. Heller is homosexual, but too afraid to admit it), she further claimed that Ms. Heller “took advantage” of her. Whereas Ms. Martinez asserts that her own intentions “are always pure,” she says Ms. Heller is untrustworthy, a liar motivated by “personal gain.”

Classic DARVO — Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

Need I remind readers of my experience with dangerous sociopaths? Look, I’m not a professional psychologist, but I know this for a certain fact: CRAZY PEOPLE ARE DANGEROUS.

Would you let your daughter have a “sleepover” with Melanie Martinez? No, you would not. The weirdo hairstyle, the pierced nose, the “Goth” makeup — it’s aposematism, a warning: “STAY AWAY! I’M CRAZY!”

Why didn’t Ms. Heller heed that warning? Because Ms. Heller is also mentally ill, and was drawn to Ms. Martinez like a moth to a flame. However, it seems Ms. Heller has since wised-up to the game:

“I assumed no one was going to take me seriously if I explained what she did. . . . I loved her even after it happened, and I had this sick need to protect her. . . . We remained friends for a while, but it was strange, obviously. I think I was invalidating my own experience for so long because she’s not a man.“

Ms. Heller felt a “sick need to protect” Ms. Martinez because, hey, mentally-ill women have to stick together, right? Isn’t that the basic organizing principle of feminism? And it was difficult for Ms. Heller to think of herself as a victim of sexual assault — she was “invalidating” what happened — because Ms. Martinez is “not a man.”

Don’t you think Melanie Martinez knew Ms. Heller would feel this way? Am I the only one who sees how the feminist movement’s deliberate demonization of heterosexual males has the effect of giving women like Ms. Martinez carte blanche to behave as lecherously as they wish, certain that they will never be accused of harassment or assault?

It’s the one-sidedness of “rape culture” discourse that offends reasonable people, in the same way the one-sidedness of “gay rights” rhetoric offends reasonable people. No person intelligent enough (and concerned enough) to read feminist blogs needs to be told rape is bad, just like we don’t need to be told it’s wrong to bully gay people. Yet when the #MeToo hysteria inspires a woman to accuse another woman of sexually assaulting her, we are expected to believe either (a) the accuser is lying, or (b) what Ms. Martinez allegedly did to Ms. Heller isn’t as harmful as a heterosexual man doing the same thing because . . . Well, why?

Somewhere a Gender Studies major is shouting: “Patriarchy!”

In other words, it’s about politics. We’ve reached that final scene in Animal Farm, where the revolutionary slogan has been amended to declare that “Some animals are more equal than others.” And the feminist claim that women never lie about rape? That’s a lie. Because in the case of Heller-vs.-Martinez, at least one of them is lying.

“Girls can rape girls. Best friends can rape best friends. Friendship does not equal consent. Silence doesn’t equal consent.”

Alas, Ms. Heller learned that lesson the hard way, and a little too late. Crazy people are dangerous, and some stereotypes are true.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!



 

Category: Sex Trouble
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