Posts Tagged ‘Amanda Marcotte’

The Deafening Feminist Silence on Iran Protests

Monday, January 1st, 2018

Having implemented Sharia law, Theocratic Iran is one of the most repressive regimes in the world when it comes to women’s rights, and a wide variety of activities are prohibited to women simply because they are women.

Now that widespread protests have broken out In Iran over the rejection of the Islamic Republic and greater rights for women, you might think that feminists organizations would be in the forefront of those clamoring for greater women’s rights.

You would be wrong. They are, as usual, nattering on about the standard array of far-left causes having nothing to do with women’s rights.

To drill down even further, I thought I would check the Twitter feeds of several prominent feminists. They too are silent on Iran:

Once again, the unwillingness to speak out on Islam’s demonstrable treatment of women as second-class citizens has left American feminists with nothing to say about the most important woman’s rights struggle of the day. (That, and the Democratic Party’s insistence on defending Obama’s disasterous (and unconstitutional) Iran deal.)

Feminism is only about “women’s rights” when they align with a far-left agenda.

“You are blocked from following @AlecBaldwin”

Wednesday, February 25th, 2015

Keith Olbermann was given a Twitter-induced suspension by his employer ESPN over insulting Penn State students for a pediatric cancer fundraiser (of all things) this week. While noting my own little dust-up with Olbermann, I observed that it was high time that Olbermann, like Alec Baldwin, learned that Twitter was not his friend.

At which point I discovered that I was blocked by Alec Baldwin:

BaldwinBlock

I’m honestly not sure why, since I only tweak him over his anger management issues about once or twice a year. (As opposed to earning my Amanda Marcotte block by consistently pointing out her extensive hypocrisy and willful ignoring of evidence in the UVA and Duke lacrosse (non-)rape cases.) Maybe he’s doing the GamerGate block thing, or using some other block list.

Evidently I’m not alone:

Time to break out this again:

Happy New Year!

Thursday, January 1st, 2015

To celebrate, here’s a few lite links:

  • Cher’s 10 Craziest Political Tweets of 2013. Including this gem:

  • Amanda Marcotte’s Ten Dumbest Tweets of 2014.
  • The automatic Thomas Friedman sentence generator.
  • (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ for the first two, Instapundit for the last.)

    This Week in Victimhood Identity Politics

    Wednesday, December 24th, 2014

    Enough news coming from the Social Justice Warrior set to merit a separate post:

  • The top ten feminist fiascoes of 2014. Includes the Rolling Stone UVA rape hoax, Wendy Davis and Rotherham. And Amanda Marcotte earned her own entry…
  • More light on the shoddy fact-checking of that discredited Rolling Stone UVA rape piece: “[Elisabeth] Garber-Paul’s work history includes the abortion activist group RH Reality Check and an internship at the progressive magazine The Nation.”
  • “UMich Feminists Harass Conservative Muslim Who Wrote Political Correctness Satire.” I would say it’s a veritable buffet of intersectionality, but we all know that the “conservative” part automatically strips away any victimhood status…
  • Will diversity destroy the left? “The Left is divided—although far from evenly—between those who believe that “identity” is the engine of history and those who believe that class struggle serves the same function.”
  • Social Justice Warriors decide that heavy metal would be their next target for imposing political correctness. Result? #MetalGate.
  • More: “Metalheads do not want to be told what to think by a self-appointed cabal determining what is ‘true’ based on their ideological agenda. It does not matter which agenda that is, only that it swallows up truth and metal equally and uses them as means toward its real goal, which is power and control.”
  • North Carolina public uses vocabulary test to promote how swell Islam is.
  • BattleSwarmBlog Celebrates Victory Over Amanda Marcotte Day

    Thursday, December 11th, 2014

    After spending days pointing out Amanda Marcotte’s factual and intellectual fallacies over the unraveling Rolling Stone UVA rape story on Twitter, this finally happened:

    AM

    I love the smell of Amanda Marcotte blocking me in the morning. It smells like…victory.

    Henceforth, December 11, 2014 shall be known as “Victory Over Amanda Marcotte” day.

    Rolling Stone UVA Rape Story Falls Apart, Feminists Freak Out

    Friday, December 5th, 2014

    In today’s LinkSwarm, I mentioned how the Rolling Stone accusation of a fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia was unraveling. Well, shortly after that it collapsed completely. So much so that even Rolling Stone itself is backtracking on its allegations, albeit in a weasely “we were taken in” fashion:

    In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

    At this point, the only way Rolling Stone could be more embarrassed is if “Jackie” turned out to be James O’Keefe in a wig.

    As the central premise of the article collapses, it’s interesting to look at the tantrums thrown by some of Twitter’s more notable feminists. Take, for example, Amanda Marcotte:

    Here Marcotte has managed to put on a veritable clinic in how to cram as many logical fallacies into a single tweet as possible:

  • Smear those who doubt the truth of the now-discredited Rolling Stone piece as “rape apologists.”
  • By extension, Marcotte is smearing everyone who has every doubted any rape allegation, or who insists on the English common law doctrines of innocent until proven guilty and right to due process, as “rape apologists.”
  • “Rapes are hoaxes”: Again, Marcotte uses rhetorical slight-of-hand to conflate people doubting this particular allegation of rape to a universal strawman that people are calling all rapes everywhere “hoaxes.”
  • “Why oppose investigating them” Once again, Marcotte constructs a strawman put forth by none of the story’s critics; indeed, she is accusing conservatives of espousing exactly the opposite opinions of what they’ve actually espoused, namely that every accusation of rape should investigated by the criminal justice system.
  • The problem is that Marcotte and so many of her feminist allies want campus rape allegations investigated not by the criminal justice system, but by star-chamber campus tribunals where the accused will not enjoy the rights of innocent until proven guilty and due process under the law. This is in response to the myth of a “rape culture” so pervasive on college campuses that (under pressure from the Obama Administration) many have adopted due-process-violating “sexual assault” tribunals. As liberal lawyer Alan Derschowitz put it: “Harvard’s policy was written by people who think sexual assault is so heinous a crime that even innocence is not a defense.”

    Not to mention the fact that these policies have “defined rape downward” to the point where “campus sexual assault” now includes “having consensual drunken sex that they regret later.” Opposition to star chamber prosecution of fake rape is in no way the same as opposition to real rapes by the criminal justice system, in the same way that opposition to feminists’ radical far-left ideological agenda is not the same as “hating women.”

    And many on Twitter were quick to call Marcotte on her BS:

    I guess Marcotte learned nothing from the time she called people skeptical of the Duke lacrosse rape-accuser: “rape-loving scum”.

    Marcotte was gardly alone in her freakout. Take, for example, Sally Kohn:

    Or Jessica Valenti:

    People would be a lot more likely to believe feminists on rape if they weren’t using it as yet another excuse to wage culture war for their far-left wing Social Justice Warrior/Victimhood Identity Politics goals.

    Finally, via Twitchy, comes this gem:

    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.

    LinkSwarm for August 6, 2013

    Tuesday, August 6th, 2013

    Still catching up, so enjoy your complimentary LinkSwarm and beverage (minus the beverage):

  • No, the IRS did not target liberal groups like they targeted conservatives.
  • The scary truth about state and local debt.
  • The U.S. government has $70 trillion in unfunded liabilities. I don’t happen to agree with everything in that assessment (a situation in which the FDIC would actually have to make good on all $7 trillion in deposit guarantees would pretty much be tantamount to the complete collapse of civilization), but the rest is scary enough.
  • Powerline’s John Hindraker wonders what the Benghazi cover-up is really about. I still think the secret CIA interrogation center that David Petraeus’ mistress Paula Broadwell claims was there is a strong possibility.
  • Thanks to ObamaCare, insurance premiums will increase in most states.
  • How liberals managed to turn wealthy Connecticut into just another broke Blue State.
  • Obama’s Nixonian scandals just keep churning.
  • The Black Hole in China’s shadow banks
  • Washington Post to be sold to Jeff Bezos. But he wasn’t stupid enough to take over existing pension liabilities. Bezos seems to be a liberal, but isn’t an overly active donor for a billionaire.
  • “Coming this fall on Cinemax: Leathers and Slutbag! They both got nailed by the same slimeball, and now they’re out for justice! Democratic politician not paying you your promised hush money? Call Leathers & Slutbag!”
  • Tawana Brawley finally starts paying for her 1987 rape hoax.
  • Liberal race-hustler Rep. Charlie Rangel takes time out of his busy schedule of defrauding the American taxpayer to suggest Tea Partiers are the “same group” who fought for segregation during the Civil Rights movement. Hey, Rep. Rangel, you know what the name of the group that fought for segregation was? The Democratic Party.
  • Attorney general Greg Abbott nails Texas Planned Parenthood for Medicaid fraud In fact, it was $4.3 million worth of fraud. More from Holly Hansen.
  • More show trails in Turkey.
  • Advocates of “green” energy cronyism seem to have found some Tea Party patsies.
  • On the differences between Austin and Texas.
  • Ace of Spades offers up an epic takedown of movie critic Andrew O’Hehir. “The man masturbates stupid and ejaculates embarrassment.”
  • And then does the same on Amanda Marcotte’s theory that men men hate sex and only use it to procreate.
  • Liberals get firebrand Twitter Gulag Defense Network founder Todd Kincannon’s Twitter account suspended. For all of two days.

  • Heh: