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Posts Tagged ‘feminism’

Not the Onion: Lesbians protest against transgenders

Posted by Richard on July 9, 2018

I’m sure this is troubling to advocates of intersectionality theory, but it left me grinning from ear to ear:

In a bizarre scene Saturday, a group of “lesbian activists” disrupted and stalled the London Pride Parade, in what they called a protest against the event’s inclusion of transgender individuals.

Local media reported that the protesters stalled the parade for around ten minutes, and as they were carted off, one could be heard screaming that, “A man who says he’s a lesbian is a rapist” — an apparent reference to male-to-female transgender individuals.

… The lesbian activists who disrupted the parade said they’ve felt left out of Pride events this year, after noting to organizers that lesbians prefer sex with only biological females, not transgender men who might dress and live as women but who have not completed gender reassignment surgery.

“We don’t want any kind of penis in our bedroom,” an activist told media. “I’m really sad I have to reassert this again.”

Men who don’t want a relationship with a “woman” who has a penis are routinely excoriated by the “woke” left as hate-filled cis bigots. How are they going to deal with women who feel the same way?

Grab the popcorn!

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To the left, Palin is not a real woman

Posted by Richard on September 12, 2008

Jonah Goldberg (emphasis added):

Feminist author Cintra Wilson writes in Salon (a house organ of the angry left) that the notion of Palin as vice president is “akin to ideological brain rape.” Presumably just before the nurse upped the dosage on her medication, Wilson continued, “Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She’s such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it’s easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.”

And that’s one of the nicer things she had to say. Really.

On Tuesday, Salon ran one article calling Palin a dominatrix (“a whip-wielding mistress”) and another labeling her a sexually repressed fundamentalist no different from the Muslim fanatics and terrorists of Hamas. Make up your minds, folks. Is she a seductress or a sex-a-phobe?

But this any-weapon-near-to-hand approach is an obvious sign of how scared the Palin-o-phobes are.

Gloria Steinem, the grand mufti of feminism, issued a fatwa anathematizing Palin. A National Organization for Women spokeswoman proclaimed Palin more of a man than a woman. Wendy Doniger, a feminist academic at the University of Chicago, writes of Palin in Newsweek: “Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”

It’s funny. The left has been whining about having their patriotism questioned for so long it feels like they started griping in the Mesozoic era. Feminists have argued for decades that womanhood is an existential and metaphysical state of enlightenment. But they have no problem questioning whether women they hate are really women at all.

This strikes me as completely unsurprising and quite in character. This is exactly how the left has repeatedly treated blacks who dared to depart from leftist orthodoxy: belittle them, condemn them as "oreos" (that is to say, not authentically black), do anything and everything to destroy them as punishment for their apostasy. Look at how they treated Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly. Look at how they caricatured Michael Steele:

 Steele smeared

The people who loudly proclaim their concern for women and minorities always savagely attack any woman or minority who doesn't fall into line and do what they're told. 

As I noted a short while ago (evoking incredulity from some readers), the left is far less tolerant and more judgmental than the right. They're convinced that anyone who disagrees with them is not just wrong, but evil. And because of their situational ethics and belief that the end justifies the means, they've convinced themselves that anything they do to defeat their enemies is morally justified.

Palin can expect more of the same. But I'm guessing it will backfire badly.  

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PUMAs 4 Palin

Posted by Richard on September 7, 2008

You think Bill Whittle was just blowing smoke? Check out some of these (posts and comments): 

Hillary Clinton Forum  (Click this one if you're only going to click one, and just keep reading!)

Hillary or Bust

No Quarter  

The Confluence  

PUMA PAC

Nice Deb  

P.U.M.A. 

Watch this and tell me it won't sway some Democratic and independent women:

And if you have time, read some of the 176+ comments

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A tectonic shift

Posted by Richard on September 6, 2008

Bill Whittle (bold emphasis added):

Sarah Palin is the anti-Obama: not a victim, not a poser, not riding a wave but rather swimming upstream — and most of all, not having run for president her entire life. She is the first politician I have ever seen — and I include Ronnie in this, God bless him — who strikes everyone who sees her as an actual, real, ordinary person.

I think the magic of Sarah Palin speaks to a belief that so many of us share: the sense that we personally know five people in our immediate circle who would make a better president than the menagerie of candidates the major parties routinely offer.

Can I get an "Amen"? 

I’ve seen post after post on Hillary forums about how much they love Sarah, how they are energized and lifted out of depression by her (and the sight of an actual Roll Call made some of them weep). They gush about how she reminds them of their hero, how tough and savvy and unafraid she is. And I have seen these women, hard-core, feminist Democrats for 30 years and more, sit in slack-jawed amazement at Palin and at how fiercely Republicans — Republicans! — are defending her, backing her, and cheering her to the rafters. These Clinton supporters say they don’t know what to think any more: The Republicans are behaving like Democrats and the Democrats are behaving like Republicans!

If you think that’s an insult, you’ve got it exactly backwards. That is not only a huge compliment from these abandoned, centrist Democrats who bemoan the loss of their party to the radicals, it is an early rumbling of a tectonic shift in American politics which we are only dimly beginning to grasp. Who are the real feminists? A significant portion of our former hard-core opposition is now rethinking in a fundamental way who it is that actually does what their former allies only talk about.

That, my long-suffering and now giddy and sleepless friends — that is the smell of victory. That is conservatism with a future. And we started on that path not by nominating a Democrat-lite, but the polar opposite. The nomination of a woman with perfect conservative credentials is causing some significant number of Democrats to re-examine everything they believe. I say: Welcome Home. Welcome to the party of individual achievement, regardless of race or gender.

Whittle was won over by McCain, too, and you should read his reasons. For the first time, Whittle, a Republican, believes "we deserve to win more than they deserve to lose." Read. The. Whole. Thing. 

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Hillary hits glass ceiling

Posted by Richard on June 3, 2008

It's all over, according to AP, CNN, and CBS. And it's a familiar story for feminists. A highly educated, highly competent, incredibly bright woman (the smartest woman in the world, according to her supporters) spent years in the shadow of a less disciplined, less competent man. She supported him through thick and thin, sublimating her own ambition and career goals to support his.

Eventually, she stepped out of his shadow. She joined the world's most prestigious boys' club and proved she was as tough and competent as any of them. She decided the time was ripe for her to move up to the executive suite. She'd paid her dues — and then some. It was a promotion that she was clearly entitled to. 

But then, as she was poised to assume the role for which she'd been working for decades, along came some wet-behind-the-ears, inexperienced male competitor. Compared to her, he was an intellectual lightweight with an incredibly thin resume. It should have been clear to all the decision-makers that she was the far superior candidate for the position. But he was young, handsome, charismatic — and male. He got the promotion, and she was passed over.

Another outrageous example of the gender bias that permeates our sexist society. I wonder how N.O.W. and other feminist organizations will react to this injustice. 

Well, really, I don't. I'm sure their commitment to liberal/leftist ideology in general will trump any concern they have for women's rights and gender equality in particular. The "little ladies" will obediently climb aboard the Obama bandwagon. If they didn't, the men who run things would call them racists. 

UPDATE: Instalanche! And not just a quick "Heh!" — Glenn posted a teaser quote. Thanks, Glenn! To those of you who aren't sure — yes, my tongue was firmly in my cheek while writing this. It's not easy satirizing the left these days, is it?

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Islam, feminism, and fecklessness

Posted by Richard on May 13, 2007

Happy Mother's Day! If you are a mother, have a mother, or know a mother, if you care about mothers, if you're at all interested in or concerned about women's rights, please go read Christina Hoff Sommers' outstanding essay, "The Subjection of Islamic Women." Subtitled "And the fecklessness of American feminism," it's the cover story in the May 21 issue of The Weekly Standard. It's not a screed or diatribe, and it's not a catalog of atrocities and outrages. It does point its finger at the feckless, but more in sadness than in anger, and it gives credit where it's due. It's a thoughtful look at a shameful situation, but with a hopeful ending:

The subjection of women in Muslim societies–especially in Arab nations and in Iran–is today very much in the public eye. Accounts of lashings, stonings, and honor killings are regularly in the news, and searing memoirs by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi have become major best-sellers. One might expect that by now American feminist groups would be organizing protests against such glaring injustices, joining forces with the valiant Muslim women who are working to change their societies. This is not happening.

… During the 1980s, there were massive demonstrations on American campuses against racial apartheid in South Africa. There is no remotely comparable movement on today's campuses against the gender apartheid prevalent in large parts of the world.

… For a brief period before September 11, 2001, many women's groups protested the brutalities of the Taliban. But they have never organized a full-scale mobilization against gender oppression in the Muslim world. The condition of Muslim women may be the most pressing women's issue of our age, but for many contemporary American feminists it is not a high priority. Why not?

One reason is that many feminists are tied up in knots by multiculturalism and find it very hard to pass judgment on non-Western cultures. They are far more comfortable finding fault with American society for minor inequities (the exclusion of women from the Augusta National Golf Club, the "underrepresentation" of women on faculties of engineering) than criticizing heinous practices beyond our shores. The occasional feminist scholar who takes the women's movement to task for neglecting the plight of foreigners is ignored or ruled out of order

Sommers offers a number of examples and cites some women's rights champions critical of their peers to back up her thesis. What most bothers me is the pervasive attitude of moral equivalence. Feminist leaders speak of "Christian Wahhabism" and equate Focus on the Family with the Taliban. The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World describes both the United States and Uganda as having extreme restrictions on women. In Uganda, a man can claim an unmarried woman by raping her. The U.S. got the same rank, according to author Joni Seager, because "state legislators enacted 301 anti-abortion measures between 1995 and 2001." Never mind that U.S. abortion laws are still among the most liberal in the world. 

Sommers takes on Nation columnist Katha Pollitt for her moral equivalence argument:

Soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Katha Pollitt wrote the introduction to a book called Nothing Sacred: Women Respond to Religious Fundamentalism and Terror. It aimed to show that reactionary religious movements everywhere are targeting women. Says Pollitt:

In Bangladesh, Muslim fanatics throw acid in the faces of unveiled women; in Nigeria, newly established shariah courts condemn women to death by stoning for having sex outside of wedlock. . . . In the United States, Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists have forged a powerful right-wing political movement focused on banning abortion, stigmatizing homosexuality and limiting young people's access to accurate information about sex.

Pollitt casually places "limiting young people's access to accurate information about sex" and opposing abortion on the same plane as throwing acid in women's faces and stoning them to death. Her hostility to the United States renders her incapable of distinguishing between private American groups that stigmatize gays and foreign governments that hang them. She has embraced a feminist philosophy that collapses moral categories in ways that defy logic, common sense, and basic decency.

It's not just an essay about the depressing state of American feminism, though. In the final third, Sommers describes the growing Muslim feminist movement: 

The good news is that Muslim women are not waiting around for Western feminists to rescue them. "Feminists in the West may fiddle while Muslim women are burning," wrote Manhattan Institute scholar Kay Hymowitz in a prescient 2003 essay, "but in the Muslim world itself there is a burgeoning movement to address the miserable predicament of the second sex." The number of valiant and resourceful Muslim women who are devoting themselves to the cause of greater freedom grows each and every day.

The courage of Muslim women fighting for their rights is inspiring. As Sommers notes, early American feminists risked being shunned or ridiculed; Muslim feminists risk imprisonment, beatings and torture, even death. But their cause is important not just for women and not just for the Islamic world, as Sommers, quoting Canadian journalist and human rights activist Irshad Manji, observes:

In her 2004 feminist manifesto, The Trouble with Islam Today, Manji writes, "We Muslims . . . are in crisis and we are dragging the rest of the world with us. If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it's now."

Manji is right: In particular, a feminist reformation could be as dangerous to the dreams of the jihadists as any military assault by the West. After all, the oppression of women is not an incidental feature of the societies that foster terrorism. It is a linchpin of the system of social control that the jihadists are fighting to impose worldwide. Women's equality is as incompatible with radical Islam's plan for domination and submission as it is with polygamy. Women freely moving about, expressing their opinions, and negotiating their relationships with men from a position of equal dignity rather than servitude are a moderating, civilizing force in any society. Female scholars voicing their opinions without inhibition would certainly puncture some cherished jihadist fantasies.

Go read the whole thing. I think it's a truly important essay, and I felt hopeful and uplifted at the end. 

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