Trans Movement Trumps Feminism?

Excerpt:

There are several corollary take-aways to the present moment. First, we have learned that the trans movement trumps feminism, just as Europe’s reaction to the mass Muslim sexual assaults this New Year’s Eve revealed that multiculturalism trumps feminism. Given the constant caterwauling about “rape culture” by campus feminists, one would have thought that feminists would have opposed males’ use of facilities frequented by unclothed or otherwise vulnerable females. But apparently the claim that college campuses are awash in serial rapists waxes and wanes in salience depending on context. It now becomes merely another sign of redneck bigotry to suggest that a heterosexual male (i.e., a rapist in waiting) or a sexual pervert may take advantage of the new trans rules. Wellesley and Smith colleges have twisted themselves into knots deciding whether the “trans” category trumps the favored status of females. They concluded that being trans cancels the disability of being male and in fact elevates the trans “female” to the highest rank on the victim totem pole.

Whether the trans movement actually trumps feminism of course depends on how "feminism" is defined.

"Desiring Young Les(bi)an Visionaries in the Archive"

Feminists get turned on in archive and write a paper about it:

Abstract
This paper presents a critically reflexive account of the experiences of a group of researchers at the Canadian Women's Movement Archives. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed, Claire Colebrook, and Victoria Hesford, it argues that the researchers shared intensely embodied and emotional encounters with the archival record of lesbians’ struggles to create and define community. These encounters encouraged the researchers to explore the potential of their own sexual subjectivities. Their deepened understanding of the complex lesbian and feminist past provided them with the desire to reconsider the collective promise of ‘lesbian’ and ‘bisexual’ for their own future community.

Read the whole thing for $41.

Canadian School Bans Words "Mother" and "Father"

It was only a matter of time.

That's the last straw. If this happens in the U.S. I'm moving to Canada another planet!

Against Marriage and Motherhood

If you think the recent turn of events regarding gay "marriage" have come out of the blue, they haven't.  And they precede Obama's wanting to "fundamentally transform America."

This essay argues that current advocacy of lesbian and gay rights to legal marriage and parenthood insufficiently criticizes both marriage and motherhood as they are currently practiced and structured by Northern legal institutions. Instead we would do better not to let the State define our intimate unions and parenting would be improved if the power presently concentrated in the hands of one or two guardians were diluted and distributed through an appropriately concerned community.

Conversations with Harvey Mansfield and Christina Hoff Sommers

More winners from Bill Kristol.

On Tocqueville:
On Strauss:
On lunatic feminism:

Christina Hoff Sommers: “Femininity and masculinity are real and most people, not all, but most people, many of the stereotypes are true. That women do tend to be more nurturing and risk-adverse and have usually a richer emotional vocabulary, and men tend to be a little less explicit about their emotions, emotionally flattened – we’ll say, stoical to be nice. More stoical, more competitive and they do engage in a lot of risky behavior, for better or worse. Men tend to show up at the extremes of success and failure more than women because they are sometimes more – single-minded in the pursuit of, more obsessive pursuits – more likely to do that than women. But you take gender studies and they say, ‘Oh, it’s all a social construction.’ Unless you’re gay, then they say, ‘Okay, that’s just the way they are, and then if you’re trans, I don’t know how they’re going it account for that….”

The Left, Sexual Norms, and the Military

Don't be fooled.  The goal of the left is not to make our military stronger--as if it were not the best and most powerful in the world already (if anything, the left would like to see it taken down a peg or fifty).  The goal is to push forward the opposite of all traditional values, plain and simple.  It is to flip on its face every traditional norm.  This is particularly the case when it comes to sexuality and gender, the summos bonos in the progressive movement.

Sexual and gender autonomy drive almost everything.

On What is Left of Our Culture

Theodore Dalrymple on his communist father, political correctness, feminism, and more here.

Excerpt:

FrontPageMag: You make the shrewd observation of how political correctness engenders evil because of “the violence that it does to people’s souls by forcing them to say or imply what they do not believe, but must not question.” Can you talk about this a bit?

Dalrymple: Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.  

I take it as given that man, having contradictory desires, is always subject to frustration, even when happy. For example, we want both adventure and safety, and when we have the one we long for the other. All forms of human happiness contain within themselves the seeds of their own decomposition.

Modern man particularly - or so it seems to me - is particularly bad at recognising that much of his unhappiness or discontent stems from this inevitable source. Rather, he blames the structure of society and thinks that a perfection that will resolve all contradictions and eliminate all frustrations can be achieved, if only we abolished private property or followed the example of the 7th century followers of Mohammed. The attempt to force people to do so gives meaning to their existence, and of course a lot of sadistic pleasure into the bargain.

FrontPageMag: You discuss the horrifying suffering that women endure under the vicious and sadistic structures of Islam’s gender apartheid. You touch on the eerie silence of Western leftist feminists on this issue, noting “Where two pieties – feminism and multi-culturalism – come into conflict, the only way of preserving both is an indecent silence.”

To be sure, the Left has long posed as a great champion of women’s rights, gay rights, minorti rights, democratic rights etc. Yet today, it has reached out in solidarity with the most fascistic women-hating, gay-hating, minority-hating and democracy hating force on the face of the earth – Islamism.

What gives? It’s really nothing new though is it? (i.e. the Left’s political pilgrimages to communist gulags etc.)

Dalrymple: I think the problem here is one of a desired self-image. Tolerance is the greatest moral virtue and broadmindedness the greatest intellectual one. Moreover, no decent person can be other than a feminist. People therefore want to be both multiculturalist and feminist. But multiculturalism and feminism obviously clash; therefore, you avoid the necessity to give up one or the other merely by disregarding the phenomena. How you feel about yourself is more important to you than the state of the world.

Gender Wage Gap: Tilting at Windmills?

The Gender Pay Gap Based on Unjust Discrimination is a Complete Myth

77 Cents on the Dollar Myth

Much of the Wage Gap Accounted for by Self-Selection in College Majors

How Many Flight Attendants are Men?

Wage Gap Myth Exposed by Feminists

The AAUW researchers looked at male and female college graduates one year after graduation. After controlling for several relevant factors (though some were left out, as we shall see), they found that the wage gap narrowed to only 6.6 cents. How much of that is attributable to discrimination? As AAUW spokesperson Lisa Maatz candidly said in an NPR interview, "We are still trying to figure that out."

But isn't the unexplained gap, albeit far less than the endlessly publicized 23 cents, still a serious injustice? Shouldn't we look for ways to compel employers to pay women the extra 5-7 cents? Not before we figure out the cause. The AAUW notes that part of the new 6.6-cent wage-gap may be owed to women's supposedly inferior negotiating skills -- not unscrupulous employers. Furthermore, the AAUW's 6.6 cents includes some large legitimate wage differences masked by over-broad occupational categories. For example, its researchers count "social science" as one college major and report that, among such majors, women earned only 83 percent of what men earned. That may sound unfair... until you consider that "social science" includes both economics and sociology majors.

Economics majors (66 percent male) have a median income of $70,000; for sociology majors (68 percent female) it is $40,000. Economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute has pointed to similar incongruities. The AAUW study classifies jobs as diverse as librarian, lawyer, professional athlete, and "media occupations" under a single rubric--"other white collar." Says Furchtgott-Roth: "So, the AAUW report compares the pay of male lawyers with that of female librarians; of male athletes with that of female communications assistants. That's not a comparison between people who do the same work." With more realistic categories and definitions, the remaining 6.6 gap would certainly narrow to just a few cents at most.
Could the gender wage gap turn out to be zero? Probably not. The AAUW correctly notes that there is still evidence of residual bias against women in the workplace. However, with the gap approaching a few cents, there is not a lot of room for discrimination. And as economists frequently remind us, if it were really true that an employer could get away with paying Jill less than Jack for the same work, clever entrepreneurs would fire all their male employees, replace them with females, and enjoy a huge market advantage.

Abortion Rights are not Only for Women

An excerpt from Katherine Timpf:

Feminists are now arguing about whether or not it’s offensive to talk about abortion as a “women’s issue” because gender is not that simple and men have abortions too.

“We must acknowledge and come to terms with the implicit cissexism in assuming that only women have abortions,” feminist activist Lauren Rankin stated in July 2013. Or, as Jos Truitt of Feministing explained: “Trans men have abortions. Gender queer people have abortions. Two spirit people have abortions. [!?!?!?!?]  People who do not fit into the box of ‘woman’ have abortions.”

In response, abortion funds around the country have already been changing their names and language to be more “gender inclusive.” Last year, “Fund Texas Women” became “Fund Texas Choice,” because, in the words of co-founder Lenzi Scheible, the group “refuse[d] to deny the existence and humanity of trans* people any longer.” But not every feminist agrees with Rankin and Truitt and Scheible and friends.

At the risk of being branded a “cissexist,” feminist essayist and poet Katha Pollitt wrote a piece for the The Nation today daring to suggest that maybe it’s not totally offensive to link being pregnant with being female. “I’m going to argue here that removing ‘women’ from the language of abortion is a mistake,” she writes. “In an era where politics is all about identity, as a tool for organizing and claiming public space, are women about to lose theirs? Because after all we’re all just people now.”

TB: And now Monty Python weighs in...

Gender Roles, Women in Combat, and Senator Tom Cotton

My senator has been in the news of late.  Maybe you've heard.  Perhaps as a result I was asked for my thoughts on the following commentary by the Arkansas Times' senior progressive editor, Max Brantley, on some remarks Cotton made. I'll comment throughout.  

[H]ere's an area where Cotton continues today to say things that echo his youthful comments and they seem likely to contribute to a gender gap in this race. Remember when he said all women should be legally prohibited from serving in combat roles? It's not just a muscle mass thing, because clearly some women could meet the physical standards and all men aren't automatically capable by virtue of their gender. He said, with emphasis added:

To have women serving in infantry, though, could impair the mission-essential tasks of those units. And that’s been proven in study after study, it’s nature, upper body strength, and physical movements, and speed, and endurance, and so forth.

Nature? We look forward to more from Rep. Cotton on the nature of women. We now know his patronizing outlook goes back many years.


TB: Where, oh where, to begin?

Calvin & Hobbes Take Leftwing Feminist Ideology to Its Logical Conclusion

Bill Watterson must have had something like this in mind when he came up with that strip.    Liberals are hilarious.

Check out the "Genderbread Man Person" by "social justice" author, Sam Killermann Killerperson, which was apparently a part of the material given to the teachers for their "training." (No, I'm not making that name up.)

Public tax dollars hard at work!

The Radical Feminist Movement and Institutions of Higher Indoctrination

What to do when you're a feminist and women can vote, go to the university (in greater numbers than men), hold political offices, run for President, find gainful employment, marry and divorce, and so forth?  Now what?  Here's what:

The video below is 34 minutes long.  Please watch it all.  For those of us who have spent a considerable amount of time in higher education the video is not surprising.  To those of you who have not, you need to be shocked to your senses.  The woman who speaks throughout, Janice Fiamengo, is truly courageous.  [The guy's facial expression at 21:22: "When dogmatic ideology is smacked in the face with reason."]

Defending the Oppressed: Grandfather Saves Granddaughter From Rape

This is the sort of story that happens all the time that you also NEVER hear about in the mainstream media.  It goes hand-in-hand with this dismantling of Adam Gopnik's STUPID rant about gun-control at the New Yorker.

The granddad (who is not named in any news report) is a hero.  And he got his stolen Cadillac back to boot!

The last line below is priceless.

ARMED SELF-DEFENSE IN NORTH CAROLINA

Via Robert Stacy McCain, an inspiring story from North Carolina:

A Lumberton man traded gunfire with three men who forced their way into his home, robbed the family, tried to rape his granddaughter and stole his car Monday, Robeson County authorities said.

One of the men, identified as Jamie Faison, 20, was shot and found dead in the stolen Cadillac parked at his home on the 600 block of Singletary Church Road, Sheriff Kenneth Sealey said in a news release.

The two other men turned up at area hospitals with gunshot wounds. … The homeowner, Kenneth Byrd, 67, was shot multiple times, the release said. …

The family told them that a man came to the door and said he was having problems with his vehicle and needed water.

Here are the three criminals. I’m not sure which of the three rang the doorbell, and of course no one would ever recommend profiling of any sort, but if any of these guys came to your door, you should probably keep it locked:

Two men wearing black clothing, ski masks and gloves forced their way into the home and demanded money, Sealey said. All three of the men had guns.

The Byrds were pushed to the back of their home and instructed to open a safe.

When the men tried to rape the couple’s granddaughter, Byrd grabbed a gun and exchanged shots with the assailants, Sealey said.

The grandfather was shot multiple times, but prevailed. Hats off to him. I am pretty sure the granddaughter is thankful that he had a gun in the house and knew how to use it.

McCain adds this priceless observation:

Feminists had no comment, as these would-be rapists were not members of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

10 Hours of Princess Leia Walking in NYC (in 2.5 minutes)

If you need an explanation see here.

Comedian Aziz Ansari: Everyone Should Say That They Are Feminists

Check this clip out from Letterman.  The feminism equals political egalitarianism meme is trending.  Feminism is trendy.  If you want to be part of the pop culture, political, university establishment you must say that you are a feminist.  Those poor, poor ignorant (or misogynistic) people who did not clap when asked who in the audience were feminists.  What were they thinking?

"It is not enough that you obey Big Brother.  You must love him."

If feminism=egalitarianism, then by parity of reasoning, masculinism=egalitarianism.  But then by the transitivity of identity, feminism=masculinism.  So if someone asks you if you're a feminist, and you're an egalitarian, just say "Yes, I'm a masculinist" for they are the very same thing.

Emma Watson Feminism Follow-up

*UPDATE*

For an example of a (willful?) distortion of feminism and egalitariansim see #7 in conjunction with  #20 here.

Is there such a thing as feminism?  Does the word "feminism" have a definition and a limited semantic range?  Or are there only feminisms?  These are interesting but difficult questions to answer. Similar questions can be raised about religion, liberalism, socialism, conservativism, masculinism and the like.

 My problem is this: If you want to tell people to embrace feminism then let's be clear about what we're supposed to be signing up for.  If feminism is something which is to be praised, protected, and promoted, then let us know what it is we're supposed to be promoting.  If you don't think there is such a thing as feminism, then why keep talking as if there is?

Hermione and the Chamber of Feminist Conundrums

Here.

*UPDATE*

A commenter on Twitter writes that I wrote a strawman characterization of feminism.
To which I reply: "A strawman argument? Are you suggesting Emma Watson is not a feminist? Or that Camille Paglia who I link to is not either?"To which he replies:"There is no "feminism" so much as there are "feminisms"—Multiple ways to approach and/or address the question of sex equality."

Maybe that's right. But if there is no feminism, how can I be giving a strawman characterization of feminism?  Answer: I can't. (As well, if that is right, then feminism is immune to both criticism and praise).  So there was no strawman characterization.  There was, however, a critique of a particular speech by a feminist which has been lauded with praise, apparently not due to the enlightening substance therein but for the platitudes.

So I've been hearing all this fuss and gushing praise about some great feminist speech Emma Watson gave.  Against my better judgment I decided to read it.  Scroll down here for full transcript.  Meh.  I'll comment on a few selections below and then point to my kind of feminist:

One in Four Women Raped on Campus?

I just finished reading Allison Blakeney's diatribe against her alma mater's Philosophy Department and its "rape culture."  Retired CO Boulder philosophy professor Wes Morriston sensibly replies here.  The whole CO Boulder situation is an excellent example of the left devouring itself.

Ms. Blakeney makes the oft repeated claim, by the President/VP, Huffington Post--the usuals-- that 1 in 4 women on college campus are raped/sexually assaulted.

Is that statistic surprising?  It sure was to me!  ONE in FOUR??

I have found that a good rule of thumb is that, when a statistic is thrown out that sounds too good (or bad) to be true (especially from ends-justify-means-liberals), it probably is.

Heather MacDonald tries to set the record straight in a long but well argued piece.  It is definitely worth the read.

Here is just a brief snippet:

If the one-in-four statistic is correct—it is sometimes modified to “one-in-five to one-in-four”—campus rape represents a crime wave of unprecedented proportions. No crime, much less one as serious as rape, has a victimization rate remotely approaching 20 or 25 percent, even over many years. The 2006 violent crime rate in Detroit, one of the most violent cities in America, was 2,400 murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults per 100,000 inhabitants—a rate of 2.4 percent.

Of course, conservatives will agree that any rape culture is too much rape culture.  Where they disagree is with the notion that the right way to go about lowering the number of rapes is by throwing vast amounts of tax money at the sort of "education" and policies envisioned by the left.  

ESPN's Kate Fagan On Early Childhood Indoctrination

Translation by Andrew McCarthy

Wives Also Kill Husbands Quite Often---Alan Dershowitz

Department of Justice Homicide Statistics: Way More Men Murdered Than Women

More Media Love on Ray Rice, O.J. Simpson, Etc.

This from a reader (my comments in bold):

1. Is it really justice when the mob wants to lynch Rice, Rodger Goodell, and take down the entire NFL? Every mob member is screaming moral outrage and wants to destroy everyone in their wake. Look, I'm all for chivalry and treating women with honor and respect. I have four precious daughters and a wife that I deeply love. If a man ever slugged one of my girls and knocked her unconscious, I would want to murder the gutless evildoer. But, does that make me morally good? No! In fact, this is why we have a justice system. It's an eye for an eye, but I would want to repay death for a punch. Isn't this similar to what the media and the mob are calling for? Nobody (including Rice, his wife, or the NFL) is justifying what Rice did. But the bloodthirsty mob isn't crying out for justice....they want vengeance and want to destroy Rice and Goodell and the NFL. Please, somebody articulate for us all what a just response should be in this case.  [I may have more to say on the matter, but definitely not today.]