Thursday, September 17, 2015

Balkanized America: The Feminist Front

     The fragmentation of the United States into interest and identity groups, each one competing for power over the others, has reached a point where:

  • Everyone is “the enemy” to many others;
  • Everyone is straining to grow eyes in the back of his head.

     (Note politically incorrect though grammatically impeccable use of he in the above, to couple to its generic singular back-referent everyone The viragoes will start to howl in 3...2...1...)

     It’s as if someone were bound and determined to make Tom Lehrer’s “National Brotherhood Week” the American reality.

     Mind you, I’m far from suggesting that you, Gentle Reader, don’t have enemies. Why, just musing for a moment on the anger evident in your eyes, your contemptuous sneer, and your perpetually twitching hands...but I digress. The problem is that, with so many identity groups and interest groups on the prowl, it’s hard to select a focus. All the same, considering how much I get paid for this...huh? Wait just a moleskin-gloved minute, there, Colonel...

     Oh, never mind. Today I’ll rag on a few recent outcroppings of hostility from women toward...hey, Aloysius, what’s the politically correct term for us non-women again? Whazzat you say? There isn’t one?

     Jeez, this job is getting to be a toughie.


     First up is a doozy from Merrie Olde England:

     A woman named Natasha Devon has written a piece in the Daily Telegraph demanding that boys under 16 be banned from attending gyms alone, to prevent them from becoming too concerned about developing muscles. Devon, who is the Department for Education’s “mental health champion” is asking for a “strict and rigorously enforced” age limit of 16 on access to gyms, unless accompanied by an adult.

     This...person has some odd arguments against allowing teenaged boys into the gym:

     Firstly, it's because young men are vulnerable and dangers lurk beneath the gym's friendly edifice. Less scrupulous fitness professionals 'up sell' protein shakes, energy drinks and even illegal steroids to impressionable gym-goers.

     The dangers this harridan cites? Gym employees might try to sell youngsters protein shakes and energy drinks. The horror!

     Secondly, there's the potential for distorted body image. Over the past decade, ie since gyms went mainstream, male hospitalisations for eating disorders have risen by 70 per cent, according to excellent charity Men Gets Eating Disorders Too.

     As opposed to the distortions that accompany the insane notion that little Johnny is a girl mistakenly born into a boy’s body, Miss Devon?

     Thirdly and most importantly, gyms are currently providing a need which should be being met elsewhere in the community. The average state school child does just a single, one-hour session of PE per week. This is nowhere near enough.

     Words came close to failing me, there. Miss Devon is opposed to allowing young men into gyms because she wants them to get more PE in their government-run school. Clearly, unless a minion of the Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent State isn’t closely supervising a boy’s exercise routine, it will all go wrong!

     (Incidentally, all the ludicrously bad grammar in the quotes above is taken directly from the Devon article. So much for England’s government-run schools. I suppose they’re too busy teaching that the Holocaust is a myth put about by Jewish financiers.)

     From the Return Of Kings article:

     Devon is a professional victim who has built two charities and wrangled herself an MBE out of the fact she once had an eating disorder. She was formerly a typist for Cosmopolitan and has zero qualifications in medicine or psychiatry. The ascendancy of pundit-turned-government advisor Devon suggests the British government is pursuing a policy of handing out appointments and honours to complete non-entities in order to appeal to feminist sensibilities.

     The Devon tirades on this subject – there are more than just the one; Google-search “Natasha Devon” AND “Daily Telegraph” – don’t merely “suggest,” Gentle Reader; they’re clear and convincing evidence.


     Next, courtesy of The Right Geek, we have this misfire by feminist social-justice warriors:

     We’ve written a lot recently about the politics of Amazon book reviews.

     Reviewers have used Amazon to express their concern over everything from the power dynamics in a romance novel about a Nazi concentration camp commander to “SJW politics” in Star Wars books; and now someone is using it as a platform to share the ol’ fashioned belief that women just don’t write good science fiction. Yawn.

     But about what is the author of the above incensed?

     The blog post from which this excerpt was pulled says absolutely nothing about female writers. It is, in reality, a general complaint about deceptive marketing. Go and read the commentary in full:
     The Unraveling of an Unreliable Field

     One thing that’s become apparent during this third go-around of SAD PUPPIES, are the many and divided opinions on why the Hugo awards are broken. Much of this conversation is simply a continuation of the debate held during (and in the wake of) Loncon 3. Depending on who you ask, the Hugos are broken because they are either too insular (this is part of the SAD PUPPIES theory) or too easily manipulated by outside voting blocs (the “fandom purist” theory) or because “fandom” itself is still too white, too straight, and too cisnormative (Call this the “Grievance Studies theory”) or even that the Hugos spend too much time dwelling on popular works, at the expense of real literature (the “pinky-in-the-air snob theory”) or that “fandom” simply falls into predictable ruts, and is easily swayed by sparkly bellwethers, such as the Nebulas.

     I want to introduce another theory. One that others have spoken of before. I call it the “Unreliable packaging” theory.

     Torgersen’s piece is entirely about the representations of various books and stories as something they’re not. He never mentions female writers at all. However, he was the organizer of Sad Puppies 3, so as far as the feminists at “The Mary Sue” are concerned, he simply must be trashing women writers.

     This is called obsession. It’s reliably present in feminist SJWs...or, as Torgersen has relabeled them: CHORFs: “Cliquish, Holier-than-thou, Obnoxious, Reactionary, Fanatics.”


     Been getting any lately? Neither have I...and if your deficiency is due to a lack of interest on your sweetie’s part...or the lack of a sweetie...beware! One feminist harridan is demanding that an emerging outlet for our frustrations be foreclosed before it can flower:

     “Sex robots seem to be a growing focus in the robotics industry and the models that they draw on — how they will look, what roles they would play — are very disturbing indeed,” she told the BBC. She believes that they reinforce traditional stereotypes of women and the view that a relationship need be nothing more than physical.

     “We think that the creation of such robots will contribute to detrimental relationships between men and women, adults and children, men and men and women and women,” she said.

     Aha! So homosexuality and pederasty are quite all right with Miss Richardson, but robots are a step too far! Stacy McCain adds a thought:

     Notice that Dr. Richardson is only worried about how these robots would affect “traditional” stereotypes of women, whereas stereotypes of men are evidently not at all “disturbing” to her. While I am also against robot sex — it’s just plain creepy — I might change my mind if scientists could program these robots to make sandwiches.

     One of his commenters adds:

     She wants to ban the development of sex toys for men? So presumably she's wants to ban sex toys for women then.

     To which McCain replies:

     You can have her vibrator when you pry it from her cold, dead hands.

     Indeed.


     Last for today, as everyone knows, to the feminists, freedom means the right to kill your unborn baby, and nothing else:

     Near the end of the first hour of the CNN Republican Debate, co-moderator Dana Bash fretted to numerous 2016 candidates about the possibility of a federal government shutdown over a conservative effort to defund Planned Parenthood that included her hounding Governor Chris Christie (N.J.) whether or not he would “support the shutdown.”

     At the start of the sequence, Bash asked Ohio Governor John Kasich: “Governor Kasich, Senator Cruz is so committed from stripping funds from Planned Parenthood that it could result in shutting down the federal government in just about two weeks. Do you agree with Senator Cruz' tactic?”

     Miss Bash proceeded to harangue Ted Cruz and Chris Christie, as well:

     BASH: Yes or no. Would you support the shutdown?

     CHRISTIE: No, no, it's really important, Dana. We got to talk about what we would be willing to shut down for. Why don't we put tax reform on this President’s desk and make him veto it if that’s what he wants to do. Why haven't we repealed and replaced ObamaCare? Make him veto it if that’s what he wants to do.

     BASH: We're talking about Planned Parenthood now. Can you answer that –

     CHRISTIE: And why don’t we do the same thing with Planned Parenthood? We elected Republican Congress to do this and they should be doing this and they are not and they’re giving the President a pass.

     BASH: One more time, I'm sorry, I want to get an answer.

     CHRISTIE: I put it in the list, Dana. We should be doing these things that force the President to take action.

     BASH: So you would support it thought?

     CHRISTIE: Let’s force him to do what he says he’s going to do. Now, I don’t know whether he’d do it or not, but let’s force him to do it.

     Infanticide-minded women everywhere need to know! Mind you, they’ll vote for Hillary Clinton anyway – purely because of her brilliant record in international relations, of course – but they still need to know.


     It comes down to this, Gentle Reader:
     Yes, there is a war going on;
     And you’re on the front lines.

     Verbum sat sapienti.

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