Posts Tagged ‘feminism’

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Auto-Decanted Victimhood Cant

Tuesday, February 4th, 2014

Via Will Shetterly comes the Social Justice Warrior Argument Generator. You can generate entire blogs or just Tumbler insults! Why go into six figures of debt for a Womyn’s Studies Degree to make your prose unreadable when a computer can do it for you for free?

If you’ve always wanted to auto-generate phrases like “atphobic misogynists like you deserve to die, you white-privileged ableist!!!!” or “you should quit erasing transracial & skoliosensual-identifying polykins, you middle class-elitist fascist!!!!”, now you can!

SCREAMING CAPITAL LETTERS and Way! Too!! Many!!! EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! included at no additional charge!

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Posted in Communism, Democrats | No Comments »

I Have Heard The Feminists Trolling, Each To Each…

Friday, January 31st, 2014

Feminism’s Twitter extremists have gotten so toxic that that infamous organ of right-wing patriarchal oppression, The Nation, actually took notice. I recommend the article by Michelle Goldberg not only for the schadenfreude, but also numerous glimmers of actual facts and insights breaking free of the politically correct morass. It examines the rage-war of victimhood identity politics through the very language purveyors of that mindset wish to impose.

Even an achingly politically correct feminist conference generates a response “so vitriolic, so full of bad faith and stubborn misinformation, that it felt like some sort of Maoist hazing.”

Online, however, intersectionality is overwhelmingly about chastisement and rooting out individual sin. Partly, says Cooper, this comes from academic feminism, steeped as it is in a postmodern culture of critique that emphasizes the power relations embedded in language. “We actually have come to believe that how we talk about things is the best indicator of our politics,” she notes. An elaborate series of norms and rules has evolved out of that belief, generally unknown to the uninitiated, who are nevertheless hammered if they unwittingly violate them. Often, these rules began as useful insights into the way rhetorical power works but, says Cross, “have metamorphosed into something much more rigid and inflexible.” One such rule is a prohibition on what’s called “tone policing.” An insight into the way marginalized people are punished for their anger has turned into an imperative “that you can never question the efficacy of anger, especially when voiced by a person from a marginalized background.”

Or, as I call it, the “get out of debate free” card. Also known as the “I don’t have to be polite because I’m marginalized, you racist!” card.

“But the expectation that feminists should always be ready to berate themselves for even the most minor transgressions—like being too friendly at a party—creates an environment of perpetual psychodrama, particularly when coupled with the refusal to ever question the expression of an oppressed person’s anger.”

Just change the word “feminists” to “anyone who disagrees with a Social Justice Warrior” and you’ll have a pretty good picture of their permanent rage-fest tactics.

Requisite The Nation en passant bashing of name-brand conservatives for imagined transgressions? Check.

“I’m not going to stop using the word ‘vagina’ for anybody, whether it’s Glenn Beck or Mike Huckabee or somebody on Twitter who feels it creates a dysphoric response,” she tells me. “I can’t do that and still advocate for reproductive freedom. It’s just not a realistic thing to expect.”

If Beck or Huckabee has actually asked people to stop using the word “vagina” it has escaped my notice. But they’re only name-checked here as designated hate-fetish objects designed to burnish the speaker’s progressive bona fides.

The piece pays special attention to #solidarityisforwhitewomen creator Mikki Kendall, who essentially says white feminists have all their hate coming.

“Feminism has a mammy problem, and mammy doesn’t live here anymore,” Kendall says. “I know The Help told you you was smart, you was important, you was special. The Help lied.”

Maybe Kendall isn’t as big of an idiot as the article makes her sound, but if you’re dismissing the concerns of your critics by stereotyping them as cliches out of a fictional movie, then you’re the one being the racist, and you’re the one with the problems.

Read the whole thing. Here’s a separate cheat-sheet to the participants. And for those who followed the Wiscon/Failfandom wars, it’s no surprise at all that the mob is now trying to get Goldberg fired…

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Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | 1 Comment »

LinkSwarm for January 29, 2014

Wednesday, January 29th, 2014

Lots of news from around the world, where the global economy is handing like a Kia that’s just started losing traction on an icy hill:

  • Bundesbank: Don’t look at us, broke PIIGS, you’re going to have to screw your own people.
  • Does a big default loom in China?
  • Russian bank halts all cash withdrawals?
  • Meanwhile, reports that Chinese banks have stopped allowing withdrawals turns out to be a false alarm.
  • European earnings outlook: Zero.
  • Problem: Greek economy still sucking wind. Solution: change how GDP is calculated.
  • Japan hits record trade deficit. Remember when they were supposed to take over the world?
  • The ruble flirts with record lows.
  • Obama and the Democratic Party’s numbers are worse than they were in 2010.
  • Planned Parenthood wonders what’s the big deal with a little statutory rape among friends?
  • Florida heroin kingpin is an illegal alien on food stamps.
  • Another Democrat convicted of that vote fraud that doesn’t exist. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Democrats actually polling worse than they were in 2010. And that’s from Dem pollster/booster John B. Judis.
  • Target’s part-time workers get ObamaCared.
  • We have a winner for troll of the year:

    Every time I hear someone say that feminism is about validating every choice a woman makes I have to fight back vomit.

    Do people really think that a stay at home mom is really on equal footing with a woman who works and takes care of herself? There’s no way those two things are the same. It’s hard for me to believe it’s not just verbally placating these people so they don’t get in trouble with the mommy bloggers.

    Having kids and getting married are considered life milestones. We have baby showers and wedding parties as if it’s a huge accomplishment and cause for celebration to be able to get knocked up or find someone to walk down the aisle with. These aren’t accomplishments, they are actually super easy tasks, literally anyone can do them. They are the most common thing, ever, in the history of the world. They are, by definition, average.

    Amy Glass, come down and collect your coveted Trolly! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “Woman Takes Short Half-Hour Break From Being Feminist To Enjoy TV Show”
  • In case you didn’t notice, Iran’s mullahs are still lying, violent scumbags.
  • Strangely enough, Israeli’s trust Netanyahu more than Obama. Funny how a mere 40+ years Palestinians breaking every agreement they’ve signed will sour people on the peace process…
  • Michael Totten wanders around Cuba some more, where he let’s us know that Cubans can be arrested for unauthorized shrimp.
  • California Court determines that disgraced serial journalistic liar Stephen Glass is too dishonest to be a lawyer.
  • In other news, Eugene Volokh stuns Washington Post readers with non-liberal thoughts on guns and other topics.
  • Have you ever considered the possibility that Woody Allen isn’t a child molester?
  • Drive a Fit, a Prius, a Yaris, or a Fiat 500? Hope you’ve made out a will.
  • Anthony Weiner forced to downsize to an apartment whose rent is a mere 6 times my mortgage.

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    Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Camille Paglia Bashes Weiner, Hillary, Victimhood Feminism, and Foucault

    Thursday, August 22nd, 2013

    Camille Paglia is always good for an orthogonal view on current pieties, and this interview with her (warning: Salon) is no different. She also has a gift for intellectual putdowns that work at a much higher level of reference than Maureen Dowd’s.

    Take, for example, her take on Anthony Weiner:

    Two words: pathetic dork. How sickeningly debased our politics have become that this jabbering cartoon weasel could be taken seriously for a second as a candidate for mayor of New York.

    Hillary Clinton and Benghazi:

    It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton (born the same year as me) is our party’s best chance. She has more sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train. And what exactly has she ever accomplished — beyond bullishly covering for her philandering husband? She’s certainly busy, busy and ever on the move — with the tunnel-vision workaholism of someone trying to blot out uncomfortable private thoughts.

    I for one think it was a very big deal that our ambassador was murdered in Benghazi. In saying “I take responsibility” for it as secretary of state, Hillary should have resigned immediately. The weak response by the Obama administration to that tragedy has given a huge opening to Republicans in the next presidential election. The impression has been amply given that Benghazi was treated as a public relations matter to massage rather than as the major and outrageous attack on the U.S. that it was.

    Throughout history, ambassadors have always been symbolic incarnations of the sovereignty of their nations and the dignity of their leaders. It’s even a key motif in “King Lear.” As far as I’m concerned, Hillary disqualified herself for the presidency in that fist-pounding moment at a congressional hearing when she said, “What difference does it make what we knew and when we knew it, Senator?” Democrats have got to shake off the Clinton albatross and find new blood. The escalating instability not just in Egypt but throughout the Mideast is very ominous. There is a clash of cultures brewing in the world that may take a century or more to resolve — and there is no guarantee that the secular West will win.

    On feminism:

    Oh, feminism is still alive? Thanks for the tip! It sure is invisible, except for the random whine from some maleducated product of the elite schools who’s found a plush berth in glossy magazines. It’s hard to remember those bad old days when paleofeminist pashas ruled the roost. In the late ‘80s, the media would routinely turn to Gloria Steinem or the head of NOW for “the women’s view” on every issue — when of course it was just the Manhattan/D.C. insider’s take, with a Democratic activist spin. Their shameless partisanship eventually doomed those Stalinist feminists, who were trampled by the pro-sex feminist stampede of the early ‘90s (in which I am proud to have played a vocal role). That insurgency began in San Francisco in the mid-‘80s and went national throughout the following decade. They keep dusting Steinem off and trotting her out to pin awards on her, but she’s the walking dead. Her anointed heirs (like Susan Faludi) sure didn’t pan out, did they?

    While it’s a big relief not to have feminist bullies sermonizing from every news show anymore, the leadership vacuum is alarming. It’s very distressing, for example, that the atrocities against women in India — the shocking series of gang rapes, which seem never to end — have not been aggressively condemned in a sustained way by feminist organizations in the U.S. I wanted to hear someone going crazy about it in the media and not letting up, day after day, week after week. The true mission of feminism today is not to carp about the woes of affluent Western career women but to turn the spotlight on life-and-death issues affecting women in the Third World, particularly in rural areas where they have little protection against exploitation and injustice.

    And one need not share her fascination with bondage and discipline to enjoy her artful takedown of the Cult of Foucault:

    My principal complaint about those three books, all from university presses, was that their intriguing firsthand documentation of the BDSM community was pointlessly shot through with turgid, pretentious theorizing, drawn from the slavishly idolized but hopelessly inaccurate and unreliable Michel Foucault.

    In this tight job market, young scholars are in a terrible bind. They have to cater to and flatter the academic establishment if they hope to survive. Furthermore, they have not been taught basic skills in historical investigation, weighing of evidence, and argumentation. There has been a collapse in basic academic standards during the theory era that will take universities decades to recover from. I was incensed that none of those three authors had read a page of the Marquis de Sade, one of the most original and influential writers of the past three centuries. Sade had a major impact on Nietzsche, whom Foucault vainly tried to model himself on. Nor had the three authors read “The Story of O” or explored a host of other crucial landmarks in modern sadomasochism. No, it was Foucault, Foucault, Foucault — a con artist who will one day be a mere footnote in the bulging chronicle of academic follies.

    Paglia can still be spectacularly wrong (such as her neo-Freudian take on Weiner later in that section), but she’s always thought-provoking and never dull. Read the whole thing.

    (Hat tip: Ace.)

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    Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | 1 Comment »

    Shut Up White Women!
    (or The #solidarityisforwhitewomen Tag And What It Means)

    Tuesday, August 13th, 2013

    Last night the #solidarityisforwhitewomen tag raced to the top of the Twitter trending chart, treating people not only to an amusing left-on-left slap fight, but also providing a glimpse into the fever swamps of far-left victimhood identity politics.

    It’s an unholy marriage of Marxism and racial identity politics, brewed and decanted among far-left community organizers and tenured faculty members. The basic idea is that victimhood equals saintliness, in that the more of a victim you are, the less of a white capitalist hetronormative patriarchal oppressor you are. (Feel free to add another dozen or so far-left buzzwords to the preceding sentence.) This is done both in order to assert who has the greater moral claim on the spoils of big government, and to cow others and guilt-trip them into giving in to your demands, because black victimhood automatically trumps white privilege, etc. It’s also to keep people firmly ensconced in the left’s group-think herd mentality rather than thinking critically. It’s the language of thought-terminating cliches, designed to end debate by placing those employing it higher on the hierarchy of victimhood than those it is deployed against.

    As for what brought on this hashtag, well, it’s a rich, zesty, resentful stew of left-wing grievance-mongering.

    Part of it seems to be backlash over all the attention lavished on Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg’s “how to have it all by climbing the corporate ladder to CEO and still having children while promoting the sisterhood” book, which seems particularly near and dear to the hearts of white female business writers everywhere.

    Part of it seems to stem from some white feminists actually daring to be critical of radical Islam, which (for complex and mysterious reasons) seems to trump white feminism on the hierarchy of victimhood.

    The topless activists of Femen seem a particular object of their ire:

    For some reason, something Amanda Marcotte did in 2008 still seems to be a fresh wound in the minds of many:

    And it’s just a chance to grind the usual left-wing axes some more:

    And this is particularly gratifying for those of us on the Vast Right Wing:

    It’s also amazing how often some variant “You shut up” is deployed for any white women who happen to have some objection to this mass race-based mobbing.

    The lesson: On the far left, you are not allowed to speak when your superiors on the victim hierarchy chart are speaking. As usual on the far-left, “let’s have a dialog on race” turns out to mean “you’ll shut up and listen while I condemn you, bigot.”

    Of course, underlying all of this is a real truth that none dare speak out loud: The Democratic Party as currently constructed spreads the benefits of its patronage disproportionately to old white politicians and their favored cronies. Just look at the paleness of hue of all those green energy subsidy recipients. Why, think of all the community organizing and diversity consulting sinecures that money could have underwritten! The Pigford scandal is a drop in the bucket by comparison. The Hillary Clintons, Harry Reids and Nancy Pelosis are always going to have first call at the trough of big government largess, because that’s the way the Democratic Party’s spoil system works.

    But above all, this blue internecine warfare is designed to do one thing: to keep those on the identity politics left as part of the herd. Those fixated on victimhood and inter-feminist doctrinal differences are far less likely to question why their policies have failed so badly when allowed to run their course in Detroit, or why 72% of blacks are born out of wedlock, thanks in large measure to to the welfare state.

    More commentary from Twitchy.

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    Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | 3 Comments »

    WisCon’s Feminist Failfandom Brigade Gets My Locus April Fool’s Piece Taken Down

    Monday, April 1st, 2013

    In an effort to prove that they’re not dour, humorless, thin-skinned avatars of political correctness with authoritarian tendencies, Wiscon’s Feminist failfandom brigade had my contribution to Locus Online’s April Fools Day festivities taken down. (Note that, under the transparent pseudonym of L. Ron Creepweans, I’ve participated in every Locus online April Fools Day since 2002.)

    Locus forced Locus Online editor Mark Kelly to pull the piece only a few hours after it went up.

    Thanks to the magic of Internet caches, you can still read it in its entirety:

    And the text:

    WisCon Makes Burqas Mandatory for All Attendees

    Today the SF3 ruling committee for the Madison, Wisconsin-based feminist SF convention WisCon announced that starting this year, all attendees would be required to wear burqas.

    “We were trying to think of what we could do to make Wiscon more inclusive,” said con chair Belle Gunness. “Suddenly, we realized that devout Muslims could easily be offended by the amount of sinful and wanton flesh on display at Wiscon. Therefore, starting with this year’s Wiscon, we’ve made burqas mandatory for all attendees. Allah Akbar!”

    Both male and female members will be required to don the traditional black, face-covering, head-to-toe Islamic garb for all convention events. Gunness indicated that the convention would have substantial quantities of Burqas for rental to congoers, from Small to 5XL sizes. As an added benefit, she said that the new regulations would help eliminate “rampant lookism.”

    Gunness said that guests would be required to wear the garb as well, “in the spirit of egalitarianism.”

    Wiscon also announced that next year’s guest lineup would consist of J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Joss Whedon and Suzanne Collins. “At least as far as you know.”

    For those tuning in for the first time, this was a direct jab (in humorous form) at WisCon’s previous decision to yank their Guest-of-Honor invitation to Elizabeth Moon for daring to voice (in the mildest possible form) politically incorrect thoughts about certain aspects of modern Islam.

    How radical Islam became so sacred to radical feminists is a topic for another time, and I have hamburgers to cook. But it’s sad to think how a tiny, unimportant, radical fringe of disgruntled feminists (so aptly dubbed “Failfandom” by Steven Francis Murphy) have not only come to believe that their right not to be offended trumps the free speech of others, but that other people in the SF community have come to cave into their petulant demands. (Whatever happened to “The solution to free speech is more free speech?” It seems that fewer and fewer people on the left side of the political aisle believe that any more.)

    But if there objective was to get this piece to disappear down the memory hole, I think they shall find that they are sadly mistaken…

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    Posted in Jihad, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors | 146 Comments »

    The Two Year Anniversary of ObamaCare

    Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

    Today is the two year anniversary of the passage of ObamaCare. Note that Republicans are marking the anniversary of Obama’s signature achievement, while the White House is not. Even Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer admits that it’s an electoral liability for Democrats.

    That might have something to do with its stupendous unpopularity, not only among Republicans, but also among Democrats. Obama says that’s because of attack ads against it. Charles Krauthammer says that’s bunk:

    There’s a widespread understanding that ObamaCare isn’t good for anyone, especially young people, and it’s a budgetary disaster.

    And next week the Supreme Court will hear arguments on its constitutionality. Many are suggesting that a decision in ObamaCare’s favor will actually damage Obama’s reelection chances.

    It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. Liberals thought ObamaCare would get more popular after passage. Instead, it was one of the biggest factors in the historic wipe-out Democratic House members experienced in 2010.

    More specifically, eight out of the eleven “Stupak Block Flippers” (i.e., the theoretically staunch pro-life Democrats who swore up and down they would never, ever, ever vote for ObamaCare if it included taxpayer funding for abortion, right up until they voted for taxpayer-funded abortion) went down in electoral defeat. At the time, the insistence for public funding for abortion seemed like a tactical error on the part of liberals. After all, why bother with that tiny sop to feminists when you’re busy nationalizing one-sixth of the economy?

    But since then, the fervor with which Democrats have pursued imposing this mandate on Catholics (part and parcel of their contempt for religion), their white hot fury at Rush Limbaugh’s (admittedly foolish) remarks, and the continuing overheated, drama queen “war on women” rhetoric coming from the left side of the blogsphere suggests that yes, that was what ObamaCare was really about, and they’re willing to remain a permanent political minority to maintain it.

    So be it. If forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions is the hill they want to die on*, I suppose we should let them. (Though not at the cost of failing to mention Obama’s failure on the economy, on creating the conditions for private industry to create jobs, Fast & Furious, or his naked cronyism.) As Mickey Kaus has noted, this issue is a serious political loser for Obama, and we should keep hammering away on it, not despite the shrieks of outrage from liberalism’s feminist amen corner, but because of them.

    *”Violent, eliminationist” military metaphor offered up as free rhetorical bonus!

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    Posted in Budget, Democrats, Media Watch, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Welfare State | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for March 20, 2012

    Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

    Had a busy day working and keeping track of contractors laying sod in my back yard, so here’s another LinkSwarm:

  • Two ads, one saying people should reject Catholicism, one saying they should reject Islam. Guess which one The New York Times refused to run.
  • “General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, the head of President Obama’s Jobs Board, plans to vote for Mitt Romney.”
  • The decline in culture at Goldman Sachs: “Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.”
  • “It appears that when he’s not busy killing un-born babies, he might like to jerk off while watching little boys play baseball”.
  • Sarah Hoyt on the myth of the war against women: “War is where the enemy decimates your numbers – like, say in China where abortion is killing mostly females. War is where you are kept from learning – like in most Arab countries, where women have restrictions placed on their education…If this is war it is war on men…If you truly believe refusing to force employers to pay for birth control is a war on women, then you are fragile little flowers who deserve to experience life practically anywhere else in the world.”
  • As Matt Dowling notes, it’s not a war on women, it’s a war on big government.
  • From Ace comes word that Nurse Bloomberg has outlawed food donations to the homeless that’s too high in fat and salt. If you put this in a Saturday Night Live parody, people would criticize it as too unbelievable…
  • In shocking news, liberal writer Froma Harrop, who appears to have spent all her life in and around New York City, isn’t worried about high gas prices. Imagine my shock. And if that name sounds familiar, there’s a reason:

    • Up Real Soon Now: Hopefully an interview with another major Texas Senate candidate…

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    Posted in Democrats, Economics, Media Watch | No Comments »

    This Week in Jihad for December 16, 2010

    Thursday, December 16th, 2010

    Lots of Jihad news of note this week:

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | 3 Comments »

    Cowardly WisCon ConCom Caves

    Thursday, October 21st, 2010

    The Wiscon convention committee (concom) has caved in to extremist demands and canceled Elizabeth Moon’s Guest of Honor invitation.

    Why?

    She dared to voice politically incorrect thoughts about Islam. Naturally the very small but quite vocal FailFandom contingent dedicated to the far-left agenda of political correctness and identity politics demanded her head. Sadly, the cowards running WisCon decided to offer it up to appease the PC Police.

    So America’s main feminist science fiction dis-invited a Guest of Honor they had already extended an invitation to (which you just don’t do) for the crime of speaking out against radical Islam, the greatest threat to woman’s freedom in the 21st century. And Elizabeth Moon isn’t Mark Steyn or Ann Coulter; my impression from talking to her is that she’s probably best described as a moderate Democrat. And I suspect anyone from outside the suffocating confines of FailFandom are likely to find very little in her original essay to justify this self-indulgent orgy of wailing and rending of garments the FailFandom brigade greeted it with.

    Bad move, WisCon. And it’s one you will regret.

    Hat tip: Patrice Sarath.

    Edited to Add: Welcome Instapundit readers! I hope some of the other topics here on BattleSwarm will interest you as well. I do want to note that this is my political blog, and I cover non-political science fiction (and other) topics over on Futuramen.

    Also, I have some signed Elizabeth Moon book for sale over here as well.

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    Posted in Democrats, Jihad | 45 Comments »

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