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Archive for 2014
December 9, 2014
MILO YIANNOPOULOS: The Sexodus, Part 2: Dishonest Feminist Panics Leave Male Sexuality In Crisis. “Straight young men simply don’t want to know any more. They’re not getting involved. Some women, too, horrified by what lesbianised third-wave feminism claims to do in their name, opt out of the argument. The absurd result is that geeks, queers and dykes are dominating the discussion about how men and women should interact. Jack Donovan, for example, is gay, as is your present correspondent. It’s as if gays are the only men left prepared to fight masculinity’s corner.”
Well, with the occasional hypermasculine straight guy chiming in now and then.
Plus:
Men, driven, as many of them like to say, by fact and not emotion, can see that society is not fair to them and more dangerous for them. They point to the fact that they are more likely to be murder victims and more likely to commit suicide. Women do not choose to serve in the Armed Forces and they experience fewer deaths and injuries in the line of work generally.
Women get shorter custodial sentences for the same crimes. There are more scholarships available to them in college. They receive better and cheaper healthcare, and can pick from favourable insurance packages available only to girls. When it comes to children, women are presumed to be the primary caregiver and given preferential treatment by the courts. They have more, better contraceptive options.
Women are less likely to be homeless, unemployed or to abuse drugs than men. They are less likely to be depressed or to suffer from mental illness. There is less pressure on them to achieve financial success. They are less likely to live in poverty. They are given priority by emergency and medical services.
Some might call these statistical trends “female privilege.” Yet everywhere and at all times, say men’s rights advocates, the “lived experiences” and perceived oppression of women is given a hundred per cent of the airtime, in defiance of the reality that women haven’t just achieved parity with men but have overtaken them in almost every conceivable respect. What inequalities remain are the result of women’s choices, say respectable feminist academics such as Christina Hoff Sommers, not structural biases.
And yet men are constantly beaten up over bizarre invented concepts such as rape culture and patriarchal privilege. The bizarre but inevitable conclusion of all this is that women are fuelling their own unhappiness by driving men to consider them as sex objects and nothing more, because the thought of engaging in a relationship with a woman is horrifying, or too exhausting to contemplate. And the sexodus will affect women disproportionately harshly because research data show that when women “act like men” by having lots of casual sex, they become unhappy, are more likely to suffer from depression and destroy their chances of securing a meaningful long-term relationship.
Read the whole thing.
ERIC S. RAYMOND: People Want To Make The Garner Killing About Race — If Only That Were True!
The truly terrifying thing about Eric Garner’s death is that I don’t think the cops in that video hated anybody. They were just doing their job. And their job included strangling a man to death for having sold “loosies” – untaxed cigarettes. Something he wasn’t doing when he was killed; he had just broken up a fight that the police came to investigate.
Garner had just broken up a fight. The police hassled him, based on his record as a (gasp!) vendor of untaxed cigarettes, and when he protested the force of law came down on him and snuffed him.
In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a book called Democracy In America that has been justly celebrated for its perception about the young American republic ever since. In it, he warned of the dangers of what he called “soft despotism” – that “covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules”, all justified in soothing ways to achieve worthy objectives. Such as discouraging people from smoking by heavily taxing cigarettes.
Eric Garner died in a New York minute because “soft despotism” turned hard enough to kill him in cold blood. There was no anger there, no hate; the police simply failed to grasp the moral disproportion between the “crimes” he wasn’t even committing at the time and their use of force. And an investigating grand jury did no better.
Violent racists, as evil as they are, generally understand on some level that they’re doing wrong. That understanding is written all over the excuses they make. These cops didn’t need an excuse. They were doing their job. They were enforcing the law.
Remember, when you pass a law, you need to be willing to see people killed to enforce it.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Sperm Donor, Life Partner. “They met in person for the first time in downtown Omaha on Thanksgiving 2011, when he pulled up in a horse-drawn Cinderella carriage, handed her a bouquet of red roses, and asked, ‘Will you be my baby mama?’ When she said yes, they gave each other high-fives and got into the carriage.”
MICHAEL WALSH: About That Senate Report: “What the Democrats are doing is classic Alinskyism, posturing as the defenders of the American Way and hoping like hell that nobody remembers that rendition prisons began under the Clinton administration.”
ASHE SCHOW: Yes, False Rape Accusations Destroy Lives.
Maxwell and other activists might try to claim that signing up for classes late is nothing compared to what his accuser is going through emotionally, but I disagree. Sterrett now has the term “rapist” hanging over his head, which will follow him his whole life despite evidence that he did not actually rape anyone. Meanwhile, his allegedly tormented accuser is pursuing her future just fine.
I’ve talked to numerous other young men accused of sexual assaults they claim were consensual, who are now suing their universities for denying them due process. I always ask what effect the accusation has had on their lives.
A former University of Massachusetts-Amherst student who was expelled over an accusation of sexual assault — which he alleges was consensual — told the Washington Examiner that his life had been turned upside down. He said that during the school’s investigation, as he drove over a bridge on his way to class, he frequently considered driving over the railing.
We’ve reached the precipice of what false accusations actually do to people. With feminist activists telling young women that they can claim rape over every regretted sexual encounter, the number of falsely accused men is climbing — as is the number of lawsuits against universities alleging denial of due process.
How long until one of these young men can no longer handle the stress and pressure? Is that what it’s going to take for feminists to stop pressuring universities and politicians to convict more young men without due process or evidence?
They won’t care at all. Maybe we need a “Men’s Lives Matter” campaign.
UPDATE: We Should Name Rape Accusers: It is time to lift the veil of anonymity. I agree. There’s nothing shameful about being raped. Why act as if there is?
SPACE: New Earth-Crossing Asteroid Discovered. “Even though experts say the giant object, known as 2014 UR116, poses no immediate threat of collision, its unexpected discovery underscores how little is still known about asteroids and their unpredictable orbits.”
ARE YOU SURE IT WASN’T LENA DUNHAM? Man With Gender Studies Degree Terrorizes Party.
Witnesses say that the incident began over a seemingly innocuous comment made by a party guest about a local filmmaker. “I said I wasn’t really into Lena Dunham’s new book,” Mallory Nyguen said. “Next thing I know, I’m being asked if I know the hurdles women in the entertainment industry face and something about the male gaze.”
Nyguen, who is an actress, is both a woman and working in the entertainment industry, added, “I just knew he wasn’t going to stop until I gave in and admitted my privilege.”
“He came out of nowhere,” says hostess Sarah Casey. Casey believes he is somehow connected to one of her “idiot” coworkers, though none of her invited party guests would admit to knowing the perpetrator. “It all happened in slow motion. I just hid under the table until he left. ”
Parker moved throughout the party, unleashing the fundamental concepts of his undergraduate major at every opportunity. “It was kind of weird to get lectured about the patriarchy by, y’know, a member of the patriarchy,” one victim commented. “He called me an Uncle Tom for wearing bras.”
In a particularly disturbing turn, one witness said that Parker claimed that he had “read too many books to even see gender anymore,” a claim the witness added was especially dubious, as it was never made clear what specific books Parker was reading. “He just kept asking if I’d heard of the Madonna/Whore complex, which isn’t a book.”
A review of Parker’s social media reveals that this is not the first time he has weaponized his liberal arts degree.
Heh. I think he’s now working as a fact-checker for Rolling Stone.
HANS VAN SPAKOVSKY: The Basics Of Libel Law In The Lena Dunham Case.
WHY POOR PEOPLE STAY POOR. There’s a lot of truth to this, but it’s also true that if you follow, say Dave Ramsey’s advice, you’ll soon have enough of a reserve that the minor problems, at least, won’t produce catastrophic results. It’s also the case, of course, that a lot of poor people don’t have the necessary personal strengths to execute Dave Ramsey’s advice successfully, and there’s not much in the larger society that reinforces those strengths these days.
YES, BUT THEY’RE PROTECTED BECAUSE THEY’RE BIG DEM DONORS. NOW UNDER PRESIDENT CRUZ, I EXPECT THE EEOC TO GIVE THEM A GOOD GOING-OVER. A Feminist Critique Of Silicon Valley. “The Valley has bought into the idea of itself as a meritocracy: a world of self-starting, bootstrapping geniuses so much better and smarter than anyone else in the world that they deserve wildly disproportionate opportunities for wealth and power. The problem is that this is the exact opposite of what Silicon Valley actually is: a sexist and racist wealth distribution mechanism that relies on cronyism, corruption, and exclusion to function.”
UPDATE: Judging by the comments, Technology Review’s readership isn’t too impressed. And after reading this piece by Elizabeth Spiers and this by Bobbie Johnson, I’m kind of surprised that Technology Review chose this woman for an interview on this topic. She seems like an angry Social Justice Warrior type, and not much else.
IN THE MAIL: From Jon F. Merz, The Undead Hordes of Kan-Gul (Shadow Warrior saga Book 1).
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 579.
EUGENE VOLOKH NOT IMPRESSED WITH THE LATEST LENA DUNHAM LIBEL DEFENSE: Lena Dunham’s publisher says her alleged rapist “Barry” wasn’t actually named Barry.
Appalling. The book wasn’t a novel; it was a memoir, offered to readers as such. The copyright page, which I suspect few people read, does say that “Some names and identifying details have been changed,” but it certainly doesn’t tell people which ones.
Indeed, early in the book, when she mentions a boyfriend of hers and labels him Jonah, she adds a footnote: “Name changed to protect the truly innocent.” Reasonable readers, it seems to me, reading the rest of the memoir, would assume that “Barry” — whose name wasn’t accompanied with any such footnote — was actually named Barry. Even if not all readers would so conclude, many would, and quite understandably so.
How could Dunham and Random House do this? How could an author and a publisher — again, of a self-described memoir, not a work of fiction — describe a supposed rape by a person, give a (relatively rare) first name and enough identifying details that readers could easily track the person down, and not even mention that “Barry” wasn’t this person’s real name?
Yeah, I think Random House’s opening offer is just that, and that we may see at least one more zero on the check before this is over.
HEATHER WILHELM: Why I Left Feminism (Or, How Feminism Left Me).
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