Chomsky on Foucault (and Also, Exactly What Was Judith Butler Trying to Say?)

Posted on | November 29, 2017 | 2 Comments

Michel Foucault and his very wrong book, ‘The History of Sexuality.’

It’s not my habit to quote Noam Chomsky, whom I despise, but I happened upon something he once said about Michel Foucault:

You can make things look complicated, that’s part of the game that intellectuals play; things must look complicated. You might not be conscious about that, but it’s a way of gaining prestige, power and influence. . . .
The only way to understand Foucault is if you are a graduate student or you are attending a university and have been trained in this particular style of discourse. That’s a way of guaranteeing, it might not be his purpose, but that’s a way of guaranteeing that intellectuals will have power, prestige and influence. If something can be said simply, say it simply, so that the carpenter next door can understand you. Anything that is at all well understood about human affairs is pretty simple. I find Foucault really interesting but I remain skeptical of his mode of expression. I find that I have to decode him, and after I have decoded him, maybe I’m missing something. I don’t get the significance of what I am left with. I have never effectively understood what he was talking about. I mean, when I try to take the big words he uses and put them into words that I can understand and use, it is difficult for me to accomplish this task. It all strikes me as overly convoluted and very abstract. But what happens when you try to skip down to real cases? The trouble with Foucault, and with this certain kind of theory, arises when it tries to come down to earth. Really, nobody was able to explain to me the importance of his work.

It is a damning judgment of postmodernism that someone of Chomsky’s stature as an intellectual was forced to admit that he found Foucault’s writing impenetrable. And what Chomsky says about the deliberate mystification practiced by the purveyors of academic jargon is accurate. Truth tends to reside in ideas that are simple enough for ordinary people to understand without the tutorial guidance of professors. By writing in opaque jargon, intellectuals create a phony prestige for themselves and their colleagues in academia, who act as a priestly caste, interpreting these “sacred texts” for the students who are indoctrinated with the quasi-religious belief system of the intellectuals.

Anyone who has studied Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity knows that her 1990 book is nearly unreadable, and yet it also consistently ranks among the top sellers at Amazon (#9 in Gender Studies, as of Monday), simply because it is required reading for so many college students. Professor Butler’s fundamental idea can be summarized in a few phrases — the social construction of the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix — but it would require hours to explain what this means, and what logical consequences we can expect from the widespread popularization of this theory. However, Professor Butler certainly understood her own purpose in promoting the “subversion of identity,” i.e., the destruction of “gender,” the abolition of what anthropologists used to call “sex-role differentiation.” Professor Butler, like all feminists, is opposed to what many Christian teachers call the complementarity of male and female, particularly between husbands and wives.

Pull up a chair, and let me explain what I mean. Read more

Category: Intellectuals, Sex Trouble

NBC Fires ‘Today’ Host Matt Lauer

Posted on | November 29, 2017 | 1 Comment

Stunning news:

Matt Lauer, the anchor of “Today” for two decades, was fired by NBC News after a detailed complaint about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.
“Today” co-anchors Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb announced Lauer’s firing Wednesday, telling viewers at the top of the show that they were processing his departure but didn’t yet know all of the details.
In a memo to employees sent Wednesday morning, NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack said the complaint, which was made by a colleague of Lauer’s, prompted a serious review and represented a “clear violation of our company’s standards.”
Lack said it was the first complaint lodged against Lauer, 59, for his behavior since he took over as anchor of the show in 1997, but there was “reason to believe” it may not have been an isolated incident.
“Our highest priority is to create a workplace environment where everyone feels safe and protected, and to ensure that any actions that run counter to our core values are met with consequences, no matter who the offender,” Lack said.

UPDATE: We are now about seven weeks into the Sexual Harassment Apocalypse that began in early October with revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior. As I have explained, the reason this is happening is because Hillary lost and Trump won. The zero-tolerance no-mercy attitude toward male misconduct is a product of feminist rage over Trump’s victory; they cannot destroy him, so they’ll destroy any man within range. The only way to save yourself? Avoid feminists.

Matt Lauer has been terminated from NBC News. On Monday night, we received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer. As a result, we’ve decided to terminate his employment. pic.twitter.com/1A3UAZpvPb

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 29, 2017

Wow, Matt Lauer was just fired from NBC for “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.” But when will the top executives at NBC & Comcast be fired for putting out so much Fake News. Check out Andy Lack’s past!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2017

UPDATE II: Because everybody is now speculating what it was Lauer did, I feel it necessary to share my hunch:

It's not even clear that this is a workplace violation. When I read the NBC statement, I had a hunch: Child pornography? Caught in a law enforcement "sting" operation? Whatever it is, it was serious enough to justify immediate termination… https://t.co/0Cexn0n8f6

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) November 29, 2017

This is only a hunch. When we get breaking news like this, there is always a flood of online speculation, and I don’t want to contribute to that by claiming any special knowledge. However, it is obvious that whatever Lauer did must have been very serious, and possibly criminal.

Category: Celebrities

In The Mailbox: 11.28.17

Posted on | November 28, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.28.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #89
EBL: What Do The Smoke Signals Say?
Twitchy: Guy Benson Nukes Dem Lies About GOP Tax Bill With One Graph, Triggers Dumb-O-Lanche
Louder With Crowder: Joy Reid Goes Full Crybaby, Blames Rural Americans For Getting In The Left’s Way

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Unexamined Repressive Brutality Of Male Feminists
American Thinker: Repealing Obama’s Net Neutrality A Blow For Freedom
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Martian Chronicles News
BattleSwarm: Dear Jason Villalba -Enjoy This Festive Holiday Primary Challenge
Bring The HEAT: Logbooks For SWOs
CDR Salamander: So, What Do You Put In The NLOS Void?
Da Tech Guy: Cokie Roberts Shoots Down The Morning Joe “Old Man Conyers” Narrative, also, The Future Of Journalism?
Don Surber: Proving EducatedHillbilly Correct
Dustbury: Wankers Need Pictures
The Geller Report: ISIS Opens Sex Slave Market In Turkey’s Capitol
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Looking Through Cold Interstellar Dust
Jammie Wearing Fools: Good Riddance To Lena Dunham
Legal Insurrection: Court Sides With Trump In Bitter Battle With CFPB, Fauxcahontas, also, Legal Insurrection Semi-Annual Fundraiser
Power Line: On Pocahontas, Sarah Sanders Gets The Last Word, also, How Democrats Turned On Charles McCullough
Shark Tank: Fant Backs Rubio’s Call For Franken Resignation
Shot In The Dark: The Dumbest Comparison
STUMP: Are Hedge Funds Or Private Equity Investments Appropriate For Public Pension Funds?
The Jawa Report: Use The Force Rey!
The Political Hat: The Transgendering Of Leviathan’s Children
This Ain’t Hell: U.S. District Court Judge Forces DoD To Accept Transgender Troops, also, Homeless Vet Johnny Bobbitt Left Marines After Abbreviated Tour
Weasel Zippers: Navajo Code Talker Not Offended By Trump Calling Warren “Pocahontas”, also, Columbia Sportswear May Close Portland Office After Death Threats, Public Pooping By Homeless
Mark Steyn: The Gay High-Water Mark, also, A World Without Courtship Rituals

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Category: Linkagery

Sex Panic and Its Consequences

Posted on | November 28, 2017 | 1 Comment

The downfall of Harvey Weinstein was fun, and it’s amusing to watch Democrats like John Conyers and Al Franken twisting in the wind. However, the Sexual Harassment Apocalypse looks uncomfortably familiar to those of us old enough to remember the McMartin Preschool story. Christina Hoff Sommers sounds the warning:

In the 1980s, a panic over Satanic abuse in day care centers put many innocent people in prison.
Soon after the Weinstein scandal broke, an anonymously sourced “S—y Media Men” list began circulating on social media. The blacklist accuses more than 70 male journalists of sexual harassment.
But the charges range from “weird lunches” to rape. The informants collapse important distinctions between criminal predation and unwelcome flirtation. The men couldn’t defend themselves — and anyone who tries can be accused of not believing victims, even anonymous ones.
Fortunately, the blacklist received criticism — especially from leftists who pointed out that these tactics can destroy innocent lives. But prominent feminist Jill Filipovic dismissed the scrutiny as “backlash.” Writer Roxane Gay disparaged “all the hand-wringing about …the ethics of anonymous disclosure.” As she explained in the New York Times, American women live in a state of siege. She suggested all men confess to “how they have hurt women in ways great and small.”

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) Feminists hate all men, and want to use these specific revelations of wrongdoing as a general indictment of men as a class, in order to banish males from position of power — in academia, in media, in government, in business. Roxane Gay’s demand for a mass confession of how men “have hurt women in ways great and small” resembles nothing so much as the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930s, or China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s.

Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It, and feminists will not be satisfied until they control all positions of authority everywhere in society. In order to advance their agenda, feminists are deliberately exaggerating the prevalence of workplace harassment, to make it seem ubiquitous. They are conflating minor annoyances — the vaguely “creepy” guy’s awkward flirtation — with such grievous wrongs as those committed by Weinstein and Louis C.K.

Let us not deny that a witch hunt can have beneficial consequences. The period of so-called “McCarthyism” in the early 1950s did result in a heightened public awareness of the (very real) efforts by Communists to subvert our government. Likewise, the Satanic child-abuse panic of the 1980s caused parents to become more vigilant about possibly abusive conditions in day-care centers. However, there is a difference between reasonable caution — a wariness of genuine danger — and paranoia.

Furthermore, we ought to notice how many of the men now accused of harassment and even sexual assault are “progressives,” including liberal journalists and Democrat politicians previously considered allies of the feminist movement. Genderqueer feminist Laurie Penny says she has been flooded with inquiries from her left-wing male associates, worried if their own past transgressions might be exposed, and also wondering how — or even if — they will ever get laid again in the future.

Good. We should be glad that these guys are worried. Many decades of reckless promiscuity, going back at least as far as the late 1960s, have lowered our society’s moral standards. (Obligatory reminder that I was a Democrat in my youth.) As bad as a witch-hunt sex panic may be, we seem to require an occasional fit of hysteria, just to remind everybody of what happens when we descend into hedonistic anarchy.

Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 11.27.17

Posted on | November 27, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.27.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Iron Bowl 2017
Twitchy: Keith Olbermann Has Nothing Left To Say, Retires From Political Punditry
Louder With Crowder: Amazon’s Alexa Is A Crazy SJW Liberal!
Based Mom: A Panic Is Not an Answer (h/t Esteemed Associate Member of the Commentariat NeoWayland)

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: COTW – What Are These “Judeo-Christian Values” Of Which You Speak?
American Power: Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters Crowned Miss Universe 2017, also, In Greenwich And Manhattan, Tax Hike Fears Spur Talk Of Exodus
American Thinker: Bill Clinton And The “Lolita Express”
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
BattleSwarm: Sh0eOnHead – Feminists Freaking Out Over Makeup-Stripping App
BLACKFIVE: Book Review & Q/A – Mindhunter
Bring The HEAT: RIP Colonel Wesley Fox, also, Women In The Infantry
CDR Salamander: Odds Are, The Unmanned Military You’re Thinking Of Isn’t The One You’ll Face
Da Tech Guy: Ephemera Vs. Evidence, also, There’s More Than One Way To Purge
Don Surber: Sorry CNN, But Trump is Absolutely Right About You Liars, also, Mining Up 28.6% – In A Single Quarter
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, also, Antisocial Strata
The Geller Report: Top Honors! American Blogger Pamela Geller Named World’s Top Islamophobe, also, French Postal Service Refuses To Deliver In Muslim Migrant No-Go Zones
Hogewash: Yours Truly, Johnny Atsign, also, Mainstream Media News, also also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
Jammie Wearing Fools: Democrat Pollster Says GOP Is “Domestic Terror Group”
Joe For America: One-Third Of Arrested MS-13 Gangsters Were Part of Obama’s “Unaccompanied Alien Children” Policy
JustOneMinute: False Accusations & Horrible Behavior
Legal Insurrection: CFPB General Counsel Disagrees With Fauxcahontas On Agency Head Replacement, also, 2020 Democratic Primaries Will Be A Stampede – Bernie Sanders The Early Favorite
Power Line: The Millennial Job Interview, also, The Left Clings To Power At The CFPB
Shark Tank: Rubio Thinks Franken Should Resign From The Senate
Shot In The Dark: “But Why, Oh Why, Do People Say The Strib Is The DFL’s PR Firm?”
STUMP: Kentucky Pension Brou-Ha-Ha – Updating Current State Of Play
The Jawa Report: London Panic, also, Sandcrawler PSA – If At First You Don’t Succeed
The Political Hat: The Communist Beacon
This Ain’t Hell: $35 Million – The Cost of Integration, also, Surplus 1911s At The CMP?
Weasel Zippers: Nurse Loses Job Over Post Saying White Womens’ Sons Should Be “Sacrificed”, also, Denzel Washington On Young Men Ending Up In Jail
Megan McArdle: The CFPB Fight Is Completely Pointless
Mark Steyn: The End Justifies The Pants-Dropping, also, Murder On The Orient Express

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Category: Linkagery

Check Me Here, @RooshV: Is Your Sexuality ‘Ugly … Dangerous … Brutal’?

Posted on | November 27, 2017 | 3 Comments

Readers may or may not be familiar with Daryush Valizadeh, the notorious pickup artist (PUA) known as @RooshV. He became the World’s Most Famous Misogynist in the wake of the Isla Vista Massacre because The Creepy Little Weirdo who committed that atrocity had frequented some PUA forums. This was a dishonest guilt-by-association smear. Maybe you would call Roosh a lady killer, but he’s not that kind of lady killer. At any rate, I name-checked Roosh in the headline because I’d like to get his reaction to a New York Times column by Stephen Marche:

After weeks of continuously unfolding abuse scandals, men have become, quite literally, unbelievable. What any given man might say about gender politics and how he treats women are separate and unrelated phenomena. Liberal or conservative, feminist or chauvinist, woke or benighted, young or old, found on Fox News or in The New Republic, a man’s stated opinions have next to no relationship to behavior.
Through sheer bulk, the string of revelations about men from Bill Cosby to Roger Ailes to Harvey Weinstein to Louis C.K. to Al Franken and, this week, to Charlie Rose and John Lasseter, have forced men to confront what they hate to think about most: the nature of men in general. This time the accusations aren’t against some freak geography teacher, some frat running amok in a Southern college town. They’re against men of all different varieties, in different industries, with different sensibilities, bound together, solely, by the grotesquerie of their sexuality.
Men arrive at this moment of reckoning woefully unprepared. Most are shocked by the reality of women’s lived experience. Almost all are uninterested or unwilling to grapple with the problem at the heart of all this: the often ugly and dangerous nature of the male libido.
For most of history, we’ve taken for granted the implicit brutality of male sexuality. . . .

(Via Memeorandum.) Is this masochistic self-flagellation necessary? Is it really true that, because of what we’ve learned about Weinstein, et al., men are now “forced” to admit that their sexuality is “ugly and dangerous”? Are all men perpetrators of “implicit brutality”?

Certainly, I disagree, and I think Roosh’s opinion is relevant here. As a conservative Christian, I cannot be accused of condoning PUA activity, but if you’re willing to set aside your moral disapproval of promiscuity, PUA discourse offers valuable insight for understanding sexual behavior in the age of casual hookups, “friends with benefits,” etc.

If a young man is an amoral hedonist, how can he maximize his opportunities for sexual pleasure? This is what PUA discourse is about. As a researcher, it is interesting to take a break from my deep exploration of radical feminism and see what “Red Pill” guys are saying. Radical feminists are man-haters whose doctrine is anti-heterosexual, per se. Thus PUA discourse — the point of which is, “How can guys get laid?” — is 180-degrees opposite of feminism, the point of which is that it wrong for men to get laid. (“PIV is always rape, OK?”)

What is impossible for me to understand is how someone like Stephen Marche — married, a father of two, and presumably heterosexual — can describe his own sexuality as one of “implicit brutality,” except that he has internalized the anti-male worldview of radical feminism. It is true that some men are bad all the time (Harvey Weinstein) and perhaps every man has his bad moments. However, it is not true that all men are bad all the time, which is what feminists believe. One notices that feminists usually insert qualifiers or disclaimers into their anti-male rhetoric, so as to give themselves plausible deniability when someone accuses them of being the man-hating monsters they actually are. Yet anyone with two eyes and a brain can see that Jessica Valenti (to use one prominent example) is profoundly convinced that all men are inferior to her. Valenti takes delight in scornfully mocking men. The whole point of Valenti’s book Sex Object was to humiliate her Beta male husband by publicly boasting about her premarital sex life with various Alphas.

If all women were as wicked as Jessica Valenti, it would be difficult to disagree with the misogynistic attitudes typically expressed by PUAs. Feminists take a perverse pride in treating men badly. They deride men as “clueless” and brag about their ability to reduce men to tears, and take especial pleasure in describing the “unwanted advances” of men they don’t find attractive. Of course, it is very difficult for a man to know whether his sexual interest in a woman is reciprocated until he expresses this interest in some overt way. Yet feminists enjoy calling men “creeps” for daring to indicate interest in them, and even claim to be “victimized” by the most innocent gestures of flirtation. In an earlier era, a college boy had to be able to cope with rejection if a girl turned him down, but that emotional pain was a minor consideration compared to what boys face now that feminists have taken over universities. Nowadays, many boys are afraid even to speak to a girl on campus, lest they be accused of “harassment” and subjected to punishment in a Title IX kangaroo court.

Feminism presents men with two options:

Damned if you do;
and
Damned if you don’t.

Everything men say or do is wrong, according to feminists, who never met a man they couldn’t find a reason to hate. This is why my advice to young men is, “Never talk to a feminist.” But I digress . . .

Daryush Valizadeh would never denounce himself for being a heterosexual male the way Stephen Marche did. Say what you will about PUAs, but from Roosh’s perspective, there is no shame in his game, i.e., figuring out what it takes to “score,” and then doing it successfully.

One of my favorite moments of last year was when “genderqueer” feminist Laurie Penny went to an event at the RNC and found herself in the same room with the notorious PUA. Penny was forced to admit that “Roosh is tall and well-built and actually rather good-looking.”

This ought to tell us something about why Stephen Marche is wrong to denounce the “implicit brutality” of male sexuality. Why do women invariably prefer tall, muscular guys? That even a Third-Wave genderqueer like Penny was unable to deny Valizadeh’s attractiveness (you know he could have had her, if he had really wanted her) is evidence that there is something in women’s nature that likes such “brutality.”

Oh, sure, feminists say they want “sensitive” guys, but you don’t see them chasing after 5-foot-4 nerds, do you? Of course not. They want the tall, swarthy guy with broad shoulders and thick biceps — physically overpowering — and maybe some “brutality” isn’t necessarily bad.

Roosh knows there is a huge difference between what women actually want and what feminists say women want. This was what was revealed, after all, in reading between the lines of Jessica Valenti’s Sex Object. There was Jack, the 20-year-old bodybuilder she slept with when she was 16: “the most beautiful guy I had seen up close . . . all muscles and smiles . . . six foot three and chiseled.” And there was well-hung Kyle, her abusive boyfriend at Tulane. Tall guys with big muscles and big penises — even a feminist enjoys that kind of “brutality.”

None of those guys wanted to marry her, of course, and so she eventually married a Harvard nerd five years younger than her, and hates him:

Every time I see a dirty cup on the kitchen counter, my face gets red. The level of disrespect feels . . . as if Andrew has hopped on the counter, pulled down his pants, and taken a sh– there for me to clean up. My husband is lovely. He is a feminist. . . .
He tells me to leave the cups on the counter and the socks on the floor. He’ll get to them eventually. But I can’t. I don’t believe him. And I can’t write in a house where something is wrong.?. . .
Andrew and I have been going to couple’s therapy, both for my anxiety and because Andrew is so mad at the space the anxiety takes up in our relationship. Our default mood is low-level annoyance toward each other with a propensity to turn into full-blown rage at the smallest thing. . . .
I feel like I might hate him and I suspect he feels the same.

You see? There’s no winning this game. Valenti praises her husband as “lovely . . . a feminist,” even while admitting she hates him. No man’s behavior is ever acceptable by feminist standards. Whatever the feminist is unhappy about, it is never her fault. Always, men are to blame, either generally (“the patriarchy”) or specifically (Jessica Valenti’s husband).

What does Roosh think of this? It would be interesting to see his take on Stephen Marche’s column, and I hope to see his reaction soon.

Category: Sex Trouble

Rule 5 Sunday: The Treasury Secretary’s Wife

Posted on | November 26, 2017 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

A few weeks ago, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and his wife, ex-actress Louise Linton, had a photo taken with a freshly printed sheet of dollar bills. Autistic screeching from the press ensued, as it does whenever someone from the Administration so much as farts, but I thought the fuss over the hashtags was (as usual) blown out of proportion.

I thought she looked pretty hot, myself.

Anyhow, Mrs. Mnuchin had a short career as an actress and model before meeting Secretary Mnuchin, and did a photoshoot for Maxim. Not bad for 36, I daresay. As usual, many of the following links are to pics generally considered NSFW, and the management is not responsible for any unpleasantness arising from your failure to click with discretion, including (but not limited to) Congressional investigations into misuse of government aircraft, penalties for early withdrawal, fines for insufficient estimated tax payment, and bad Muzak in the waiting room.

Actually a lawyer.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny serves up Hot Pick Of The Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #83, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns; Animal Magnetism adds Rule Five Clinton Cash Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL’s herd of heifers this week includes Aurora Perrineau, Sharon Tate, Rashida Jones, Eiza Gonzalez, Lily James, Thanksgiving Rule 5, Scent Of A Woman – Tango, Black Friday Babes, Christina Hendricks, Katie Cassidy, Motorboating Branson, and Iron Bowl 2017.

A View From The Beach brings us What a Sucker, Nina Dobrev, I’ll Have Fries With That, Friday From the Philippines, Happy Thanksgiving!, The Self-Destruction of Hollywood Continues, Hollywood Victim du Jour, Politicians Make Passes at Girls Without Glasses, Lena Dunham Stands by Her Man, RIP: Malcom Young and I May Just Live Forever.

Proof Positive’s Ladies With Leftovers include Friday Night Babes Maria Bello and Leeann Tweeden,Vintage Babes Priscilla Lane and various Pilgrim chicks, and Leeann Tweeden doing Sex in Advertising in nothing but beercaps; also, Victoria’s Secret. At Dustbury, it’s Della Reese and Deepika Padukone.

Thanks to everyone for the delicious linkagery!

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Category: Rule 5