Sixteen Volts

Seeing that Carnival of Feminists XII is up, it is perhaps time to put on protective clothing and take a look at what our betters have now cooked up. Perhaps we might even learn something along the way, so let's take our shovels and rubber boots and start wading.

American universities have to obey the Title IX act (which I now learned that is formally known "the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act", which sounds like something out of a John Waters movie) that says that the university must finance women athletes as much as male athletes. Myself, I don't see any reason what business universities have being in sports at all, but then again, I am not the one who makes the rules. However, as the news article "Postsecondary Science and Math Programs Face Title IX Review" informs us, some people would like this act to also apply to math and science. Let us sit back and watch how this show unfolds.

As ideologies, feminism and socialism are the same: whoever supports one supports the other, both movements have identical goals, and both terms allow equally likely predictions about how that person thinks about some particular topic. Just like the terms "Clark Kent" and "Superman" are mutually interchangable with certain well-known restrictions (from "Clark Kent is a man" we can deduce that "Superman is a man", but it doesn't follow from "Lois Lane knows that Superman can fly" that "Lois Lane knows that Clark Kent can fly"), the words "feminist" and "socialist" are similarly interchangable, since they have the same extension in objective reality. The second edition of "The Big Fat Carnival" again nicely demonstrates how tightly certain memes are entangled. One might logically assume that fat acceptance would be orthogonal to other political views so that the carnival would feature both leftist and right-winger posters to a similar extent, but apparently not.

The fatties carnival also links to the post "Fat and sexy" of Curvaceous D. Hmmm. So this is what the progressive community considers beautiful and sexually attractive? And this is what gives the leftist men boners? I guess that you can wank your cock to whatever rocks your boat, but then don't complain when the more normal and sane men laugh at you. For a more verbal kind of unintentional humor, we can look at the teen angst in the blog "I Hate People". Tell me, how would you even begin to parody this gang? This particular blogger would make a great columnist for The Onion, since she is essentially Jean Teasdale who has undergone some radical feminist brainwashing. (Probably looks about the same too, based on her self-description.) For example, look at the posts "transsexuality... and my look at it", "abuse" or "how to not be racist and/or xenophobe". How hard they would be edit a bit to Jean Teasdale style?

One of the most amusing things about fat acceptance movement is how its proponents tend to support socialism, since if you look at actual socialist countries such as Cuba and North Korea, obesity doesn't seem to be much of a problem in them, for some mysterious reason. The post "Why We Should All Be Anti-Stalinist/Totalitarian" in "The G Bitch Spot" describes and links to a play that every single leftist in the world should be tied down and forced to watch Clockwork Orange style. If they still remain leftists after seeing this show... well, they have pretty much established exactly what moral midgets they are.

But in the name of honesty I have to admit sometimes even the leftists can surprise you positively. One of their basic principles has traditionally been that in criminal cases, the prosecutor's burden of proof should be much higher and prisons sentences should be done away with and replaced with therapy, since a criminal is a powerless victim of society and capitalism. Unfortunately, the idealist leftists apparently never realized until it was too late that these principles might also eventually come to apply to rape and hate crimes. When I recently came upon the blog TalkLeft, I expected it to be your typical trendy femo-socialist outfit, but I then saw their post "The Duke Lacrosse Players Rape Allegations: Truth or Scam?" which defends the Duke lacrosse team that is currently being lynched by feminists who finally got their Great White Defendant so that they don't need to care about the annual 3000 black-on-white gang rapes that they are mysteriously silent about. I admire the intellectual consistency of TalkLeft in reminding people that presumption of innocence and burden of proof also apply to wealthy white people.

The comments of this post contain two such very revealing comments that I am going to just post the money paragraphs here. If ever in the future the femo-socialists come to power, I don't want to hear anybody telling me that they "didn't know" what the real goals of these people were. First, Jesurgilac says:

Face it: until there is a reasonable arrest/conviction rate for rape, any man accused of rape can be assumed to be guilty. Until there is a reasonable arrest/conviction rate for rape, not being arrested, or not being acquitted, won't mean the man's not guilty of rape: it'll only mean that he's just another rapist who got away with it.

Then, Sadie B:

My personal opinion is that, using the modern definition of rape, there can almost be no such thing as a false charge. Sex is not an entitlement, and all sex should be consensual. If any party to any sex act later claims they were coerced, for any reason, then in my book the burden of proof lies on the accused.

Of course this completely upends the tradition of presumption of innocence, and I understand that, but I am not sure that when we are talking about rape the presumption of innocence does a very good job of leading us on the path to justice.

One of my favourites quote by The Danimal which most people know to be true but must first hear it explicitly for it to properly register is

It's trivially easy for a man to get women to "like" him. All he has to do is be nice, give them sincere-sounding compliments, refrain from coming on sexually too strongly, express concern for things women are concerned about while keeping quiet about his own concerns, deny that his attraction for women is primarily due to their physical appearance, and above all express an appropriate hostility for men he perceives women do not like. Being gay also helps.

In the blogosphere, I don't think there is a man who follows this advice better than Chris Clarke. I can't say anything about the gay part, but I have noticed that whenever some feminist is criticized, Chris comes like a white knight to mightily slay the villain and reassure the feminist that she is morally and intellectually superior and the criticism is just envy, stupidity or malice. In this light, his post "Why I am not a feminist" is an absolutely brilliant move: the author slyly asserts his moral superiority as a man "who really gets it" and makes the feminists praise him for being such a wonderful man. I really have to bow down in front of such a truly magnificent act. I feel so impressed with this act that I feel like I should start a profeminist side blog under another name and try to follow his lead. A typical profeminist man wouldn't exactly be difficult to mimic, although I don't know how long I could keep it up before getting bored and turning it into an obvious parody. Perhaps some better writer than me ought to try this.

The feminists long for a society in which men behave like women, but then when they get their utopia, express enthusiasm and admiration toward cultures whose men feminism hasn't had a similar effect on. The post "Manliness" by Ann Althouse examines the related issues of manliness, which feminists don't seem to be able to eradicate no matter how they try. And of course, only the white men's manliness is a problem.

Moving on. In "Why I write not of men", "Bitch Ph.D." explains:

When feminists get together online or in person to talk about our problems, the focus is on us. If we decide to deal with a different or more specific group's problems, you can bet straight white men's problems are not on the emergency to-do list. We might talk about men of color or gay men or impoverished men, but for some reason, straight white bourgeois men rarely take up a lot of our activist time. Some of us feminists happen to be straight white women who are involved sexually with straight white men. In my love life, I do care for a straight white man and we treat each other with complete respect. In my work, I deal all the time with straight white men, and I treat them all with exactly the respect with which I treat everyone else. But in my activist life, when dealing in abstracts, I don't think, "You know who desperately needs my help today? Straight white dudes."

The Danimal once put it a lot better:

Just be honest and say feminism is an attempt to curtail some freedoms currently enjoyed by men, and transfer them to women. Feminism is the idea that men should have less, so women can have more.

The post "Feminist Alliances" in "Women's Space" laments how difficult it is when some less enlightened fellow travellers have not reached proper uniformity of thought. The post "Feminist In-Fighting" calls for a truce between different factions and then informs us that

Even in women's studies, a place where we should be educating eachother about feminism and supporting our sisters. No ladies, women's studies is one of the most rampant places for sisterly abuse.Perhaps its because its caught up in the patriarchal academic rigors still.

Well, at least that one would be easy enough to fix, if it hasn't been already, since the more female-dominated some academic discipline is, the less connected it is to objective reality and the lower its standards. Another post "Real Breasts" informs us that

It's always struck me as so odd: asked what they find attractive, individual heterosexual boys and men often describe women who diverge from the ideal, sometimes widely, and a quick look around evidences that most men do not partner with Barbie-doll types.

It's funny how the leftists generally denounce the idea of revealed preferences when non-leftists use them to argue their case, but not in this case. Oh well, I guess that we can now similarly conclude that many women find poor, fat and unenlightened middle-aged men maximally attractive, since some of them have to settle for them, and that scrubbing toilets at McDonald's is the dream job for many people. The same post also links to "Michigan Womyn's Music Festival", which I am sure would also be tremendously difficult to parody. Perhaps some future episode of South Park will take us there.

The post "Is She or Isn't She?" at "100 Little Dolls" wonders if a sexy kickass woman who has sex with other women really is a feminist shero or is she just meant for male titillation. Nah, couldn't be.

When the title of a post is "In Which the Oompa Loompas Teach us Poststructuralist Feminism", you don't even have to read it to know that it is going to be great in so many levels at once.

Garth Ennis is perhaps best known for writing the Preacher comics. In one issue, the vampire sidekick Cassidy was visiting New Orleans and encountered a group of goths who wanted to be vampires, so they were naturally quite ridiculous. Your typical college leftists, basically. A morbidly obese goth woman angrily asked him what he is looking at, and Cassidy answered that if she has to ask, there is no point trying to explain it. But all is forgiven and Ennis gets to keep his progressive approval as long as he remembers to mock Christians. However, Dog Day Afternoon asks whether there is anything problematic in Ennis's trivialization of rape. (By the way, since we learn from this post that Ennis trounces "mostly Christianity", could somebody quickly name a comic book where Ennis trounces Islam, Judaism, Hinduism or some other major religion? Because I don't seem to remember ever reading any.)

The feminists seem to believe that nagging is every woman's basic right. This is pretty ironic once you realize that nagging pretty much by definition is an admission that the person who engages in it does not accept the principle that "no means no". Feminists are also typically eager to proclaim that women should not be any way chained to their relationships but should have the right to leave even their husbands in a drop of hat if they so desire, for the simple reason their partner is not in some sense to their liking. This is all fine and dandy by me, but if you claim this, then you don't get to complain if men also believe that they have the exact same freedom. The post "Also, splutters of incoherent rage" in aptly named, since the feminist poster has found an advice site that says that men also have the right to try to change their partners and trade up. Somebody once said that the best way to make somebody aware about his or her privilege is to allow other people use the same privilege, after which the message usually comes across quickly.

Last but not least, Biting Beaver instructs us about rape in "Glad to see we agree":

Here’s the deal. Rape, ALL rape, is violent. Rape is rape when a man nags a woman into sex, it’s rape when she’s drunk, it’s rape when she says anything other than “Yes”. It’s rape if she didn’t fight, it’s rape if she did. If he gets anything other than full-board consent (in the form of a verbal Yes) then he’s raped her. I’m glad to see we’re on the same page Ms. Appleton. Welcome to the Dworkinite brand of feminism.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Wednesday, April 05, 2006 at 10:59 AM