While sitting on a downtown taxi stand this morning, I watched as a pretty young woman crossed paths with an old, disheveled, possibly homeless black man. He smiled broadly at her, bowed slightly at the waist, and proclaimed "You are the prettiest of them all!" before continuing on his way.
I briefly considered leaping to her defense and educating the old fellow about the oppressive, misogynistic evils of street harassment, but then I remembered that I'm not a feminist idiot.
Some days I impatiently long for the inevitable societal collapse, if only because first among the culls will be overeducated mouth-breathers who can inform me of the hundred ways I have oppressed the Wild Goat-Boy of Borneo since breakfast yet don't possess the minimal wit required to look both ways before walking into the fucking street.
The first cartoon is one of dozens of Fuck Off, Jesus memes that are floating around the internet. A google search for such memes returns around 900,000 results in less that half a second. Fuck Off, Jesus memes are clearly intended to be profoundly offensive to Christians, but I have yet to hear one single Progressive liberal concern troll waxing all self-righteous about the doubleplusungoodness of antagonizing Christians by being deliberately disrespectful of their religion. Quite to the contrary; antagonizing Christians is one of the core values of leftist political agitation in the Western world and Democrat public policy in the U.S.
Now consider the second cartoon, which was the winner of the Draw Mohammed contest that was attacked by two radicalized American Muslims on May 3rd. While whether it is more offensive than the Jesus memes is certainly up for debate, I don't think it is because it's an accurate portrayal of how a large and extremely violent cohort of the Muslim world views the core Western value of freedom of expression while the Jesus memes are just childishly deliberate, contemptuous mockery of the Christian deity without any basis or even interest at all in fact or accuracy.
It's plainly obvious that the breathless denunciations of both the Draw Mohammed contest and Charlie Hebdo stem from a deep-rooted cowardice. After all, when have Christians ever killed anybody over a satirical representation of Jesus? When have Christians ever even suggested that those who draw such cartoons be killed? Implicit in the hand-wringing about Mohammed cartoons is the bowel-loosening terror of the sort of Islamic violence that has been a constant part of international news for as long as I've been alive.
These people try to tell us that not baking a fucking wedding cake or refusing to pay for some broad's birth control is as bad, if not worse, than murdering people for drawing cartoons similar to the ones they chuckle at and share when they pop up by the dozen in their social media feeds. And then they expect to be taken seriously when the phrase "I'm all for free speech, but..." leaks out of their stupid fucking faces.
The people denouncing cartoonists who satirize Mohammed are cowards, pure and simple, who hypocritically revel in exactly the same sort of insulting of Christians and Christianity. Cowards don't attack targets that are likely to kill them. Cowards bow and scrape and appease, selling first their souls, then their neighbors, then their friends to tyrants and murderers that they themselves might be spared.
It's been a long time since I've posted anything here. I have a lot going on these days. Which is good, since my general demeanor deteriorates with boredom. But I have a few minutes this evening so I thought I'd jot down some thoughts on the terror attack in Garland, Texas on May 3rd.
1) This most definitely was a terrorist attack. Anybody who suggests different is either ignorant of the facts, a liar, or just plain stupid. It also serves as positive proof that there are now violent radical Islamists operating in the US and they are actively seeking targets.
2) Yes, the event that was the target of the attack was intended to be provocative. Yes, it was a "free speech" event. It is possible to be both. Ask any "artist" that has desecrated an American flag or Christian religious symbol or icon.
3) There is no religious exemption regarding being the target of provocative speech, no matter how much the left wing media insinuates that there is or ought to be. Just ask any Christian in the Western world how far that line of argument has ever gotten them.
4) Given the fact that the man who planned and carried out this attack was a radicalized American convert to Islam, expect more of these attacks. This one failed; others will succeed. If Europe's experience with unfettered immigration from the Islamic world is any indication, things are going to get extremely ugly over the next couple of decades.
5) Expect the mainstream media, academia, and leftist political establishment to do everything it can to downplay, rationalize, and just plain ignore the rise in violent crime across the board that will likely occur in the US just as it has occurred in Europe and Scandinavia. Google "Rotherham sex abuse" and rape stats from England, Sweden, and Norway for a preview of what's to come unless US political leadership cracks down on immigration and starts forcing cultural assimilation (not bloody likely).
6) Start reading up on 4th Generation Warfare (start with Bill Lind and Martin van Creveld) if you want to make sense of how modern radical Islamists operate. These people are all basically independent operators with a very general set of goals and objectives. Remember all the shit we were told about terror cells getting their orders from some central command out in the Iraqi desert or some such? Throw all that out the window. There are no terror cells; it's all about fucking shit up on an individual, ad hoc basis.
7) They are expecting us to expect them to follow some semblance of a rule book. That they will do no such thing gives them a tactical and psychological advantage.
8) They and their forebears have proven repeatedly over the last 1300 years that they will kill anyone, any time, and any place, and they expect to die doing so. This also gives them a tactical and psychological advantage.
9) If you live among or near a large immigrant Muslim community, buy a gun and learn to use it proficiently. If you live in a state that allows open carry, do so. If you live in a state that allows concealed carry, do so. The shooters in Garland failed because the event organizers planned for trouble and spent a pretty penny on armed security. If Americans are half the xenophobic gun nuts that liberals insist we are, now would probably be a good time to start letting our freak flags fly. Hunting's no fun when the rabbit's got a gun.
10) Start being more polite to Christians. It is just dumb to alienate the people who will go to war to keep you from being beheaded in the middle of your local farmer's market by crazed radical Muslims. Or don't, and enjoy being a diversion while the rest of us shore up our firing positions.
Like it or not, kids, we're in the shit now and it's far more likely to jump off in "blue" cities where "tolerance" is high and firearm enthusiasm is low than it is in rural areas where the rednecks fight each other just for shits and giggles. You know how Daryl Dixon is a fan favorite in The Walking Dead? Be like that.
As Heinlein was fond of saying, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
Recently, two high profile rape stories collapsed under the weight of their own bullshit. The first was when a Rolling Stonearticle that purported to tell the harrowing tale of a ritual gang rape at a frat house was shown, after a bit of actual investigation, to be completely fabricated. The second, just a couple of days later, was when Lena Dunham's account of being raped by a college Republican named "Barry" was proven false by, again, actual investigation of the claim. Much hand-flappy angst und wagling ensued and continues today, mostly by feminists bitterly lamenting the apparently misogynistic and oppressive investigation of what is considered in the Western world to be a heinous crime.
Both Rolling Stone and Random House (Dunham's publisher) have gone into damage control mode as they desperately hope to fend off what seem to be slam-dunk libel suits from the accused in both stories. Rolling Stone initially responded by shifting blame to "Jackie," the sole source for the gang rape yarn. This backfired immediately as victim advocates who uncritically accepted the story mere days before accused them of victim-blaming and further victimizing Jackie. Since then, much-reviled right wing muckraker Charles C. Johnson has reported that Jackie has a history of left wing activism and dubious sexual assault claims. This suggests that she may have made the whole thing up to further the political ends of campus "rape culture" moral scolds (not to mention feeding whatever mental problems she might have), a tactic reminiscent of the numerous similar hate crime hoaxes that have littered the national headlines over the past thirty years.
Dunham had already been reeling from the fallout of accounts in her sleazy memoir in which she describes systematically sexually abusing her little sister for over a decade, which she and the pop culture feminists that have hitched their wagons to her inexplicable success tried unconvincingly to fob off as normal girly experimentation. After some basic background investigation by Breitbart reporter John Nolte revealed gaping holes in her college rape story and "Barry" started a legal defense fund, Dunham popped up with a tedious and self-serving piece in Buzzfeed that contained a perfunctory apology to the poor, innocent schmuck who was blindsided by her lies jammed into a long-winded screed about how she's still, like, totally a real victim that deserves both support and congratulations for bravely telling her story, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she has so thoroughly trashed her own credibility that only the most deranged of feminist ideologues could take it even half seriously.
Some of my friends worry that I obsess too much about stuff like this, but it hits me in a very visceral fashion because I was once falsely accused of a couple of felonies that could have landed me in state prison. When a cop shows up at your door and starts asking pointed questions about events you don't know anything about with the demeanor of one who has already decided that anything you say short of a full confession is bullshit, it makes you more sensitive to what the falsely accused go through. It took several weeks for the fear of suddenly being arrested and carted off to jail by the police to dissipate. I can only imagine what "Barry" went through as his wife, family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers became aware of Dunham's claim of being raped by a man that most people would reasonably conclude was him. And we already know about the protests and vandalism the Phi Kappa Psi chapter at the University of Virginia as gone through (the frat is still under suspension even though the gang rape story has been debunked).
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh believes that the accused in both cases have very strong grounds for libel suits. I really hope they sue and win big. "Barry" and the members of Phi Kappa Psi deserve exonerations at least as high profile as the accusations they suffered. Maybe making Rolling Stone and Lena Dunham pay huge sums of cold, hard cash to the people they wronged will begin to put the brakes on this nonsense.
Being on the business end of such an accusation is a frightening experience. I read once that, in China, the penalty for a false rape accusation is to serve the sentence that the accused would have gotten. I don't really know if that's true, but I would absolutely be in favor of such a law where I live. The mere accusation of a sex crime is enough to destroy a man's academic and/or professional career, get him shunned socially, destroy his family and reputation, and dog him with dark rumors for the rest of his days. Sometimes it can even gethimkilled.
Feminists would have us "listen and believe" instead of question and investigate, perhaps because the latter might show false accusations to be more common than we are led to believe. One thing I know for certain is that rape is far too serious an accusation to accept without close scrutiny and investigation. Women who make such accusations falsely should be severely punished.
I just had a young woman in my taxi who received some dire news about a family member during the ride to the airport. She suddenly burst into tears and great, wracking sobs of emotional distress.
There are very few things that will put a man on high alert quicker than that. It's a hard-wired biological response; the CNS floods with adrenaline, vision and hearing get sharper, and the primitive lizard brain commands that the threat be found and killed. But, with nothing to fight, it turned a routine 30 minute drive into an ordeal of white knuckles and grinding teeth.
I don't put much stock in biological determinism, since we humans possess the ability to override most of our biological impulses, but it is very foolish to underestimate or disregard the profound and constant effect that biology has on our physiological, cognitive, and emotional processes.
I dropped her off about half an hour ago and I am just now starting to calm down. My nerves are shot, I'm exhausted, and I just want to eat and go to sleep.
There is all the difference in the world between treating pyeople equally and attempting to make them equal. - Friedrich Hayek
(Above is Emma Watson's He For She speech. I commented on it in real time as I watched it.
Starts well enough.
Quoting the dictionary definition of feminism is often used by the bona fide man-haters to deflect criticism. Almost always in conjunction with the feminist variant if the No True Scotsman fallacy.
She mentions being "sexualized" at 14, yet was willing to get naked on camera when everybody thought that she was going to be cast as the female lead in the film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey. Of course, the reason she felt sexualized at 14 couldn't possibly be because she actually was being sexualized by all those sex-specific hormones that her body was flooding itself with. That would be biology when we know that teenage girls are sexualized because of patriarchy.
At 18 she laments that her male friends weren't "allowed" to show their feelings. This is a solipsistic interpretation of the growing natural behavioral differences between the sexes at that age. (It later occurred to me that, although she mentioned several times men not being "allowed" to show their feelings, she never said anything about men expressing their masculinity. This is another example of solipsism; she fails to understand that emphasis on emotions is a biologically feminine trait. Men do in fact express their feelings; it's just not with the same overt displays of emotion.)
"Why has the word [feminism] become such an uncomfortable one?" Ye shall know a tree by its fruit.
First round of applause for the women's bodily autonomy comment. Pretty sure how this is going to go now.
She says that no country in the world has achieved gender equality, but she's switching between two mutually exclusive concepts of equality; equality of outcome (wage parity, etc.) and equality of treatment (being respected). One has got to give way for the other. Equality of outcome requires inequality of treatment; equality of treatment means inequality of outcome. Can't have both.
(paraphrasing) "My parents loved me and treated me with respect and I'm a girl so they are inadvertent feminists." Nice try, though.
She keeps acting like she can't figure out why people are so put off by the mere word (feminism). It comes with a lot of baggage there, sweetheart.
And now she extends a formal invitation for men to support feminism. That would be the feminism with all the baggage that people don't want to associate with.
And now she's ticking off a short list of social ills that men face, seemingly oblivious to the role that feminism has played in exacerbating the problems.
"...a distorted sense of what constitutes male success." No explanation what this is supposed to mean. Implies that feminism contains the real sense of what constitutes male success.
Lamenting gender stereotypes now. Sounds like the old "social construct" bullshit they use to deny biological sex differences.
When men are "free from gender stereotypes," things will change for women as a natural consequence. Well, no shit. When men stop being men, things will change for women. Has she not been paying attention?
"If men don't have to be aggressive to be accepted..." More "social construct" nonsense. Men "have to be" aggressive because it's a defining biological trait. Ditto for female submissiveness. (Relax there, ladies. Individual results may vary.)
Men and women should "feel free" to be "sensitive and strong." Again, "sensitive" and "strong" are loaded concepts. Sensitive, when applied to men, means overtly displaying feminine traits. Strong, when applied to women, means...OK - I don't know what the fuck it means, but it looks like the promo photo for a Lifetime network original movie.
A "spectrum" instead of two "opposing ideals." She's saying that sexual dimorphism is an "ideal" and not a biological reality. (And this anti-scientific nonsense gets applause.)
"It's about freedom." Yeah, yeah...it's always about "freedom."
Men could be "a more true and complete version of themselves" if only they acted less like men.
And now back to income inequality, the old outcome/treatment dichotomy, as if that hasn't been debunked over and over again. Flogging a dead horse.
Now she's talking about child brides, which is the latest attempt of feminists to ride on the coat tails of third world problems. No mention of corresponding child husbands.
"We are struggling for a uniting word..." Oy vey. Change the package, put a big yellow NEW AND IMPROVED! Now with 33% less Man Hating splash on the front.
*****
The speech was long on men should be allowed to have feelings, which is just a regurgitation of the silly old get in touch with your feminine side bullshit from the 1970s. The predicament that Western men find themselves in today is precisely because of a surplus of feminine conditioning and indoctrination (it's not men that are running K-12 education, is it?) and a deficit of male role models (observe the ever-climbing rate of single motherhood). And then she wonders why the male suicide rate is so high. Normal expressions of youthful masculinity are drugged into submission or vilified as inherently harmful to both women and themselves, as echoed by the "Patriarchy hurts men, too" line that feminists trotted out as another deflection when men's rights activists started gaining a bit of traction in the public discourse.
It seems that her heart is in the right place but, right off the bat, I suspected that she was trying to put lipstick on a pig. The name of her Twitter campaign gives the whole thing away: He For She.
Entitlement much?
Indeed. Her delivery was pleasant enough, but there's nothing new here.
