The Other McCain

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

The Death of a ‘Dianic High Priestess’

Posted on | October 1, 2016 | 3 Comments

“Wicca refers to the practice of European paganism popular throughout Europe and North America. . . . Dianic Wicca refers to a more radical women-only practice, named for the Goddess Diana. The novels of Marion Zimmer Bradley have been influential for Dianic Wiccans . . .”
— Meredith Miller, “Dianic Wicca,” in Historical Dictionary of Lesbian Literature (2006)

“Dianic Wicca is quite nearly a synonym for ‘lesbian paganism’ or ‘feminist witchcraft.’ It was founded by a crazy Hungarian-born woman known as Zsuzsanna Budapest who became a feminist, divorced her husband, abandoned her two sons and turned lesbian.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Son Describes Abuse by Feminist Pagan Fiction Author,” 2014

“I am a 56 year old Dyke Leather witch. … I am a member of the National Leather Association-Dallas. … I hold the titles of Ms. National Leather Association-International 1994 and Ms. Texas Leather Pride 1993.”
— Artemis Silverowl, 2013

“Gee, Stacy, where do you find this stuff?” People ask me this question whenever I stumble onto one of those really weird stories from the bizarre fringes of feminism, but really, isn’t feminism just one big weird pile of bizarre fringes? Still, sometimes my research turns up something so genuinely strange that even I am impressed by its weirdness, as was the case today when I found the 2013 obituary of an esteemed member of the Dallas chapter of the National Leather Association:

 

Last week the tragic news of the untimely death of Artemis Silverowl rocked both the Women’s and Leather communities. Artemis was a long time member of both, beginning in the early days of the “feminist wars in the 70s” . . . She leaves behind her fiancée, Denice, members of her Leather Families, and hundreds of other Leathermen and Leatherwomen.
To quote her own words from her bios, “I have been an out Dyke since 1975 and an OUT Leather woman since 1976. I came out as a dyke at the age of 18 years old and I came out as a leather woman at the age of 19 years old.”
A “Yankee” by birth, she was born in Massachusetts and began her involvement with the Dallas Leather in 1991. She served as the female co-chair of NLA-Dallas from 1992–1994 and was a member of the Beyond Vanilla Committee during the same period of time. . . .
In her profile, Artemis she wrote, “I firmly believe that the future growth and survival of the Bd/Sm/Leather/Fetish community depends upon coalition building, tolerance, integrity and service. We must become adept at respecting our differences while building bridges for our common good.” . . .
Artemis was also a Dianic High Priestess and member of the Wiccan community. Dianic Wicca, sometimes known as “feminist Wicca,” began in the 1970s as an outgrowth of both the feminist and “new age” movements. It worships Diana, the daughter of Jupiter and Latona, and the twin sister of Apollo. She was the Roman goddess of the hunt, wildlife, wilderness, childbirth, lakes and streams, roads and harbors, and the moon. She was also the goddess of protection of women and children. Dianic Wicca celebrates the feminine aspect of the divine and the aspect of the ”divine feminine.”

“Artemis Silverowl” was actually Cynthia Babbitt, the daughter of Fred and Doris Babbitt of Worcester, Massachusetts. “Silverowl”/Babbitt was an employee of the University of Texas-Austin, and her “life partner” Denice Wong was also evidently known as “La Lioness” in the Dallas “leather community.” There was a memorial service for “Silverowl”:

The memorial, held at the Interfaith Chapel of the Cathedral of Hope and attended by over one hundred people, included an honor guard which presented the gay pride and Leather pride flags. Artemis’ boots, vest and cover, along with a photograph of her, were displayed at the front of the chapel. The Honor Guard consisted of Sir Lacey, Terrie Anderson, Master Mack, Master Gator, Fred A., and Raven.
The service was officiated by koneko and paid tribute to Artemis’ Wiccan faith. Artemis’ fiancee, La Lioness, as well as long time friends Jim Richards, Hardy Haberman and Master Lanie, remembered Artemis as a strong, courageous and loving woman.

The tribute to “Silverowl”/Babbitt by “La Lioness”/Wong:

I’ll never resign myself to having lost you. I know that we shall meet again and continue with a new chapter in our book of life.
Artemis I know you loved me and that you never meant to hurt me. Your absence makes it difficult to breathe.
I understand now the significance of your final destination. The river from which you came has reclaimed you to heal you emptiness, loneliness and brokenness. I now know that you had to go because this was not a place for a soul a like yours.
The life and love that we shared flows to be depths of our souls. I am a better person because of the unconditional love that we shared and the spirit of forgiveness that blossomed within our relationship.

What more can we say about Cynthia “Artemis Silverowl” Babbitt, “Dianic High Priestess and member of the Wiccan community”? Perhaps it would be appropriate to quote her own self-description:

“I am a decidedly butch woman.
I am an alpha slave who identifies as a boy. …
I am a switch and I am a pansexual player.”

A fitting epitaph for the “Dyke Leather witch” who believed in “the future growth and survival of the Bd/Sm/Leather/Fetish community.”

 

+ + + + +

Feminism is about weird people and bizarre ideas. Readers who wish to express gratitude for my service in finding this strange tale should remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!




 

The Sex Trouble project has been supported by contributions from readers. The first edition of Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the War on Human Nature is available from Amazon.com, $11.96 in paperback or $1.99 in Kindle ebook format.

 


Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox, 09.30.16

Posted on | September 30, 2016 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox, 09.30.16

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Proof Positive: Captain America Vs. Hillary
EBL: Evan Rachel Wood Westworld Rule 5
Twitchy: Ted SMASH Hulk! Senator Cruz Slaps Back At Actor Mark Ruffalo
Louder With Crowder: YouTuber Mercilessly Mocks Hillary’s Insincerity, And It’s PERFECT


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #20 – The Run Guts Pull Cones Episode
American Power: Hedge Funds Short Deutsche Bank
American Thinker: Hill On Bill’s Women – “We Reached Out To Them”
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Space Invaders Friday
Da Tech Guy: Hyde Amendment Turns 40, Much To Hillary’s Annoyance
Don Surber: Hillary Leads Among College Graduates Earning Less Than $35K
Dustbury: Quote Of The Week
Jammie Wearing Fools: The Media’s Not Even Pretending To Be “Objective” About Trump
Joe For America: Guess What’s Happening To The NFL Three Weeks After Anthem Protests?
JustOneMinute: Waddya Mean “Democrats”, You Corporate Stooge?
Pamela Geller: Clinton Names Merkel As Her Favorite World Leader
Power Line: FBI Director Comey Claims “I Am Not A Weasel”
Shark Tank: Zika Virus Funding Could Fall Prey To Federal Bureaucrats’ Red Tape
Shot In The Dark: Return Of The DFL Dictionary
STUMP: Public Pensions Primer – Intergenerational Equity
The Jawa Report: Shocking News! Mateen Lied To FBI But Wasn’t Charged
The Political Hat: When The Republic Is Over
The Quinton Report:
This Ain’t Hell: Hillary Clinton And Alicia Machado – The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Getaway Car, also, Wait Lines To Get Out Of VA
Weasel Zippers: Gary Johnson Asks “Who’s Harriet Tubman?”, also, Effort To Deligitimize Judicial Watch As Media Comes Straight From The White House
Megan McArdle: The Economics Of Dining As A Couple


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Today’s Open-Box And Pre-Owned Item Deals
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Category: Linkagery

Feed Her Majesty To Her Master, Cthulhu? Sure. Prosecute Her? Not Wise.

Posted on | September 30, 2016 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

Category: Hillary Clinton

In Defense of William F. Buckley Jr.

Posted on | September 30, 2016 | Comments Off on In Defense of William F. Buckley Jr.

“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.”
– William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)

Never trust anyone who speaks ill of their own parents. Probably everyone goes through that adolescent phase of thinking their parents are idiots, but mature reflection — when we understand the difficulties of adult life, and have become parents ourselves — ought to temper our judgment, and curb any temptation to criticize our elders. Furthermore, people who malign their own parents are in essence testifying against themselves. “The nut doesn’t fall far from the tree,” after all, and if your parents were such awful people, what should we expect from you?

In 2009, Christopher Buckley published in the New York Times some anecdotes about his late father, William F. Buckley Jr., that were not entirely flattering. Among other things, Buckley the Younger accused his father of hogging the TV remote and changing channels at a whim. “If it were so, it was a grievous fault. And grievously hath Caesar answered it.”

Now, I rise to speak in defense of William F. Buckley Jr. not only because I might also be guilty of hogging the remote — “my remote,” as I call it — nor even to remind my own children of their duty of filial piety, although these are certainly important considerations. God forbid that, after I’m mouldering in the grave, any of my numerous progeny should think to profit by badmouthing me in print, as Christopher Buckley has done to his deceased father. Oh, sure, perhaps it wasn’t malice that inspired Buckley the Younger to tell these tales about the Old Man, but great reputations can be undermined as much by carelessness as by spite, because who knows what use a man’s enemies might make of the discovery that, e.g., the deceased Great Man hogged the TV remote?

To see how this works, examine “William F Buckley — A Case Study In Narcissistic Personality Disorder” by The Anonymous Conservative, who makes of Buckley’s remote-hogging a symptom of psychiatric illness and/or bad character. It would perhaps suffice to discredit this claim to point out that the anonymous author uses the phrase “the Cuckservative Establishment,” and asserts:

Conservatism is merely an expression of the K-selected psychology. It is invigorated by the disasters produced by liberalism, as the horrors liberals cultivate have their effects on the minds of the populace. Nobody can create it through positivity, any more than you can create a high tide with a water pump. You can massage things at the edges, humiliate a liberal here and there, even hold the line on one issue or another with subtle threats of force in places, as with guns, but in the grander scheme, r and K are like the tides.

What fresh Hell is this? For those unfamiliar with the subject of population demographics, let me offer this brief bit from Wikipedia:

In ecology, r/K selection theory relates to the selection of combinations of traits in an organism that trade off between quantity and quality of offspring. The focus upon either increased quantity of offspring at the expense of individual parental investment in r-strategists, or reduced quantity of offspring with a corresponding increased parental investment in K-strategists, varies widely, seemingly to promote success in particular environments.
The terminology of r/K-selection was coined by the ecologists Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson based on their work on island biogeography; although the concept of the evolution of life history strategies has a longer history.

E.O. Wilson and “sociobiology” have exercised an influence among certain secular (or as they would call themselves, “scientific”) conservatives, who wish to marshal Darwinism in support of various ideas that liberals generally dismiss as falling into the category of “racism.” My own experience of being hate-listed by the SPLC for daring to treat these subjects as worthy of inquiry should suffice to prove that I am no “Establishment cuckservative” fearful of liberal disapproval, nor am I prone to retreat from any defensible truth. However, I am also skeptical of speculative theory, which is what Darwinism is, as it goes beyond the facts of nature to imagine a remote past in which random accidents accumulated into “progress” that led pond scum to become something more than pond scum. At any rate, while “r/K selection theory” might be a useful tool with which to explain various natural phenomena, I hesitate to endorse how The Anonymous Conservative has taken the ball and run with it as “The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics”:

As the images flowed through my brain, I saw one side, brave, strong, and honorable, the other, groveling, weak, and pathetic. The presence of one side enhanced the fitness of the population, while the persistence of the other deteriorated it. One was genuinely good and created magnificence, and one was not. The daring and the cowards. The patriots and the traitors. The Warrior and the Hippie. The Capitalist and the Communist. The stoic NRA member, and the easily frightened and insecure anti-gun pussy. The Marine, and the Womyn’s studies major at UC Berkeley. Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals. Complexity in adaptation and a devolved simplistic fecundity. Evolution and Devolution. The production of a great society, and the decline into chaos of a collapsing society. It all made sense. I thought back to the microbes, and the conditions which produced them, thought of r/K theory, and all of this was borne in my mind.

As I say, fear of liberal disapproval plays no part in my work, and insofar as this application of “r/K” actually contains truth, I would defend it. Yet employing this as a pretext to attack the reputation of the late William F. Buckley Jr. leads to rather bizarre claims:

People like Buckley only slow the ascent of conservatism, by trying to demonize the leading edge of the movement on behalf of their mentally damaged fellow travelers on the left. Driven by the urge to assuage their own fears of not being in control of the flow of events, they are seeking one thing. If they are not in control, someone else must be, and that someone else must be the smart person.
Notice the analogies between the narcissist’s behavior, and that of the modern Cuckservative right. People are happy in America. Things are good. What do the Cucks innocently support? Importing floods of 69 IQ foreigners into the nation, who have no hope of ever assimilating. Importing people who cannot create even a semblance of freedom in their home countries, let alone protect it from leftists here. People who come from cultures where nepotism and corruption are so endemic to their culture that even if the US artificially imposes democracy and freedom in their home nation, they have no ability to maintain it themselves. People who come to the US in search of free resources, provided by government. People who vote by margins of 70 or 80% for the liberal’s promises of free resources provided through theft from the productive. People who kill innocent Americans and destroy the nation’s unity through divisions of language, and culture, and moral philosophy.

No one can accuse me of wanting to import “floods of 69 IQ foreigners into the nation,” etc., and I’m quite sure William F. Buckley Jr. never supported any such scheme. The question of how to fix our broken immigration “policy” (which in truth is no policy at all) has bedeviled the conservative movement for the past 30 years. The Right seems to be caught between (a) rank-and-file opposition to open borders, (b) the Chamber of Commerce crowd’s appetite for cheap labor, (c) sentimental fools who get all misty-eyed while quoting Emma Lazarus and invoking their great-grandfather’s arrival at Ellis Island, and (d) the Republican Party’s predictable cowardice when accused of “racism.”

As someone who has spent more than two decades in conversation with leading minds of the Right — including the so-called “alt-Right,” some of whom owe me personal favors, and vice-versa — I abhor the kind of internecine warfare that goes on between various factions of the conservative movement. Years ago, I started joking that I should write a history of these conflicts which I proposed to entitle First, They Came for Mel Bradford. If you don’t get that joke, I won’t bother you with an explanation of how Bradford’s appointment to a position in the Reagan administration was sabotaged with the assistance of George F. Will, among others. Nor will I explain why in recent months I’ve thought of an imaginary sequel to that story that I propose to title Sam Francis Could Not Be Reached for Comment. In the seemingly interminable wars between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives, the neocons have engaged in a lot of dishonorable backstabbing to gain and maintain their predominant influence within the GOP, while the paleocons have engaged in too many self-defeating tactical blunders. Rather than to rehash all these ancient grievances, however, my purpose here is to defend Buckley’s reputation against the preposterous accusation that he “slow[ed] the ascent of conservatism.” Most of Buckley’s peers and comrades — including people I had the opportunity to know, like M. Stanton Evans, Paul Weyrich and Phyllis Schlafly — have joined him in the Great Beyond, so that they are unavailable to testify in his defense. Therefore, I will attempt briefly to rescue Buckley’s good name from the posthumous smear of being an “Establishment cuckservative.”

The modern American conservative movement began in the 1940s in reaction to (a) FDR’s New Deal and (b) the threat of Soviet Communism. These were separate dangers that were nevertheless in some way related, given how the Alger Hiss case exposed the way Soviet agents had penetrated the federal government during Roosevelt’s presidency. We could recite a long roster of names — inter alia, Owen Lattimore, Harry Dexter White and Henry Wallace — to explain why what liberals called “McCarthyism” arose in the late 1940s and early ’50s. William F. Buckley Jr.’s first contribution to the anti-Communist cause was his 1951 book God and Man at Yale, which exposed how this Ivy League institution, generally believed to be a bastion of conservatism, was in fact well on its way to becoming quite the opposite. Buckley (helped by his mentors, Willmoore Kendall and Frank Chodorov) demonstrated that Yale was betraying its original commitment to Christianity, and was also promoting left-wing political and economic ideas. Buckley did not claim that Yale was being taken over by godless Communists, but he did show that the university was failing to teach students how and why they should oppose godless Communism. Probably no book in the 20th century caused quite as much of a firestorm as did God and Man at Yale.

Buckley was accused of being a crypto-fascist and his book was metaphorically compared (by Frank Ashburn in the Saturday Review) to the burning cross at a Klan rally. Despite this vilification, Buckley had truth on his side and, as we look back across the span of more than six decades, the accuracy of his assessment is all the more remarkable. Now that Yale actually is being run by godless Commies, we can point to Buckley’s timeless classic and say, “See? We told you so.”

It was not Buckley’s intention to make himself the leader of a movement, but what happened was that the movement’s demand for leadership more or less required Buckley to step into that role. While there were many great minds at work in the project of crafting an intellectual response to the challenges facing America in the 1950s, no one else had the distinct combination of traits that Buckley brought to his job as founder of National Review. On the one hand, Buckley was full of the youthful impudence necessary to mock the reigning pieties of liberalism, while at the same time he had a profound reverence toward traditional values of faith, freedom and family. At a time when Republicans were embracing the moderate “go-along-to-get-along” attitudes of the Eisenhower administration, Buckley and National Review stood for a real system of conservative principles. Buckley’s conservatism included (but was not limited to) opposition to the Welfare State in domestic policy, and an unflinching hostility toward Communism. However, as we look back on that era, we must remember how the grand drama of the Cold War overshadowed every other consideration in American politics. Probably no one under age 40 today has any notion of the seriousness of the Soviet menace and what a tremendous feat it was for Buckley and others to organize the West’s victorious strategy in that historic contest.

Let it be said that I may here be giving Buckley too much credit for his role as de facto intellectual leader of the conservative movement that ultimately elected Ronald Reagan president and, in consequence, forced the collapse of the Soviet Union’s “Evil Empire.” Knowing that many other people contributed to that success, and not wishing to diminish the role of others by exaggerating Buckley’s eminence, still I feel the greater danger is in not giving Buckley enough credit for what he did.

Too easily do the young forget what their ancestors accomplished, succumbing to the belief that historic events were somehow inevitable. However, as Ronald Reagan famously said, “I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.” Confronted with the crisis of the late 20th century, Buckley was not content to do nothing, and if it is wrong to give him too much credit for the success of the conservative movement, so would it be wrong to blame Buckley too much for the movement’s failures over the past 25 years. Certainly there are legitimate grounds on which to criticize Buckley. No one in public life is exempt from criticism, but when the subject is someone so directly involved with a historic success, it behooves us not to be nitpicky about their faults and errors. Never will I forget that night in 1989 when I watched live on CNN what seemed to me a miracle — the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event that answered the prayers of many millions of freedom-loving people around the world.

 

How much credit does William F. Buckley Jr. deserve for the success of the conservative movement that rallied Americans to stand firm against Communism, to elect Ronald Reagan and support his anti-Soviet strategy, and thus to lead America to victory in the Cold War? However you answer that question, you cannot say Buckley’s contribution was minor, and I think everyone who loves liberty owes a certain debt to the man who once dared to stand athwart history, yelling Stop.

Now shut up, you kids, and hand me back my remote.




 

Category: Conservatism 101, History

Murder City, U.S.A.: Chicago Has More Murders Than L.A. and N.Y.C. Combined

Posted on | September 30, 2016 | Comments Off on Murder City, U.S.A.: Chicago Has More Murders Than L.A. and N.Y.C. Combined

The Associated Press:

Malik Causey was one of 91 homicide victims in Chicago in August, the deadliest month in the city in two decades and the latest milestone for a metropolis becoming known for its murder rate. Already, killings here have jumped 46 percent over the same period last year, climbing past the 500 mark — a total larger than Los Angeles and New York combined.
An analysis of the August toll shows more clearly than ever who’s dying in the Chicago slaughter and what’s behind it: surging violence in a handful of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods, which are riven by loosely organized street gangs.
Young African-American men are the chief victims. In a city that’s one-third black, the overwhelming majority of those murdered in August — 71 — were, like Malik, African American. Another 11 had Hispanic surnames. Almost half were in their teens or early 20s.
And more than 70 percent of those shot to death appeared on the Chicago police’s “Strategic Subject List,” which includes 1,400 people considered likely targets of violence based on gang involvement or criminal record.

(Via Memeorandum.) Read Heather Mac Donald’s The War on Cops to understand how “Black Lives Matter” is complicit in this problem.

 

Category: Chicago, Crime

In The Mailbox: 09.29.16

Posted on | September 29, 2016 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.29.16

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Hoboken NJ Transit Train Crash
Twitchy: Man Attempts To Steal Trump Sign, Gets Shocking Surprise
Louder With Crowder: Ted Cruz Nails DHS For Accepting Refugees Based On “Their Word Alone”


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Entire Australian State Loses Power Grid
American Power: Angelo Codevilla, The Ruling Class
American Thinker: How Opiates Devastated The Heartland
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily News
Da Tech Guy: JD Rucker – Government Should Defend Our Flank And Let Us Make Things Happen
Don Surber: NYT Sour Grapes In Ohio After Trump Leads, also, Instapundit Suspends Twitter
Dustbury: Such A Different Deal
Fred On Everything: Undocumented Shopping – Legacy Of An African President
Jammie Wearing Fools: Washington Mall Terrorist Wasn’t American Citizen, Still Voted Three Times
Joe For America: Chelsea Blunders, Admits Hillary Will Give Illegals Obamacare
JustOneMinute: Beware The Demagogues On Crime!
Pamela Geller: Obama – I Won’t Say Islamic Terrorism
Power Line: GOP Leaders Set To Rubber-Stamp Obama’s Internet Giveaway
Shark Tank: Is Arizona About To Get High? The Prospects For Proposition 205
Shot In The Dark: La Generalissima
The Jawa Report: Fatwa This! Just Asking For It Edition
The Political Hat: Cleanlines Is Next To Sharia
This Ain’t Hell: Drip, Drip, Drip – 615 More U.S. Troops To Iraq, also, NJ Politics And Valor Thieves
Weasel Zippers: CA Governor Signs Bill Allowing Felons To Vote From Prison Cells, also, More Dead People Voting, This Time In Virginia
Megan McArdle: Pensions Fly Only If You Believe They Can


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Category: Linkagery

Blame the Patriarchy!

Posted on | September 29, 2016 | 2 Comments

The core myth of feminism is that women — yes, all women — are victims of oppression under patriarchy, an unjust and tyrannical system in which all men participate and from which all men benefit. This claim of patriarchal oppression is used to justify the anti-male agenda of feminists who insist that every male is to blame for the injustice that all women suffer. Perhaps someone should explain this to William Marotta:

A Kansas sperm donor caught in the middle of a child support case says he wanted to help a lesbian couple when he made the donation nearly five years ago.
Instead, he may end up paying for his action.
A judge ruled that William Marotta must pay child support, even though he says he signed documents waiving his parental rights.
Shawnee County District Court Judge Mary Mattivi said [in January 2014] that Marotta failed to conform to Kansas law, which says a licensed physician must be involved in an artificial insemination process, court documents show.
The documents show that the lesbian couple whom Marotta helped conceive a child say they performed the artificial insemination procedure at home.
This story begins on Craigslist in March 2009. That was when Marotta noticed an advertisement from the Topeka couple, seeking donated sperm.
“Intrigued” by the ad, he says, he delivered three cupfuls of his sperm — gratis — to the women.
One of the women gave birth to a daughter in December 2009, according to court documents.
“I donated genetic material, and that was it for me,” he told CNN affiliate WIBW.
Or so he thought. That changed when the parents separated and one of the women stopped working because of illness and applied to the state for help, he said. The state contacted Marotta for child support.

If indeed our society were prejudiced in favor of males, as feminists insist, would such a ruling be possible? Here is Marotta agreeing to do these women a favor, and his “reward” is to be forced to fork over money for the support of this child, over which he exercises no parental rights, because (a) they deceived him about the legal status of their contractual agreement, (b) they couldn’t keep their relationship together, (c) one of them quit her job, and (d) the courts are in fact prejudiced against males.

A very similar case in England forced Andy Bathie to pay support for a child because he agreed to act as sperm donor for a lesbian couple who split up after the baby arrived. What you discover, once you clear away the propaganda, is that feminism’s claims of women’s perpetual victimhood function as a ready-made excuse to exempt women from responsibility for their own choices, shifting all the blame (and all the costs) for women’s problems onto men, collectively. In this way, men are compelled to subsidize failure, and blamed for situations over which they exercised no control: “Oh, look, a woman has blundered herself into a catastrophic failure — we must find a man to blame for this!”




 

Category: Sex Trouble

Campus Insanity: Why Does Claremont Need a ‘Queer Resource Center’?

Posted on | September 29, 2016 | 3 Comments

 

In a review of protests last year on the campus of the Claremont Colleges (which include Scripps, Pomona, Pitzer, Harvey Mudd and Claremont McKenna), I was intrigued by something in this story:

“We need to be less afraid of being called racists, classists, and ableists, and more afraid of actually being those things,” lamented one student at Scripps College’s BeHeard Forum. The subject we had gathered to discuss was Silencing and Tone Policing — two phrases I had never heard until the week prior, when several Facebook comment wars exploded over supposed racialized and transphobic event titles, descriptions, and surveys. People’s actions and intentions soon became irrelevant because only language, and those who got to wield it, mattered.
Such encounters do not come as a surprise. We live in a time when extreme political correctness and campus movements — started mostly by minority students in an effort to silence any speech that they find hurtful or offensive — are raging across the country. The BeHeard Forum, intended to be a forum for resolving differences, quickly became an opportunity for people identifying as “victims” to complain about their pain and suffering while stifling constructive discourse concerning what constitutes appropriate campus debate. The forum highlighted the desire of some campus groups to ensure that those individuals with whom they disagree not be heard at all.
This particular forum was held in response to a Scripps Voice poll. The writer asked, “Are you aware of any Scripps stereotypes? Do they affect you?” The stereotypes in question essentially boil down to “promiscuous student” or “earnest feminist.” Somehow, this too became an issue of race when students began questioning if “fitting in” to a Scripps stereotype meant belonging to a certain race.
And then there was the outrage over a feminist event which served cupcakes decorated with vulvas, at which a former employee of the Queer Resource Center became incensed, stating, “How dare you associate vulvas with being a woman. I feel so violated.” Despite apologies from the event organizer, the conversation devolved into accusations of insensitivity towards trans women. . . .

You can read the whole thing. Probably your initial reaction, like mine, is to wonder why Scripps College (annual tuition $50,983) employed someone so deficient in knowledge of basic biology that they don’t understand why vulvas are associated with being a woman.

 

We need not wonder why vulva-decorated cupcakes are being served at a “feminist event” at Scripps, a West Coast version of those pricey women’s colleges like Bryn Mawr and Mount Holyoke where rich parents send their lesbian daughters. Scripps made the lesbian blog Autostraddle’s listing of top “LGBT-Friendly College Campuses”:

The environment at Scripps is extremely safe and friendly for queer womyn and our growing number of trans students . . .
[The Queer Resource Center] is a friendly, welcoming, accepting and affirming space. Queer women of color should be on the lookout for Queer People of Color Brunches and monthly gatherings.
Nearby gay clubs include The Hookup, Oasis, Alibi East and Menagerie.

We may conclude that snacking on vulvas is a popular pastime among students at Scripps, if not yet a mandatory part of the curriculum. However, the known prevalence of lesbianism among Scripps students (and the “LGBT-friendly” climate at Claremont more generally) gives rise to the question of what purpose the Queer Resource Center serves. Given how famously gay Claremont is, one assumes that no student who finds homosexuality objectionable would ever enroll there.

If everyone on campus is already “LGBT-friendly,” what exactly is the Queer Resource Center’s mission?

The QRC has something for everyone
Whether you identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, asexual, omnisexual, pansexual, or as an ally, the QRC has something to offer you! Our space houses a great collection of over 1,200 LGBTQIA-related books and movies, which can be checked out for free and used as textbooks for classes or research material for papers. The QRC’s student staff members work hard every semester to hold a number of fantastic programs in addition to co-sponsoring many other events with various organizations.
Our lounge and lobby (aka rainbow ski lodge) can be used for organizational meetings, doing homework and studying, or simply hanging out with good friends in a safer and more welcoming space. The lounge also includes two computers for 7Cs student use. Come on by to write a paper, do research, check your email, or what have you, all in the relaxed and welcoming environment of The QRC!
In addition to the student staff members . . . and a graduate assistant from Claremont Graduate University, the QRC Director and Program Coordinator are both available for drop-in hours. If you are dealing with issues of sexual orientation or gender identity, coming out, research, or just to say hi — their doors are open!

Yes, their doors are open at the QRC, where the staff “strive to embody” such principles as “Using Social Justice as a Framework and Queerness as a Lens.” This is why parents pay $50,983 a year in tuition, so their kids can learn to think in terms of social justice and queerness. That the QRC may be superfluous at such an LGBT-friendly school is not an idea that is likely to occur to elite liberal arts students, who are accustomed to having college administrators and faculty indulge their whims. If Daddy’s paying $66,664 a year (tuition plus $15,681 for room and board) to send his daughter to Scripps, we may assume that he expects the school to pander shamelessly to whatever his precious princess demands.

When they’re not busy snacking on vulvas, the girls at Scripps College can pursue Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies:

We offer an interdisciplinary framework through which to explore the social construction of gender and sexuality and the material impact of these constructions. We offer historical, contemporary, and transnational analyses of how the formation of gender and sexualities emerge in different contexts such as colonialisms, nationalisms, and globalization. From our engagement with, and critique of, disciplinary practices in the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences, we forge new critical paradigms and methods for generating feminist knowledges. Our creation of new critical paradigms relies on the linking of knowledge formation to activism and social justice movements. Our courses satisfy campus breadth requirements, develop critical analysis and writing skills, and transform students’ understanding of and engagement with the world around them.
A student who majors in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies will gain a strong liberal arts training in critical theory and social justice.

Critical theory and social justice — very much in demand at Scripps College, although not so much in the profit-making private sector where the student’s Daddy earned that $66,664 he’s paying to send his daughter “to explore the social construction of gender and sexuality.”

And also, eat some vulva cupcakes.




 

Category: Education, Gays, Sex Trouble
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