Posts Tagged ‘feminism’

Newer Entries »

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.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | 3 Comments »

LinkSwarm for April 4, 2013

Friday, April 5th, 2013

Been a while since the last Friday LinkSwarm, so here it is!

  • The problem with Europe’s economy? It’s the spending, stupid.

    Government spending on bailouts, subsidies, grants, salaries and entitlements commands a much larger share of these economies than it did just a few years ago. European austerity has been focused on the private sector — namely, taxpayers with high incomes.

    That is the second thing the PIIGGS have in common. The highest income tax rate was recently increased in every one of the troubled PIIGGS except Italy (where it was already too high at 43%). The top tax rate was hiked from 40 to 46.5% in Portugal, from 41 to 48% in Ireland, from 40 to 45% in Greece, from 40 to 50% in Great Britain, and from 48 to 52% in Spain.

  • Immigration “reform:” Distrust and Then Verify.
  • News flash: Getting a PhD in Literature is not a surefire path to financial security. Stop the presses!
  • Female Princeton grad tells current Princeton women that maybe they should consider getting married in college. Naturally the Ivy league/feminist/MSM complex threw a fit. (Pro-tip: There are few surer signs of leftwing PC think than the word “hetronormative.”)
  • Homicide Trends in the US: 1980 to 2008.
  • Dwight brings up another case of journalistic malpractice. “Meet the Sniper Who Killed 2,200 People in Iraq.” As Dwight notes, anyone with even passing knowledge of snipers should know that this claim is ludicrous from the git go. In sports terms, it’s like someone claiming they threw 20 Major League no hitters, or ran a two minute mile. It reminds me of Scott Thomas Beauchamp’s smears about troops in Iraq in The New Republic. (If you remember the Beauchamp affair, it turns out that he was engaged to Elspeeth Reeve, who just happened to be a TNR fact-checker. Somebody should make them read Stolen Valor.)
  • Also from Dwight: This interesting piece about a gay man talks about coming out at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.
  • Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott: UN Treaties don’t trump the Bill of Rights.
  • Left-wing bigots pat themselves on the back.

    • Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Economics, Media Watch, Texas, Welfare State | 1 Comment »

    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…

    Tags:, , , , , , ,
    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!

    Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,
    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…

    Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
    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:

    Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    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.

    Tags:, , , , , ,
    Posted in Democrats, Jihad | 45 Comments »

    Newer Entries »