Posts Tagged ‘feminism’

On Nina Burleigh’s Irrational Perceptions

Friday, August 1st, 2014

Robert Stacy McCain first alerted me to Nina Burleigh’s amazingly irrational screed on the “Women Against Feminism” movement. Which, in turn, linked to this women against feminism tmblr, which Burleigh describes as “selfies of young women, dressed and posed like ads for DIY escort services.”

Later on she says that “Everything about Women Against Feminism suggests it’s a sock puppet for the aggrieved misogynists and pedophiles of the anti-feminist men’s rights crowd. The main clue is that almost all the women on the site are nubile and posed in ways that fulfill dirty old men’s wildest dreams about pliant young things.”

Set aside the fact that Burleigh’s sole claim to fame is offering to give Bill Cinton a blowjob. Go look at that tmblr she links to. Really, go look at it.

So where are all those women “dressed and posed like ads for DIY escort services?” Not only do I not see any, I don’t see any pics that any remotely rational viewer could construe as such.

In fact, let me post the very most salacious pic I could find on that entire tmblr. Ready? (“Don’t look, Ethel!”)

That’s it. That’s the closest I could find to Burleigh’s “escort” poses.

That tmblr consists of perfectly normal, non-slutty women holding up signs she disagrees with, none of whom remotely look like they’re “dressed and posed like ads for DIY escort services.”

Instapundit weighs in as well:

To a certain class of women in the media, it’s always about them, and their various mucous membranes.

Which, speaking of psychosexual theories, may explain Burleigh’s reaction to Women Against Feminism. Just check out the pictures; I’m sure these young women need to check their “prettiness privilege” or something. And I think that’s what’s going on with Nina Burleigh. When she, and her generation of feminists, could exercise sexual power directly (see above) it was all “you go, girl!” Now that they’re getting past that age, they’re falling back on the standard refuge of older women: Slut-shaming younger women who try to do the same. Older women have, of course, always tried to limit the sexual power of younger women, for fairly obvious reasons. This is just more of the same.

Plus this: “From the comments: “For Burleigh and her crowd I propose a new hashtag: #shrewculture. You know what to do, Internet.”

Nina Burleigh’s feminist politics seem to have so warped her worldview that she can’t even perceive reality clearly anymore. Perhaps she should consider seeking professional help…

LinkSwarm for June 27, 2014

Friday, June 27th, 2014

A small LinkSwarm for a busy Friday:

  • Evidently Obama wants $500 million to arm the Syrian rebels that we’re supposedly trying to fight in Iraq. Oh, the article says he wants to arm “moderate” rebels. Has anyone seen these moderate rebels? Who are they? Kurds? Oppressed Christians? The problem isn’t that they don’t exist, the problem is that the actual moderates seem to have forces too small to affect the outcome of the fight, and I don’t trust this administration on, well, anything, but especially on their ability to discern the difference between “moderate” rebels and radical Islamic militias from 6,000 miles away….
  • Welcome to the ObamaCare Death Spiral.
  • The War Nerd suggests that Putin is mucking around in eastern Ukraine less to take it outright than to keep it at a simmer so he gets to keep the Crimea without a fight. Also include this epic quote: “Tom Friedman, the Michael Jordan of wrong.”
  • Obama gets unanimous beatdown from the Supreme Court. For the 13th time.
  • Even liberals are turned off by Hillary’s poor, poor pitiful me act.

  • As Hillary Clinton gears up for a Presidential run in 2016, ABC decides to make one of Bill Clinton’s chief aides a network anchor. Lovely.
  • Hillary’s book sells more than 100,000 copies, but woefully short of what it would need to earn back it’s whopping $14 million advance…
  • Did Obama Fail Black America?” Obviously the question mark is unnecessary, as the only question is whether that headline is one or two words too long.

  • Feminism: The Tiny Elite: “You don’t have to look far to realize that victimhood is the flavor of the moment in America. Deeming oneself a victim delivers an afforded reverence, especially if said victimhood is biologically based.” Today feminism is “a group working largely for the interests of elite white women.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • How the media discriminates against stories than indict big government.
  • Phil Collins donates his extensive collection of Alamo relics to the state. In fact, Collins is donating not only his existing collection, but stuff he continues to acquire. Three cheers for him.
  • Much like obeying the law, word problems are not Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings’ strong suit.
  • Texas man told to remove American flag from his balcony because it was “a threat to Muslims.” Get a rope…
  • Far-left cartoonist Ted Rall gets the axe. I’m not sure there’s a violin tiny enough…
  • Finally, you too can own the screenplay to Manos: The Hands of Fate.
  • I hope to have a longer post of the kangaroo court trying Michael Quinn Sullivan next week…

    Ms. Magazine Comes Out Against the Presumption of Innocence and the Due Process of Law

    Thursday, June 19th, 2014

    Instapundit linked to this Ms. magazine piece. (Yes, evidently they’re still publishing. Who knew?)

    It starts off: “One in five college women are sexually assaulted, and only 12 percent of college rape survivors will report their rape to the police. And yet, some men accused of such assaults are playing the victim.”

    First, the 1-in-5 statistic is completely made up garbage:

    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. The one-in-four statistic would mean that every year, millions of young women graduate who have suffered the most terrifying assault, short of murder, that a woman can experience.

    Indeed, the Justice Department shows rates of 6 rapes or sexual assaults of women per 1000 on college campuses. That means that Ms.‘s rape estimates overstate the incidence by 42 times. That’s like saying “The average price of a fast food hamburger is around $100.”

    Secondly, if men are “falsely accused of sexual assault and unjustly punished by their college’s judicial system” because their college does not observe the due process of law, then guess what? They are the victims.

    Back to Ms. and their lies: “According to the FBI, only eight percent of rape reports are unfounded. And this is most likely an overestimate of false reports: the FBI counts cases as unfounded when deemed so by law enforcement officials, not when they are proven false through a trial.”

    First, the FBI statistics are meaningless in relation to the campus cases under discussion, because those statistics deal with charges which were brought up under the due process of the law, not the “men are considered guilty until proven innocent” kangaroo courts universities have imposed based on politicized and misguided Obama Administration guidelines. Second, the “not when they are proven false through a trial” negates the statistic. Indeed, one gets the impression that Ms. is upset that men are found innocent in real courtrooms at all.

    More Ms. blather: “While a false rape claim is undoubtedly detrimental to the accused…” Why yes, being falsely accused and branded a sex offender due to a complete lack of due process is indeed “detrimental.” How nice of you to notice.

    Due process, the rule of law, the burden of proof and the presumption of innocence are rights that protect all Americans, of whatever sex, color or creed. The desire to throw them out to meet the demands of radical feminist identity politics is an abhorrent perversion of justice that should be opposed by all Americans.

    LinkSwarm for June 18, 2014

    Wednesday, June 18th, 2014

    There’s so much news going on in the world that it’s hard to sit down and focus on one story to get a single blog post out of it when there’s another huge story coming down the pike. Iraq, Ukraine, the VA Scandal, the dog eating Lois Lerner’s emails (“Barack Obama has brought us Jimmy Carter’s economy and Richard Nixon’s excuses”); too damn much going on to focus on one thing. So here’s a LinkSwarm instead:

  • Barack Obama is not interested in war, but war is interested in Obama.
  • Obama golfs while the world burns. “Oh Lord, I was born a golfing man!/I get in a round whenever I can…”
  • Obama Administration admits that ObamaCare will cost people more for health care, even with the subsidies.
  • Russia cuts off natural gas supplies to Ukraine.
  • Russian tanks appear in eastern Ukraine.
  • Russia’s top anti-corruption cop decides to take up flying.
  • One reason the IRS went after the Tea Party: Chuck Schumer asked them to.
  • “The Obama administration has reached levels of hitherto unknown incompetence.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • A majority of Americans do not believe that Obama is trustworthy. You don’t say.
  • Another day, another 48 people dead at the hands of Jihadists in Kenya. There are days when 48 people killed at a hotel would top the news…
  • The Obama Administration also released 12 Jihadists in Afghanistan.
  • Won’t someone please think about poor, impoverished Hillary Clinton?
  • The Obama Administration’s intentionally lax border control enforcement is letting letting Mexican gang members waltz into the country.
  • “Thousands of young, poor would-be immigrants—90,000 this year alone—have swarmed across the border, the logical fruition of the entire cynical approach of the Obama administration toward illegal immigration.”
  • Bill Gates wants to propagandize you into accepting illegal alien amnesty. Actually, what Gates and his high tech baron compatriots really want is more H1-B visas, but since that doesn’t help the Democratic Party as much as illegal alien amnesty, it gets rolled into the giant “comprehensive immigration reform” ball.
  • Should Obama have erased the IRS emails Nixon have erased the tapes?
  • Turning point in the Brat campaign: crashing a staged event to prove Cantor was lying about amnesty.
  • “Prostitutes more than double their earnings by moonlighting as currency traders” in Venezuela.
  • Argentina runs out of rope.
  • European cab drivers protest Uber by halting traffic. Result? Uber sees 850% increase in signups.
  • I’m going to boil this down to the essentials: Never open an account with a Georgia bank.
  • But maybe they need to seize your money to pay for all that food stamp fraud.
  • Does anyone really think West Virginia Democratic Senate candidate Natalie Tennant is any more “pro-coal” or “pro-gun” than Bart Stupak was “pro-life”?
  • Another year, another lefty writer caught plagiarizing the work of others. And not just any lefty writer, but a Pulitzer Prize winner to boot…
  • Chelsea Clinton got paid $600,000 by MSNBC. That worked out to $26,724 for each minute she was on the air. In other news, your betters in the overclass really don’t care what you think of the financial compensation one member of the class gives to another…
  • Millions in “urban redevelopment” money in Democratic-controlled Philadelphia ends up in certain people’s pockets with almost nothing to show for it. Try to contain your shock. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • South Carolina university professors: “How dare you make us teach the Constitution?”
  • Violence and subway strike in advance of Brazil’s World Cup.
  • New guidelines for ignoring due process in accusations of college campus sexual assault = Lawsuitapalooza!
  • Erick Erickson calls out Ted Cruz for not endorsing more conservatives.
  • Dwight does some gun geeking for you Smith & Wesson fans.
  • Dear anyone who’s ever self-published their own book: you’re a fascist Ayn Rand supporter, using your evil individualism to bypass the holy gatekeepers of traditional publishing.
  • And if you think that’s the stupidest left-wing essay you’ll read today, think again.
  • There was enough voter fraud in a Weslaco City Commissioner Race for the judge to order a new election. “Some of the disallowed ballots were cast by voters claiming Rivera’s childhood home as their address.” Note: Weslaco is down in the valley right next to Donna, Texas, which had its own voting scandal.
  • Doggies! (Patriotic doggies, no less.) (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “This harlot-sized ensemble will make you the envy of your trampish posse on your fraudulent wedding day.”
  • 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!

    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…

    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.
  • 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.)

    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.

    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…