The Other McCain

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

UCLA Feminist Identifies as Heterosexual, Blames ‘White Feminism’ for Trump

Posted on | December 6, 2016 | 2 Comments

UCLA sophomore Graciela Barada is not LGBT.

A feminist student at the University of California at Los Angeles has admitted she is heterosexual. Sophomore Graciela Barada confessed her heterosexuality in Fem (“UCLA’s Feminist Newsmagazine Since 1973”), in a Nov. 17 column about the recent presidential election, entitled “Dear White Liberal Friends, Family, and Peers.”

“Our feelings are confusing and overwhelming to say the least,” Barada wrote of UCLA students “experiencing uncertainty, fear, anger, despair, frustration” because Republican Donald Trump won the election. “Since Tuesday, my social media timelines have been flooded by a seemingly perpetual stream of fake-woke liberal white feminist proverbs that, frankly, are painfully problematic and extremely frustrating.”

Saying she is “opposed to virtually all that [Trump] embodies and the so-called Conservative ‘values’ he stands for,” Barada wrote:

Like many of you, I have yet to come to terms fully with what Trump’s victory will mean for the future of our planet and for millions of people (both domestic and abroad) in years to come. . . .
My own privilege has protected me from enduring many of the daily horrors that countless minorities have faced since the election. The daughter of Spanish-speaking immigrants, I proudly identify as a woman of color and “first-generation” American citizen. I am also financially secure, cissexual, heterosexual, able-bodied, and in the process of completing my undergraduate education at a world-renowned institution. And despite the presence of Trump supporters and sympathizers amongst my peers, the UCLA community is overwhelmingly comprised of other students of color.

Only 8,000 white students are enrolled at UCLA, where whites are a minority (26%) of the university’s 30,000 undergraduate students, the majority of whom (56%) are female. Asian students are 32% of UCLA undergraduates, Hispanics are 21% and black students are 5%.

“White feminism” has been under attack since the Nov. 8 election, as feminist critics of Hillary Clinton’s campaign have pointed to exit-polls showing that Trump got a majority (53%) of white women’s votes:

White women preferred Trump to Clinton. And who is Hillary Clinton if not a representative of white-woman-ness, that is, of so-called White Feminism? . . .
In Slate, L.V. Anderson interprets the results to mean that “[m]ost white women don’t want to be part of an intersectional feminist sisterhood.” . . .
To be a Donald Trump woman was to be heterosexually desired. To be a Hillary Clinton woman . . . was to throw on a pantsuit and ask to be valued, instead, for your abilities.

“White feminism played a huge part in this election: it focused on the issues of being a white woman and disregarded all the hate and oppression that white women inflict on others,” Etienne Rodriguez wrote the day after the election at the teen feminist site Affinity.

Graciela Barada similarly condemned her white classmates at UCLA:

For the white women still donning the “I’m With Her” slogan, please inform yourself of the ways in which your demographic chose Trump (a misogynist candidate) over Clinton-Kane, whose political platforms embraced progression of women’s rights in America. In actuality, this adamant focus on what the GOP victory means for “women everywhere” often exclusively refers to the circumstances of white women and is thus the embodiment of white feminism. This white feminist stance is a reflection of white privilege, a privilege that many white liberal women seem reluctant to admit exists and prevails in spite of the oppressions they may face due to their gender and other marginalizing factors. . . .
Trump-like figures are the product of our White Supremacist capitalist patriarchy, 230 years in the making. . . .
Recognize the legacies of oppressive American power structures for what they are. When I speak of complicity, I do not mean that each white American is single-handedly responsible for committing verbal and physical violence against marginalized groups. Rather, I am hinting at the fact that the “white” identity — and the place of many white people in our great American tale — is rooted in the oppression of less dominant groups.

Graciela Barada’s mother is a white immigrant from Spain and her father, a businessman in Washington, D.C., is a black immigrant from Cuba. Graciela Barada’s suffering of “oppression” from “White Supremacist capitalist patriarchy” consists of attending a university in Los Angeles where annual tuition is $39,518 for out-of-state students and room and board are $15,069 a year. A majority (58%) of UCLA students are non-white, and yet “white privilege” is still the problem.

“White feminism” was the topic of a discussion last month hosted by UCLA’s Intergroup Relations (IGR) program, the Daily Bruin reported:

Students discussed feminist issues and considered their visions for gender equality at student-run event on the Hill on Wednesday.
The Intergroup Relations Program hosted a dinner dialogue about what they call white feminism. About 20 students attended the event held at Bruin Plate. . . .
At these events, students can talk about topics they might be uncomfortable with, said Celia Cody-Carrese, an intern with Intergroup Relations and third-year geography and environmental studies student.
Cody-Carrese said the organizers chose white feminism as the topic of Wednesday’s event because they think feminism has traditional ties with white supremacies. . . .
Intergroup Relations leaders discussed how celebrities approach feminism. Some asked the group what the difference was between the empowerment messages in Taylor Swift’s vs. Beyonce’s music.
Some students said they thought Swift’s music does not have the same impact as Beyonce’s because of her privilege, even if her music has messages of empowerment. Conversation later spread into European patriarchy as an instrument of subjugation during the colonial era in world history.
Cody-Carrese said she thinks the word “feminism” is usually applied to white women. . . .
Cody-Carrese said she thinks white feminism disregards the concept of intersectionality. For example, a white woman cannot completely understand the specific plight of a black woman, she said.

Taylor Swift vs. Beyoncé and colonial subjugation by European patriarchy  — this is what parents send their children to UCLA to learn:

Mitali Gupta, a UCLA Senior who attended the event, told Campus Reform that feminism’s link to white supremacy was indeed discussed during the meeting, adding that she agrees that such a connection exists.
“As a woman of color I was curious to know what ‘white feminism’ really was,” Gupta explained. . . .
Anna Yeakly, the director of the Intergroup Relations Center, said in a statement to Campus Reform that the dinner dialogue program is in its 5th year, and that the program is a partnership between various administrative offices on campus.
“White feminism was a topic suggested by the students, based on their interest in discussing the issue of intersectionality that is often left out of conversations about feminism” Yeakly said.
According to the Center’s website, recent dinner dialogues have focused on issues such as the “Intersections of Social Media, Culture, and Social Justice Issues” and “Race and Police Enforcement.”

Arguments over racism have not distracted feminists at UCLA from their main agenda, i.e., accusing men of rape. Seventeen rapes were reported at UCLA in 2014, the same year the California legislature enacted its controversial “affirmative consent” law, which effectively criminalizes all sexual activity on university campuses in the state:

The way this bill defines “affirmative consent” could open the door to a flood of sexual assault accusations, but provides no clear way for the accused to prove they obtained consent. . . .
In fact, asked in June, the bill’s principal co-author, Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, had no clue how one could prove they received affirmative consent.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Lowenthal told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. “I think it’s a legal issue. Like any legal issue, that goes to court.”
But if one of the bill’s co-sponsors can’t explain how to prove one obtained consent, how is a college student supposed to figure it out?

UCLA has numerous programs to encourage accusations of rape, including “Sexual Assault Awareness Month,” as well as Campus Assault Resources & Education (CARE). Ariana Damavandi, a staff writer for Fem (“UCLA’s Feminist Newsmagazine Since 1973”) has identified the problem as “rape culture . . . centered around a heteronormative narrative, meaning heterosexuality is unconsciously prioritized as the most normal and acceptable sexual orientation and non-heterosexual narratives are often ignored.” Sophia Galluccio, another staff writer for Fem (“UCLA’s Feminist Newsmagazine Since 1973”), demands “Zero Tolerance” for “rape culture.” Another article in Fem (“UCLA’s Feminist Newsmagazine Since 1973”) blamed “toxic masculinity and the hegemonic roles . . . that delineate how men are supposed to behave themselves — as violent, unemotional, aggressive, dominant, tough, sexual, and confident”:

As a result, men feel pressure to actively enforce their masculinity, which often occurs through this sexually explicit, misogynistic or racist language. . . .
This derogatory language normalizes behaviors associated with sexual violence and racial discrimination, and preserves a rape culture in which men behave in ways under the assumption that sexual aggression and objectification are natural qualities of masculinity. This is one reason for the alarmingly high rates, underreporting, and limited punishment of sexual assault on college campuses. When faced with charges of sexual assault or rape, college men often face little scrutiny, excused by a “boys will be boys” mentality, implying that they are simply acting out of a natural sexual impulse.

Did I mention that Fem has been “UCLA’s Feminist Newsmagazine Since 1973”? This is kind of relevant, because if college girls writing articles in a magazine were the solution to “rape culture” (or “toxic masculinity” or anything else), don’t you think that 43 years of this would have eliminated these problems? What they have done instead is to create a climate of irrational hostility toward men, where male students are a minority (44% of undergraduates at UCLA), so that there are nearly 4,000 more women than men on campus. Yet anyone who thinks heterosexuality is “normal and acceptable” is accused of “rape culture” by UCLA feminists, who insist that sexual assault occurs at “alarmingly high rates” at their school.

 

Behold the staff of Fem — do they look “oppressed” to you? Do they appear to be victimized by a “heteronormative narrative”?

Earlier this year, the staff of Fem participated in the International Women’s Day march, carrying signs denouncing “capitalist exploitation” and declaring, “It is our duty to fight for freedom from the imperialist white supremacist capitalist cisheteropatriarchy.”

 

Capitalism is wrong, according to the staff of Fem (“UCLA’s Feminist Newsmagazine Since 1973”), and heterosexuality is also wrong:

At some point in human history, men decided that women belonged to them. Today, in the United States, women are allowed to have property, money, and lots of other things they couldn’t have in the past, but for some reason we haven’t quite gained control of our bodies.
Heterosexual men control women’s bodies in a variety of ways, including restricting our access to abortion and healthcare, sympathizing with accused rapists, and objectifying and trivializing our sexuality. That last one is especially true for non-heterosexual women, who are consistently a target of objectification and fetishization for heterosexual men.

The author of that article is Laura Jue. Click here to see her photo. Is she “a target of objectification and fetishization for heterosexual men”? Or is this merely a paranoid delusion, like Graciela Barada’s claim that she is a victim of “the legacies of oppressive American power structures . . . rooted in the oppression of less dominant groups”?

Speaking of “less dominant groups,” UCLA’s football team went 4-8 this season, losing to Stanford, USC and Cal-Berkeley. Maybe if their punter hadn’t been arrested on a bogus rape charge . . .

Anyway, Graciela Barada says she is heterosexual, but why? How? More importantly, who? Has any guy at UCLA ever admitted to having sex with a staff member of “UCLA’s Feminist Newsmagazine Since 1973”?

I doubt it, but if it happened, I blame “toxic masculinity.”

(Hat-tip: The Political Hat.)



 

Category: Education, Election, Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 12.06.16

Posted on | December 6, 2016 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
First Street Journal: There’s A Hunger Problem On America’s College Campuses
Battleswarm: Texas SEIU Declares Bankruptcy To Avoid Judgment
EBL: Baby, It’s Cold Outside
Twitchy: NARAL Board Member Had Sex, Got Pregnant – But It’s Not Her Fault!
Louder With Crowder: Tucker Carlson Dropkicks Smug College Kid Over Trump & The Environment


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Simplicity Of The Lunatic Left
American Power: The Social Justice Left Vs. The Identitarian Alt-Right
American Thinker: The Problem Isn’t The Alt-Right, It’s The Alt-Reality
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily News
Da Tech Guy: One Critical Point To Add To #LashEquality, also, Baldilocks – California Prepares Its Final Blunder
Don Surber: Infrastructure Projects ARE Conservative
Dustbury: We Have All Been Here Before
Jammie Wearing Fools: Diary Of A Hillblazer – How I Ended Up In A Psych Ward On Election Night
Joe For America: Major Voter Fraud Uncovered In Key Battleground State Of Nevada
JustOneMinute: Ben Carson?
Power Line: “Post-Truth” Media Should Look In The Mirror, also, Ellison Remembers To Forget (Again)
Shark Tank: Florida Legislators File “Booze Bills” To Kill Prohibition-Era Law
Shot In The Dark: NPR’s “On The Media” – Fake Analysis Of “Fake News”
The Geller Report: Muslim Council Of Britain Says It’s Up To Kufr To Integrate, Not Us
The Political Hat: On Equality
This Ain’t Hell: Tuesday Morning Feelgood Stories
Weasel Zippers: Senate Dems Regret Changing Senate Rules Now That Trump Is President, also, White House Says “Embittered” WW2 Vets Should Get Over Pearl Harbor Attack
Megan McArdle: Start Worrying About Long-Term Care
Mark Steyn: Dark Waters


Today’s Digital Deals
Amazon Warehouse Deals
Shop Amazon – Secret Santa Gifts in Home Office

Category: Linkagery

FMJRA 2.0: Spiral

Posted on | December 6, 2016 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday
The Pirate’s Cove
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View from the Beach
Proof Positive
EBL@RedState

Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro Just Became the Only Kind of Good Communist
A View from the Beach

‘Girl Power’ and Honor in Pakistan: The Unsurprising Death of Qandeel Baloch
A View from the Beach

Personal Or Ethnic, Slobodan Miloševic Clearly Understood Hygeine #TrudeauEulogies
A View from the Beach
EBL@RedState

FMJRA 2.0: After Black Friday
The Pirate’s Cove
A View from the Beach
EBL@RedState

‘Little Old Liberal White Ladies’
The Political Hat
EBL@RedState

Herbert Kornfeld Was Certainly Smarter Than Krugman, My Basset Hound. Also, The NYT Economist Dude. #TrudeauEulogies
EBL@RedState

In The Mailbox: 11.28.16
A View from the Beach
Proof Positive
EBL@RedState

Some Stereotypes Are True
The Political Hat
EBL@RedState

The Intifada at Ohio State Proves the Immigration-Terrorism Connection
EBL@RedState

In The Mailbox: 11.29.16
Proof Positive
EBL@RedState

Notoriously Crazy Felon Barrett Brown Has Been Released From Federal Prison
EBL@RedState

War on Women: Democrats Ready to Throw Nancy Pelosi Under the Bus?
EBL@RedState

In The Mailbox: 11.30.16
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 12.01.16
Proof Positive
EBL@RedState

‘Hashtag He’s Your President’
The Political Hat
EBL@RedState

#FreeStacy Quoting My Favorite Source
Regular Right Guy
BattleSwarm Blog
A View from the Beach
EBL@RedState

Guess What Swarthmore College Will Teach Your Children for $63,550 a Year?
Regular Right Guy

In The Mailbox: 12.02.16
Regular Right Guy
Proof Positive
EBL@RedState

Top linkers this week:

  1.  EBL@RedState (15)
  2.  A View from the Beach (7)
  3.  Proof Positive (6)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!


Today’s Digital Deals

Category: FMJRA Award

In The Mailbox: 12.05.16

Posted on | December 5, 2016 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


This week’s FMJRA and Rule 5 Monday will follow later this evening, if I can stay awake…


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Renzi In Ruins – Populism Prevails In Italy
Twitchy: Gloriously Idiotic Paul Krugman Leads Another Parade Of Denial About Why Hillary Lost
Louder With Crowder: McDonald’s Hits Back Hard At #FightFor15 With Touching Ad Campaign


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Listen Up, Faggots – You’re Being Used
American Power: Death Toll Rises To 36 In Oakland “Ghost Ship” Fire
American Thinker: The Left’s Coming Counterattack
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – A Voice For Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens by Lydie Denier
Da Tech Guy: John Ruberry – Trump Just Got Into China’s Head
Don Surber: Phony Cries Of Phony Capitalism
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, also, Meanwhile In Arkansas
Jammie Wearing Fools: Oh Look, That SPLC Survey On Post-election “Hate Crimes” Left Out 2000 Committed Against White Students
Joe For America: Thug Shoots Newlywed Soldier And Wife – Where’s Al Sharpton?
JustOneMinute: Positive Thinking At The Times!
Power Line: A Fitting End – Castro’s Hearse Breaks Down
Shark Tank: Allen West Going Back To Washington, DC?
Shot In The Dark: At Least Neville Chamberlain Realized He Was Wrong
STUMP: Dead Men Collect Pensions – Update On Pension Fraud
The Geller Report: Watch As Muslim Men Threaten British Schoolgirls With Brutal Rape & Beatings DAILY
The Jawa Report: War Porn, also, Fidel Castro Pushed Into Grave
The Lonely Conservative: The Left Needs To Get A Grip, And So Do Trump’s Biggest Fans
The Political Hat: The Enwokening Of White People
This Ain’t Hell: Four Resign From VA Ahead Of Discipline, also, #Pizzagate
Weasel Zippers: Green Berets Fighting Daesh Frustrated By Top-Level Micromanagement, also, Dem Rep Ellison Says Democrats Will Do Nothing But Vote No While Trump Is President
Megan McArdle: The Allure Of “Repeal And Delay” For Obamacare Critics
Mark Steyn: The Road To Wellville


Today’s Digital Deals
The Road To Wellville
Amazon Gift Card W/Holiday Teddy Bear

Category: Linkagery

Amid Dow Boom, Liberal Media Gloom

Posted on | December 5, 2016 | 3 Comments

In the weeks leading up to the Nov. 8 election, Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) warned of economic disaster if Donald Trump won.

“Economists: A Trump win would tank the markets,” was the Oct. 21 headline at Politico, and on Nov. 6 — two days before the election, when some polls showed Hillary Clinton’s numbers had sagged — the headline at Huffington Post was, “Donald Trump Has Caused A Historic Drop In The Stock Market,” with writer Ben Walsh warning:

Deporting some 11 million undocumented immigrants, building a wall along the border with America’s third biggest trading partner, starting a trade war with Mexico and China that would destroy 4 million U.S. jobs: These are all deeply harmful economic policies.
Moody’s says Trump’s policies would throw the U.S. economy into the longest recession since the Great Depression. Citigroup thinks a Trump win could cause a global depression. By a different measure, Trump in the White House would cause the American economy to shrink by $1 trillion over five years, according to British research firm Oxford Economics.

As Democrat campaign propaganda, this may have been effective, but as financial journalism, it has proven woefully incorrect. The day after Trump’s stunning victory, the Dow gained more than 250 points, and by Nov. 22, hit a record high above 19,000 points. This “Trump boom” shows no sign of fading. The Dow jumped 100 points after the opening bell this morning and, as of 11 a.m., was at 19,260. And yet the media are still looking for gloom amid the economic sunshine:

“It’s hard to know how President-elect Trump will be in 54 days or 53 days when he is President Trump,” Joann Weiner, director of the department of economics at George Washington University, told Circa.
“I think the biggest worry for anyone getting out of college is, ‘Will these policies tip the economy into a recession?'”

What liberals don’t seem to understand . . . Well, they don’t really understand anything very well, but they especially don’t understand economics, having paid little if any attention to the subject, except to seek justification for their crypto-Marxist antipathy to profit.

Communist protesters at the GOP convention in July.

It’s bad for companies to earn profits, the liberal believes in his heart, because profits are the result of capitalist greed, and this is bad for women and children and racial minorities and spotted owls. Liberal hostility toward capitalism — expressed in a discourse where “big business” and “corporate America” are used as pejorative terms — is an emotional reflex, closely related to the liberal’s hatred of America. Anything that is distinctly American, including college football and the U.S. military, must be a force for evil in the world, the liberal believes.

“They always blame America first,” as Jeanne Kirkpatrick said of the Democrats’ typical stance during the Cold War and, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Democrats have devoted themselves to destroying the America that sent the Bolshevik dream to “the ash-heap of history.” Instead of honestly admitting the destructive purpose, however, Democrats now speak in poll-tested phrases about “Hope and Change,” promising to “fundamentally transform” America — into what?

Questions like that don’t get asked often enough. What was so bad about the America that twice elected Ronald Reagan by landslide margins? If Democrats believe the America of 1984 was evil, why?

The problem with Republicans is that they are too polite. It would be rude to confront the phony “journalists” at CNN, to crowd one of those liars into a corner and ask: “Why do you hate America so much?”

No, Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) don’t want to admit the real nature of their own irrational prejudices, and Republicans are too polite to call them out on it. Has anyone in the Republican Party asked, for example, how much federal aid to education goes to elite private schools like Swarthmore College (annual tuition $49,104), where students enroll in “Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology”? Why should the devout Catholic or Baptist be taxed to support such nonsense? Where are the GOP senators and congressmen demanding to know what kind of “education” taxpayers are being required to subsidize?

Because the Republicans are too polite (or too stupid) to call attention to what’s going on in our taxpayer-funded schools, a generation of young people has been indoctrinated in the anti-American prejudices of the Democrats who control university campuses. Meanwhile, Democrat operatives in the teachers unions who run the K-12 education system ensure there is No Child Left Believing in Christianity or Capitalism. Public schools teach atheism and universities teach “Queer Theology,” and nowhere in the educational process does a child ever encounter the arguments of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek or Thomas Sowell. Therefore, in their continuing crusade to “fundamentally transform” America, the Democrats are always moving to the left. If a Democrat wins the White House — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama — he will appoint a left-wing administration to implement a left-wing policy. However, when Democrats lose elections, they invariably interpret their defeat as evidence that they aren’t far-left enough.

This post-election demand for a “Radical Vision to Defeat Trump” comes from Zack Exley, whose resumé includes six years as a labor-union organizer, a stint with MoveOn.org, a gig with the doomed 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign and, most recently working for Bernie Sanders — the avowed socialist who would have won the Democrat nomination, were it not for the blatant cheating of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Zack Exley speaks for the majority of Democrat voters, the mobs of dangerous lunatics who riot in the streets, openly avow their Marxist hatred of capitalism, and proclaim “America Was Never Great.”

If Trump succeeds, these fringe-kook extremists will lead the Democrats into political oblivion. If Trump fails . . . Well, good-bye, America.



 

Category: Democrats, Economics, Education, Election

#LashEquality: @CoverGirl Promotes Transgender Agenda in Commercials

Posted on | December 4, 2016 | 7 Comments

 

Analysts seeking to understand why 62 million Americans voted to elect Donald Trump president might consider how Third Wave feminism — “gender theory” and all that — has alienated every Christian parent in the country (to say nothing of many radical feminists who oppose it). Postmodern academic theory about the social construction of the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix has made its way into the world of Hollywood, journalism and now, advertising:

So what does it mean that CoverGirl’s latest face (joining the ranks of Zendaya, Katy Perry, Pink and more) is . . . a boy? And a noncelebrity boy at that?
He is James Charles, 17, a high school senior from Bethlehem, N.Y., who lives with his parents and a younger brother and does makeup for friends in his spare time (at no charge). In the past year or so, Mr. Charles has amassed nearly 650,000 followers on his Instagram account and more than 90,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, where he posts tutorials for creating fake freckles or layering chunky glitter around the eyes.
He gained attention last month when he posted to social media about retaking his senior photos because he didn’t like how the highlighter on his cheekbones looked in the originals. . . .
The selection of Mr. James by CoverGirl comes amid a broader questioning of traditional gender boundaries in fashion and beauty, and the growth of a crop of internet-famous beauty junkies who have built followings through social media.

That New York Times article was published four weeks before Election Day and quoted this boy gushing: “We’ve made so many amazing progressions with gay rights, gender inclusivity and self-expression.”

What some consider “amazing progressions,” however, others may view as decadence, what the Hebrews called toeba (“abomination”) which seems to have flourished in Obama Nation. Permit me to digress here to deliver a brief Bible study on Deuteronomy 22:5, wherein cross-dressing is condemned as toeba. Because I grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, when boys wearing long hair and girls dressing in what was then called “unisex” (i.e., androgynous) styles alarmed our elders, I have an appreciation of cultural context and the influence of fashion in this regard. Read more

Category: Gays, History, Religion

Guess What Swarthmore College Will Teach Your Children for $63,550 a Year?

Posted on | December 3, 2016 | 7 Comments

Tuition at Swarthmore College is $49,104, room and board is $14,446, and what does this elite private school teach its students?

Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology
The God of the Bible and later Jewish and Christian literature is distinctively masculine, definitely male. Or is He? If we can point out places in traditional writings where God is nurturing, forgiving, and loving, does that mean that God is feminine, or female? This course examines feminist and queer writings about God, explores the tensions between feminist and queer theology, and seeks to stretch the limits of gendering-and sexing-the divine. Key themes include: gender; embodiment; masculinity; liberation; sexuality; feminist and queer theory.

Queering the Bible
This course surveys queer and trans* readings of biblical texts. It introduces students to the complexity of constructions of sex, gender, and identity in one of the most influential literary works produced in ancient times. By reading the Bible with the methods of queer and trans* theoretical approaches, this class destabilizes long held assumptions about what the bible–and religion–says about gender and sexuality.

Preaching homosexuality as a religion earned Swarthmore a coveted spot on the Young America’s Foundation list of “America’s Most Bizarre and Politically Correct College Courses of 2016-2017”:

“The sad truth is that many of America’s greatest minds are spending four formative years and tens of thousands of dollars sitting in classes such as ‘Ecofeminism,’ and ‘Queering God,’ which clearly do little to equip them to face the real and complex problems our country desperately needs them to solve,” the foundation stated in releasing its list. . . .
Called the Comedy & Tragedy survey, it uses class course descriptions to illustrate “the increasingly radical world of academia.” . . .
What’s more, “many of the courses listed in this study are just plain wastes of time,” it adds.
“Harvard teaches ‘Friends with Benefits?’ and ‘Queering Affect.’ In this same trend, Swarthmore offers both ‘Queering God’ and ‘Queering the Bible.’ Yale offers ‘Bodies and Pleasures, Sex and Genders’ as well as ‘Transgender Cultural Production.’ Students aren’t only spending their time in hilariously weird courses—they’re sitting through hours of courses that tactlessly group members of our society into collective entities, stripping them of their individuality and blaming conservatism for their ills.”

Fewer than 1,600 students attend Swarthmore, which was founded by Quakers in the 1860s and now promotes homosexuality at an annual symposium named for one of its gay alumni, Richard Sager:

Every spring Swarthmore College hosts an unusual dance party known as “Genderf–k.” Students are expected to defy normal gender standards by cross-dressing and/or wearing very little clothing, which is always a fun & entertaining spectacle. The dance is part of the Sager symposium, which is for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Studies, held every year to increase awareness about queer issues (with queer-focused lectures, performances and social events).

Students on the 425-acre campus can join such organizations as the Swarthmore Feminists and the Swarthmore Queer Union.

Every spring, students at Swarthmore celebrate “Crunkfest” featuring the “American Masturbatory Theater Company” — a circle-jerk as performance art. In March 2014, Swarthmore made headlines during Women’s History Month by hosting a “Fat Justice and Feminism” workshop, funded by the Women’s Resource Center.

That workshop was taught by self-described “angry, man-hating lesbian” Nichole Sullivan and her comrade Cora Segal, who subsequently became notorious as “TrigglyPuff.” Swarthmore has plenty of money with which to provide its students queer theology, feminism, cross-dressing, “fat justice” and public masturbation, but the $63,550-a-year college doesn’t have a football team. Swarthmore eliminated football in 2000:

Swarthmore’s decision wasn’t due to lack of funding, or the burdens of complying with federal gender-equity law, or apathy. In fact, attendance had improved from an average of about 750 fans at games in 1999 to about 1,000 this season.
Instead, the 1,400-student school said it is cutting football because it does not want to recruit so many athletes.
“People get an edge in the admissions process if they are incredible musicians or artists or maybe for community service,” college spokesman Tom Krattenmaker said. “It’s basic math. If you eliminate football, you suddenly have a lot more spaces for everything else.” . . .
“The price of making football work was just too great,” Krattenmaker said.

Yes, there are “a lot more spaces for everything else” at Swarthmore, none of which seem to involve sanity or heterosexuality. Swarthmore’s office of Counseling and Psychological Services provides “free, voluntary, confidential psychological individual and group counseling to students,” and has a staff of 11 employees, or about one counselor for every 145 students on campus. The staff psychologists must be overworked because, let’s face it, you’d have to be crazy to go to Swarthmore and your parents would be crazy to spend $63,550 a year to send you there. If your kid is a deranged lunatic (cross-dressing, masturbating in public, babbling gibberish about “queer theology,” etc.) just call 911 and have them committed to the state mental asylum. Problem solved, no cost to you.

“Hey, Jake, what’s this I hear about your daughter being hauled off to the funny farm last week? Was she on drugs or something?”
“No, it was worse than that — she applied to Swarthmore.”

A daily dose of Thorazine would be better than the Swarthmore curriculum:

Students in Swarthmore’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program study the social relations of power in a variety of cultural, historical, and national contexts. The objective of the program is to bring feminist and queer theory in conversation with new research methodologies in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. The program emphasizes complex interrelationships among gender and sexuality, race and class, and local and global politics. . . .
Students take a course on theory and methodology in gender and sexuality studies, which can focus on topics as diverse as gender and education and feminist critiques of biology.

They don’t teach biology at Swarthmore. They teach “feminist critiques of biology,” and have a “conversation” with “queer theory.” Must be hard to take notes when you’re wearing a straitjacket, but . . .

Trans* Bodies and Power in the Age of Transgenderism
This talk by Jack Halberstam investigates desires, orientations, experiences of the gendered body that are nestled within the elliptical modes of address that stretch between what can be said, what can be thought and what feels possible if not probable. It is not a survey of transpeople, trans experience or trans politics so much as an account of the spaces between that have opened up as old classification systems give way to new and as gender norms, bodily practices and desires are reconfigured within new matrices of meaning, politics, violence and fleshly becomings.

Professor Halberstam’s event Monday at Swarthmore is sponsored by the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. “Jack” (neé Judith) Halberstam is an acclaimed expert on such topics as the “transgender gaze,” “lesbian drag king cultures” and “dyke subcultures as one site for the development of queer counterpublics and queer temporalities.” Parents are paying $63,550 a year for their kids to learn this stuff at a college that doesn’t even have a football team, whereas Penn State tuition for in-state students is only $17,900 and, with room and board ($11,860), the total cost is $29,760. You could send your kid to the University of Alabama and, even paying out-of-state tuition, it would cost you only $36,500 a year, including room and board. Alabama is No. 1 in college football, and Penn State (No. 8) will play Wisconsin tonight for the Big Ten championship. Meanwhile, your kid expects you to pay $63,550 a year for her to major in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Swarthmore. If that’s not a textbook case of insanity, what is? Speaking of textbooks . . .

The faculty of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Swarthmore includes Professor Tamsin Lorraine, who is also chair of the Philosophy department. Her doctoral dissertation, Gender, Identity, and the Production of Meaning, was published in 1990 and is described thus:

In this study of the production and interpretation of meaning, Tamsin Lorraine argues that writing texts is a self-constituting, meaning-producing activity that is inherently gender-formed. At the core of her analysis is a theory of the self developed from Hegelian and Lacanian insights, criticized and revised in the light of [Luce] Irigaray and [Nancy] Chodorow. The value of this framework is dramatically demonstrated when it is applied to the reading of three “masculinist” texts, taken from Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Sartre.

If you’re not a student of postmodern gender theory, you probably don’t know that Luce Irigaray is a “French lesbian feminist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher . . . involved in the development of psycholinguistically based critique of heteropatriarchal language.” Nancy Chodorow’s theories about girls’ “difficulties with boundary diffusion and differentiation” have been influential among lesbian therapists. (You can get an excellent education reading my blog, and hitting the tip jar here is a lot cheaper than tuition at Swarthmore.) Professor Lorraine is also author of the 1999 book, Irigaray and Deleuze: Experiments in Visceral Philosophy, and here is a two-sentence sample from page 24 of that book:

Irigaray’s work hints at an alternative subjectivity that is more fluid than the masculine subject, a subject that is always immersed in the world and others and whose boundaries are always shifting. She associates this subjectivity with the feminine because it is women who are more often associated with madness, the unconscious, and the body, and because she believes that women have less symbolic support for differentiating from others and maintaining a separate self-identical identity as women.

So, this “alternative subjectivity” of women is “associated with madness, the unconscious, and the body,” according to Professor Lorraine, whose duties at Swarthmore include teaching “First-Year Seminar: Human Nature” (!!) and “Introduction to Philosophy: Truth and Desire” (!!!). What sort of “nature,” what sort of “truth,” and what sort of “desire” do you suppose Professor Lorraine teaches her students, whose parents pay $63,550 a year for them to acquire this knowledge? Meanwhile . . .

Professor Patricia White is the Program Coordinator of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Swarthmore. Professor White is author of Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability, a 1999 book from page 5 of which we shall quote this two-sentence sample:

How might lesbian identities have evolved historically in relation to gendered consumerist discourses generally and in relation to fantasy consumption in the form of images and stories offered by the movies in particular? The cinema fostered new kinds of homosociality within the heterosocial sphere of commercialized leisure, and they are infused with homoerotic impulses.

Explaining what Professor White means by this would require more effort than I’m prepared to give it today, but you could hit the tip jar for $5 or $10, just to thank me for transcribing those two sentences. Even at minimum wage, that kind of labor might be worth a buck or two, which I could use to buy a beer and try to forget I ever heard of Professor White or her book. This semester, Professor White is teaching “Theory and Methodology: Special Topic: Queer Media” (GSST 020):

The history of avant-garde and experimental media has been intertwined with that of gender non-conformity and sexual dissidence. Queer theory has developed in relation to queer film texts and cultures. How do lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) filmmakers queer sexual norms and standard media forms? Challenging classic Hollywood’s heterosexual presumption and mass media appropriations of LGBT culture, we will examine LGBT aesthetic strategies and modes of address in contexts such as the American and European avant-gardes, AIDS activism, and transnational and diasporan film.

Swarthmore students are learning “gender non-conformity and sexual dissidence” as Professor White teaches them how to challenge “Hollywood’s heterosexual presumption” — and for only $63,550 a year!

Rumors that there may be heterosexual students at Swarthmore cannot be confirmed because (a) “gender non-conformity” makes it difficult to know who is male or female on campus, and (b) any heterosexual activity at Swarthmore could lead to charges of harassment or rape.

Hope Brinn (left) and her fellow plaintiff Mia Ferguson.

Feds launch investigation into
Swarthmore’s handling of sex assaults
The U.S. Department of Education has opened an investigation into whether Swarthmore College violated federal regulations in its handling of sexual harassment and assault cases on the 1,545-student, Delaware County campus.
Student complainants Mia Ferguson, an engineering major from Cambridge, Mass., and Hope Brinn, an educational studies and sociology/anthropology major from Wilmington, received a letter from the department’s Office of Civil Rights last week confirming the probe.
“We will investigate these allegations above because OCR has jurisdiction and the allegations were filed timely,” the office’s Rhasheda S. Douglas, team leader, wrote in a July 12 letter to the women. . . .
The case at Swarthmore is part of a growing national movement in which young women are speaking out about their colleges’ handling of sexual assaults.
Ferguson and Brinn, both rising juniors, and others filed the complaint in May, alleging that Swarthmore violated federal regulations known as Title IX, which prohibit sexual discrimination. The college, the women said, created a sexually hostile environment by failing to handle the cases appropriately. They also accused the college of retaliating against Brinn for reporting she was a victim of sexual harassment and violence. A senior resident advisor told other students she was assaulted, according to the complaint.

Teenage girls assaulted? Harassed? Victims of a “sexually hostile environment”? How can this happen? Mia Ferguson blames Swarthmore:

I was sexually assaulted my first year at Swarthmore. With the support of friends, teammates, classmates, RAs, CAs, peer counselors, and staff members, I’ve come to a secure emotional place regarding the experience that allows me to identify as a “survivor”. . .
Members of the administration have attempted to push me into darkness. They summon those who are closest to me, those whom I first told about my assault, into “emergency” meetings. . . .
Some might assert I have hurt the college, or at least its administration and reputation. This, to me, feels a lot like I am the sexual assault victim and the college is the perpetrator. They don’t know their consequences, they won’t own up to their wrongdoing, and I become the bad guy for noting their crime.

This is astonishing! Swarthmore ditched its football team, hosted gay symposiums with “Genderf–k” parties, promoted queer theology, feminism, cross-dressing, “fat justice” and public masturbation. Swarthmore dedicated an entire department to analyzing “the social relations of power” and offering “feminist critiques of biology,” hired professors who are experts in “heteropatriarchal language” and “gender non-conformity and sexual dissidence.” Despite all this, somehow there are still heterosexual males on campus, and Swarthmore girls are victims of a “sexually hostile environment” — an environment for which their parents paid $63,550 a year! Why, that’s just . . . .

 

Crazy. The lunatics are running the asylum at Swarthmore, and the craziest part of it is that parents pay big money to send their kids to that kind of “elite” looney bin. And they don’t even have a football team.

If you hit my tip jar $63.55 and 999 other readers did the same, I could afford to send my 17-year-old son to Swarthmore for a year. But he’s already applied to his grandfather’s alma mater, the University of Alabama, so if you and 999 others could hit the tip jar for $36.50, maybe we could manage to scrape by. But if you can’t do that much, hit the tip jar for $9.99, and I could get a 6-pack of Corona to help me recover from the emotional trauma of researching the insanity at Swarthmore.

Where’s my “safe space”? Where’s my “trigger warning,” huh? Why can’t we do something to stop these academic weirdos from warping the minds of America’s youth? Why are all the so-called “elite” colleges run by nutjobs teaching gender theory and queer theology? How did Swarthmore go from being a Quaker school to being a Queer school?

 

Swarthmore College’s annual Queer and Trans Conference (QTC) is a student-run, free, and public conference that explores critical topics of queer and trans thinking, playing, working, organizing, and living. . . . We invite a diverse group of presenters who will help us to re-center queer and trans discourse around voices and perspectives marginalized by mainstream gay rights movements. . . .
In past years, conferences and symposiums have explored sexual politics of the bedroom, boardroom, and classroom; queer media; queer coalition building; the intersections of race, religion, and gender; queer and trans activism; debates around same-sex marriage; and queer families and homes.

Speaking of “marginalized” perspectives, what about normal? Whatever happened to normal parents trying to raise normal kids? Are there any colleges in America where they teach kids how to be normal? Because being normal seems to be an increasingly rare skill nowadays.

It’s a lonely feeling, being The Last Sane Man in America™ . . .



 

 

Category: Education, Gays, Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 12.02.16

Posted on | December 2, 2016 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: RIP Chef Peng Chang-Kue
Michelle Malkin: What If The Convicted “Serial Rapist Cop” Is Innocent?
Twitchy: Cillizza, Other Journos Whine When Trump RAMS Them At Rally; Delicious Schooling Follows
Louder With Crowder: TOLERANCE! Veteran’s Home Torched Just For Supporting Trump


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #28 – The Virgin Episode
American Power: Democrats Risk Irrelevance If They Don’t Change
American Thinker: The Myth Of Racist America
Animal Magnetism: Rule 5 Time Travel Friday
Da Tech Guy: My Advice To Trump? Give The Left/Media Nothing
Don Surber: Electoral College Dropout
Dustbury: We Few, We Easily Mocked
Joe For America: Michigan Recount Takes Strange Turn When Attorney General Sues
JustOneMinute: December Already?
Power Line: Trump Derangement Strikes Deep, also, The Crying Game, Clinton Style
Shark Tank: Charlie Crist Transitions To D.C.
Shot In The Dark: They Tend To Be Shoddy Anyway
The Geller Report: Obama’s Backroom Refugee Deal Gives OK To Australian Rejects From Terror Spots
The Jawa Report: Woman Gets Death Fatwa For Running Around Saudi Arabia Damn Near Nekkid
The Quinton Report: Action Needed To Save Columbus Day In Baltimore
This Ain’t Hell: Straight White Men, also, Flag Flies Over Hampshire College Again
Weasel Zippers: Trump Calls Taiwan – First Phone Call Since Diplomatic Relations Suspended In 1979, also, Oregon School Bans Santa Decorations As Possibly Disrespectful, Insensitive
Megan McArdle: The Left’s Doomed Effort To Coerce The Right
Mark Steyn: Make Kellogg’s Grrrrrreat Again


Today’s Digital Deals
Cyber Monday Deals Week
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy – Just $26.49!

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