why 53% of white women voted Trump

why 53% of white women voted Trump

There has been much bellyaching by liberal white women that 53% of us voted for Donald Trump in November presidential election.

After learning of this statistic, Sa’iyda Shabazz writes a challenge letter to her white friends in The Mary Sue:

So, you voted for Trump. You don’t have to admit it, I know you did. Granted, I think the fact that some of you won’t admit it is telling. Some of you have said that you have stayed silent because you didn’t want to get dragged for voting for him.

If you’re standing by your choice, why won’t you defend it? And to those of you who have been open with your admiration…what exactly do you admire about him?

She concludes: I may still be your friend, but our relationship will never be the same.

My response is below:

Dear Sa’iyda Shabazz,

While I am not your friend (and clearly won’t be anytime soon), I feel obliged to explain.

• I am the wife of a white husband (who is a kind, hard-working, devoted family man).
• I am the mother of a white son (who is the perfect mix of smart and sweet).
• I am the sister of a white brother (who has served this country honorably as a US Marine).
• I am the aunt of a white nephew (who has also served this country in the US Army).
• I am the daughter of a white father (who won a Pulitzer prize covering the race riots in Detroit, in an effort to support civil rights).
• I am the best friend of a white co-blogger (who has served in various hot spots across the globe as a Green Beret).
• I am the employee of a white, male employer (who is an awesome boss and a substantial taxpayer).

I see how hard all of these men work, how much they give to family and friends, and how much they give to this country. These are my primary relationships. When I vote, the quality of their lives are going to be a significant part of my decision matrix.

While life under Donald Trump may not be perfect for them, I anticipate that their lives will be better because of the policies that Trump plans to enact and the people he intends to put in charge. So will mine. And, so will those of progressives deriding those of us who voted for Trump…including you.

I am not going to vote so you feel “safe”. In fact, you voting your feelings is part of the problem.

After eight years of the Obama administration and its antics (e.g., global warming is more of a threat than terrorism), we will be safer only after January 20, 2017. I suspect there are many other Americans who are looking forward to that date as well.

As an extra bonus for my vote, I sense there is now an appreciation for the “alpha-male” that has been noticeably lacking for at least eight years. Dear Sa’iyda, please allow me to show you what that looks like:

I am so damned tired of the continuous white-man-bashing of social justice warriors. It seems I am not the only one, as the evidence suggests:

• There has been enormous backlash to MTV’s White Guy Resolution 2017 video, which is off-the -charts in terms of racism and sexism.
• White male college students are fighting back — and winning — when falsely accused of racism, sexism, and ginned-up crimes.
• Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said she doesn’t need to cater to male Star Wars fans, and it appears, and men are assessing the new film based on how much gender justice messaging is depicted.

I admit that Donald Trump is far from perfect. However, I have seen this man grow during the campaign. I anticipate he will learn rapidly, adjust readily to the conditions of the Office of President, and continue to be flexible and adaptable in pursuing the best interests of all the citizens in this nation (just not the special, protected classes like Obama administration has done).

Sa’iyda: I sure hope you’re tolerant and open-minded enough to acknowledge improvements in both Trump and the country that you will see in the next four years (at least).

In conclusion, the one thing I like best about electing Donald Trump: The era of the Beta Male is over.

I hope my explanation helps. Thank you for the opportunity to do so.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Is There Really a Rape Culture on Our Campuses? - The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy

Is There Really a Rape Culture on Our Campuses? - The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy

Many people believe that the nation’s college campuses have become hotbeds of sexual assault. In June, after a student at Stanford University was convicted of rape but given a light sentence, Vice President Joe Biden wrote an open letter to the female victim:

You were failed by a culture on our college campuses where one in five women is sexually assaulted—year after year after year. A culture that promotes passivity. That encourages young men and women on campuses to simply turn a blind eye.

The statistics on college sexual assault haven’t gone down in the past two decades. It’s obscene, and it’s a failure that lies at all our feet.

An American Psychological Association blogger wrote in 2014:

Let’s make something clear right from the start: Rape is caused by rape culture. … Rape culture is so entrenched in our society, and its components so ubiquitous, we may sense that something doesn’t taste right, but be at a loss to pinpoint the problem.

Wendy McElroy will have none of this. She says that the chances of being raped are more like one in a hundred per year for college women (or 4 percent during a student’s four years).

In addition, the prevalence of rape is on the decline, and “rape culture hysteria” is destroying the lives of male students by denying them due process and damaging women by teaching them not to protect themselves.

McElroy has written a book, Rape Culture Hysteria, to make her case.

She contends that “social justice warriors” are creating hysteria about a non-existent rape culture in order to “impose a specific ideology that legally disadvantages one class of people (white males) in order to benefit others.” The rape culture, she says, is a Big Lie (a reference to George Orwell), and a popular delusion (a reference to Charles Mackay’s book Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds).

Well-known in libertarian circles, McElroy considers herself a feminist and respects what she calls “individualist feminism,” which developed out of the anti-slavery movement in the 19th century. Those feminists “championed human rights while insisting that people shoulder responsibility for themselves,” she says. “The current movement is a mockery of itself.”

To puncture the claims that rape is frequent, McElroy presents an exhaustive analysis of available statistics. Four major studies and three minor ones, all produced by federal agencies, have attempted to calculate the prevalence of rapes. The definition of rape varies widely—one of these studies even counts “rape by deception,” or having sex “with someone because he or she lies to you.” And the study techniques range from a review of police statistics to online surveys.

Certainly, there are rapes on campus. The famed 1-in-5 statistic (more precisely, the claim that 19.8 percent of female seniors have been raped during their college years) comes from an online survey conducted at two universities by the National Institute for Justice (part of the Justice Department).

That number combines rape and sexual assault, both completed and attempted; assaults can include just forced kissing or grabbing. (The authors of the study say that figures for rape alone over four years, completed or attempted, would reduce the figure to 14.3 percent or 1 in 7 female students.) McElroy points out that only 42 percent of the surveyed women responded to the survey, even though they were offered a $10 Amazon gift certificate and an iTunes song download.

At the other extreme is the National Crime Victimization Survey, an annual survey by the Bureau of Justice (another arm of the Justice Department). It does not count as rape a situation in which one of the partners is incapacitated by drink or drugs—frequently the case when someone is accused of rape on campus. The survey found in 2013 that the rate of rape or sexual assault was 4.4 per 1,000 female students or less than half a percent in that year (or, estimated over four years, still less than 2 percent).

So, one study includes forced kissing (and has a low survey response), and the other doesn’t include rape when the victim is intoxicated. McElroy calls the findings from these studies “an onslaught of confusion.” But at the very least, she adds, “statements like the one by Vice President Biden are misleading and unnecessarily alarmist.”

Perhaps the most important part of the book is her discussion of the negative impact of rape culture hysteria, as her subtitle, ”Fixing the Damage Done to Men and Women,” suggests.

First, there is the elimination of due process for the accused. Protections for accused men were swept away in 2011 when the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a “Dear Colleague” letter that mandated certain rules when on-campus rape accusations were made.

The biggest change was to instruct schools to use the civil-suit standard in assessing guilt: a person is guilty if the “preponderance of the evidence” leads to that conclusion. This is a much weaker standard than the criminal standard, which requires a judgment of guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The department contends that since an on-campus guilty verdict can at most lead to a student’s expulsion, not incarceration, the easier standard is justified. Yet McElroy observes, “the permanent notation in a student’s records can haunt him for life.”

In addition to affecting the future of men who may be falsely accused, what are the impacts on women? Perhaps the most interesting is that the “rape culture” hysteria discourages women from protecting themselves.

Self-defense “used to be a matter of common sense,” says McElroy. “People avoided walking down alleys at midnight in high-crime areas. They bolted the door behind them at night. They…did not pass out drunk in a stranger’s apartment.” But to bring this up is called victim-blaming. There’s a feeling that a woman should be able to do whatever she wants, including drinking heavily, without fear of assault. If she can’t, it is the fault of the “rape culture.”

McElroy’s book emerges at a time when things may be changing slightly. The Department of Education recently settled a complaint with Wesley College in Delaware for failing to provide a male student due process when he was accused of sexual misconduct. According to Inside Higher Ed, this could be the first out of nearly 200 Title IX investigations to go after a school for failing to provide due process for the accused.

There is also some pushback from faculty. Law school faculty at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania have chastised the Department of Education for misusing Title IX. Says McElroy, “Merely rolling the provision back to the status it enjoyed before the dear colleague letter (pre-2011) would be a sharp turn toward sanity.”

And yes, we could use some sanity on campus.

5 Legal Rights Women Have That Men Don’t | Thought Catalog

5 Legal Rights Women Have That Men Don’t | Thought Catalog

I’ve had an opportunity lately to speak to a lot of feminists about why so many young women are rejecting feminism, and one theme that has come up repeatedly is that feminism is interested in equal rights for everyone. I have yet to meet a single feminist who was not completely astonished to discover that not only do women have equal rights to men, they actually have more rights than men. Most feminists will backpedal when confronted with that reality and try to justify why they are deserving of more rights than men, but the stark fact remains that in 2014, women do indeed have more rights than men. Here are five legally enshrined rights that women have and men do not:

1. Women have the right to genital integrity

Regardless of how you personally feel about the practice of circumcision (I personally find it barbaric, cruel and completely unjustifiable), the legal fact is that infant girls are protected against any genital cutting of any kind and infant boys are not. Many feminists will argue that female genital mutilation (FGM) is a magnitude of brutality beyond male genital mutilation and while that may be true, I do not find the “it’s only a little bit brutal” argument to be very compelling. It’s like saying cutting off a toe is okay because cutting off a foot is much worse. Ultimately, the argument is immaterial to the fact that women have the legal right to be protected from having their body parts sliced off. Men do not.

2. Women have the right to vote without agreeing to die

In the US, citizens are free to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to democratically choose their own leaders through the process of casting a ballot in an election once they reach the age of 18. Women achieve this right by the simple act of surviving 18 years. Men may not actualize their basic rights as a citizen without first signing a Selective Service card, in which they agree that at the discretion of the democratically elected government, they will take up arms and die to defend their liberty and way of life. The draft. Men may vote if, and only if, they agree they will face death if required. Women have no such obligation, but they do get to vote for the governments that can potentially send men to meet death. Again, regardless of how you feel about the draft, women have the right to vote without agreeing to be drafted. Men don’t.

3. Women have the right to choose parenthood

I’ve written about this before, but it is worth repeating. Women have three options to absolve themselves of all legal, moral, financial and social responsibility for children they did not intend and do not want. Women may abort the child before it is born, they may surrender the child for adoption without notifying or identifying the father or they may surrender the infant under Safe Haven laws and walk away from all responsibility and obligation. Women cannot be forced or coerced into parenthood, but they are legally allowed to force men into financing their reproductive choices. In many states, men can be forced into financial responsibility for children whom they did not biologically father. As long as a particular man is identified as the father, he will be held accountable. Paternity fraud is legal. In no state is legal paternal surrender permitted without the express agreement of the mother.

Again, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with legal paternal surrender, the fact remains that women have the legal right to choose parenthood. Men do not.

4. Women have the right to be assumed caregivers for children

When parental relationships irretrievably break down, current custody laws assume one primary caregiver (almost always a woman) and one tertiary caregiver (almost always a man). In order to win equal or shared custody, the tertiary caregiver must litigate to prove they are worthy of equal parenting, a proposition that is not only very difficult to “prove”, it is also very expensive. The legal presumption of shared parenting upon divorce – that children have a legal right to an equal relationship with both their mother and their father following relationship breakdown – is strongly resisted by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other feminist organizations who know that women will almost always win custody of children under the default laws. In actual fact, men who can afford to purse legal remedies and challenge primary custody stand a good chance of winning, because women do not have the market cornered on loving or caring for children. So while the law does not specifically indicate that custody will be awarded to women, the defacto result of primary/tertiary caregiver custody law is that women have a legal right to be assumed caregivers for children. Men do not.

5. Women have the right to call unwanted, coerced sex rape

The original FBI definition of rape specifically identified women as the victims, excluding the possibility of male rape victims. When the FBI updated that, it did so in way that includes a small minority of male rape victims but excluded most male rape victims by retaining the “penetration” clause. Penetration of any orifice must occur for rape to have happened. The FBI does collect another set of statistics though, under the category of “other sexual assault” – it’s the awkwardly named “made to penetrate” category, which includes men who were coerced, tricked or bullied into penetrative sex with women they would otherwise not have had sex with. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey similarly considers the two types of assault separately, despite the fact that occurrences are virtually identical. 1.27M women report rape (p.18) and 1.26M men report “made to penetrate” (p.19). By collecting the information under separate categories, following the legal definitions, women have the right to have their rapes called “rape”. Men do not.

Why does any of this matter? Feminism is under attack in the popular media for failing to address real problems that have real consequences for real people. Despite insisting that feminism cares for everyone, and wants equality for everyone, the facts suggest the opposite is true. Women have more rights than men and those discrepancies need to be addressed. But more importantly, gender is just one thing that defines who a person is, what advantages and disadvantages they might have, what opportunities are in front of them, or foreclosed. Class, wealth, race, ability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion – all of these things have a profound influence on individuals, and the only way to understand how a specific person can be helped or hindered is to see that person as a human being, first and foremost. Perhaps the reason I don’t need feminism is because what I really need is humanism. And maybe you do, too.

5 Legal Rights Women Have That Men Don’t | Thought Catalog

5 Legal Rights Women Have That Men Don’t | Thought Catalog

I’ve had an opportunity lately to speak to a lot of feminists about why so many young women are rejecting feminism, and one theme that has come up repeatedly is that feminism is interested in equal rights for everyone. I have yet to meet a single feminist who was not completely astonished to discover that not only do women have equal rights to men, they actually have more rights than men. Most feminists will backpedal when confronted with that reality and try to justify why they are deserving of more rights than men, but the stark fact remains that in 2014, women do indeed have more rights than men. Here are five legally enshrined rights that women have and men do not:

1. Women have the right to genital integrity

Regardless of how you personally feel about the practice of circumcision (I personally find it barbaric, cruel and completely unjustifiable), the legal fact is that infant girls are protected against any genital cutting of any kind and infant boys are not. Many feminists will argue that female genital mutilation (FGM) is a magnitude of brutality beyond male genital mutilation and while that may be true, I do not find the “it’s only a little bit brutal” argument to be very compelling. It’s like saying cutting off a toe is okay because cutting off a foot is much worse. Ultimately, the argument is immaterial to the fact that women have the legal right to be protected from having their body parts sliced off. Men do not.

2. Women have the right to vote without agreeing to die

In the US, citizens are free to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to democratically choose their own leaders through the process of casting a ballot in an election once they reach the age of 18. Women achieve this right by the simple act of surviving 18 years. Men may not actualize their basic rights as a citizen without first signing a Selective Service card, in which they agree that at the discretion of the democratically elected government, they will take up arms and die to defend their liberty and way of life. The draft. Men may vote if, and only if, they agree they will face death if required. Women have no such obligation, but they do get to vote for the governments that can potentially send men to meet death. Again, regardless of how you feel about the draft, women have the right to vote without agreeing to be drafted. Men don’t.

3. Women have the right to choose parenthood

I’ve written about this before, but it is worth repeating. Women have three options to absolve themselves of all legal, moral, financial and social responsibility for children they did not intend and do not want. Women may abort the child before it is born, they may surrender the child for adoption without notifying or identifying the father or they may surrender the infant under Safe Haven laws and walk away from all responsibility and obligation. Women cannot be forced or coerced into parenthood, but they are legally allowed to force men into financing their reproductive choices. In many states, men can be forced into financial responsibility for children whom they did not biologically father. As long as a particular man is identified as the father, he will be held accountable. Paternity fraud is legal. In no state is legal paternal surrender permitted without the express agreement of the mother.

Again, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with legal paternal surrender, the fact remains that women have the legal right to choose parenthood. Men do not.

4. Women have the right to be assumed caregivers for children

When parental relationships irretrievably break down, current custody laws assume one primary caregiver (almost always a woman) and one tertiary caregiver (almost always a man). In order to win equal or shared custody, the tertiary caregiver must litigate to prove they are worthy of equal parenting, a proposition that is not only very difficult to “prove”, it is also very expensive. The legal presumption of shared parenting upon divorce – that children have a legal right to an equal relationship with both their mother and their father following relationship breakdown – is strongly resisted by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other feminist organizations who know that women will almost always win custody of children under the default laws. In actual fact, men who can afford to purse legal remedies and challenge primary custody stand a good chance of winning, because women do not have the market cornered on loving or caring for children. So while the law does not specifically indicate that custody will be awarded to women, the defacto result of primary/tertiary caregiver custody law is that women have a legal right to be assumed caregivers for children. Men do not.

5. Women have the right to call unwanted, coerced sex rape

The original FBI definition of rape specifically identified women as the victims, excluding the possibility of male rape victims. When the FBI updated that, it did so in way that includes a small minority of male rape victims but excluded most male rape victims by retaining the “penetration” clause. Penetration of any orifice must occur for rape to have happened. The FBI does collect another set of statistics though, under the category of “other sexual assault” – it’s the awkwardly named “made to penetrate” category, which includes men who were coerced, tricked or bullied into penetrative sex with women they would otherwise not have had sex with. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey similarly considers the two types of assault separately, despite the fact that occurrences are virtually identical. 1.27M women report rape (p.18) and 1.26M men report “made to penetrate” (p.19). By collecting the information under separate categories, following the legal definitions, women have the right to have their rapes called “rape”. Men do not.

Why does any of this matter? Feminism is under attack in the popular media for failing to address real problems that have real consequences for real people. Despite insisting that feminism cares for everyone, and wants equality for everyone, the facts suggest the opposite is true. Women have more rights than men and those discrepancies need to be addressed. But more importantly, gender is just one thing that defines who a person is, what advantages and disadvantages they might have, what opportunities are in front of them, or foreclosed. Class, wealth, race, ability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion – all of these things have a profound influence on individuals, and the only way to understand how a specific person can be helped or hindered is to see that person as a human being, first and foremost. Perhaps the reason I don’t need feminism is because what I really need is humanism. And maybe you do, too.

5 Legal Rights Women Have That Men Don’t | Thought Catalog

5 Legal Rights Women Have That Men Don’t | Thought Catalog

I’ve had an opportunity lately to speak to a lot of feminists about why so many young women are rejecting feminism, and one theme that has come up repeatedly is that feminism is interested in equal rights for everyone. I have yet to meet a single feminist who was not completely astonished to discover that not only do women have equal rights to men, they actually have more rights than men. Most feminists will backpedal when confronted with that reality and try to justify why they are deserving of more rights than men, but the stark fact remains that in 2014, women do indeed have more rights than men. Here are five legally enshrined rights that women have and men do not:

1. Women have the right to genital integrity

Regardless of how you personally feel about the practice of circumcision (I personally find it barbaric, cruel and completely unjustifiable), the legal fact is that infant girls are protected against any genital cutting of any kind and infant boys are not. Many feminists will argue that female genital mutilation (FGM) is a magnitude of brutality beyond male genital mutilation and while that may be true, I do not find the “it’s only a little bit brutal” argument to be very compelling. It’s like saying cutting off a toe is okay because cutting off a foot is much worse. Ultimately, the argument is immaterial to the fact that women have the legal right to be protected from having their body parts sliced off. Men do not.

2. Women have the right to vote without agreeing to die

In the US, citizens are free to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to democratically choose their own leaders through the process of casting a ballot in an election once they reach the age of 18. Women achieve this right by the simple act of surviving 18 years. Men may not actualize their basic rights as a citizen without first signing a Selective Service card, in which they agree that at the discretion of the democratically elected government, they will take up arms and die to defend their liberty and way of life. The draft. Men may vote if, and only if, they agree they will face death if required. Women have no such obligation, but they do get to vote for the governments that can potentially send men to meet death. Again, regardless of how you feel about the draft, women have the right to vote without agreeing to be drafted. Men don’t.

3. Women have the right to choose parenthood

I’ve written about this before, but it is worth repeating. Women have three options to absolve themselves of all legal, moral, financial and social responsibility for children they did not intend and do not want. Women may abort the child before it is born, they may surrender the child for adoption without notifying or identifying the father or they may surrender the infant under Safe Haven laws and walk away from all responsibility and obligation. Women cannot be forced or coerced into parenthood, but they are legally allowed to force men into financing their reproductive choices. In many states, men can be forced into financial responsibility for children whom they did not biologically father. As long as a particular man is identified as the father, he will be held accountable. Paternity fraud is legal. In no state is legal paternal surrender permitted without the express agreement of the mother.

Again, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with legal paternal surrender, the fact remains that women have the legal right to choose parenthood. Men do not.

4. Women have the right to be assumed caregivers for children

When parental relationships irretrievably break down, current custody laws assume one primary caregiver (almost always a woman) and one tertiary caregiver (almost always a man). In order to win equal or shared custody, the tertiary caregiver must litigate to prove they are worthy of equal parenting, a proposition that is not only very difficult to “prove”, it is also very expensive. The legal presumption of shared parenting upon divorce – that children have a legal right to an equal relationship with both their mother and their father following relationship breakdown – is strongly resisted by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other feminist organizations who know that women will almost always win custody of children under the default laws. In actual fact, men who can afford to purse legal remedies and challenge primary custody stand a good chance of winning, because women do not have the market cornered on loving or caring for children. So while the law does not specifically indicate that custody will be awarded to women, the defacto result of primary/tertiary caregiver custody law is that women have a legal right to be assumed caregivers for children. Men do not.

5. Women have the right to call unwanted, coerced sex rape

The original FBI definition of rape specifically identified women as the victims, excluding the possibility of male rape victims. When the FBI updated that, it did so in way that includes a small minority of male rape victims but excluded most male rape victims by retaining the “penetration” clause. Penetration of any orifice must occur for rape to have happened. The FBI does collect another set of statistics though, under the category of “other sexual assault” – it’s the awkwardly named “made to penetrate” category, which includes men who were coerced, tricked or bullied into penetrative sex with women they would otherwise not have had sex with. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey similarly considers the two types of assault separately, despite the fact that occurrences are virtually identical. 1.27M women report rape (p.18) and 1.26M men report “made to penetrate” (p.19). By collecting the information under separate categories, following the legal definitions, women have the right to have their rapes called “rape”. Men do not.

Why does any of this matter? Feminism is under attack in the popular media for failing to address real problems that have real consequences for real people. Despite insisting that feminism cares for everyone, and wants equality for everyone, the facts suggest the opposite is true. Women have more rights than men and those discrepancies need to be addressed. But more importantly, gender is just one thing that defines who a person is, what advantages and disadvantages they might have, what opportunities are in front of them, or foreclosed. Class, wealth, race, ability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion – all of these things have a profound influence on individuals, and the only way to understand how a specific person can be helped or hindered is to see that person as a human being, first and foremost. Perhaps the reason I don’t need feminism is because what I really need is humanism. And maybe you do, too.

The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government

The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government


Many people assume that it is modern feminism, not the Constitution, that has secured freedom and political equality for women. In reality, the Constitution has always been compatible with women’s equal political rights and provides a framework for the expansion of those rights. Although contemporary feminists ostensibly pursue the goal of ensuring that men and women enjoy equal opportunity and treatment under the law, the feminist movement has largely strayed from this narrow mission in favor of a far more radical agenda. In the name of “equality,” it has sought to promote women’s full autonomy by eliminating gender distinctions and forcing gender parity. Achieving these goals would require a vast expansion of centralized government, the redefinition of freedom, and the destruction of equal protection and due process of law. This movement undermines America’s constitutional system, which limits the scope and character of the law with a view to protecting the individual rights of both men and women.

The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government

The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government


Many people assume that it is modern feminism, not the Constitution, that has secured freedom and political equality for women. In reality, the Constitution has always been compatible with women’s equal political rights and provides a framework for the expansion of those rights. Although contemporary feminists ostensibly pursue the goal of ensuring that men and women enjoy equal opportunity and treatment under the law, the feminist movement has largely strayed from this narrow mission in favor of a far more radical agenda. In the name of “equality,” it has sought to promote women’s full autonomy by eliminating gender distinctions and forcing gender parity. Achieving these goals would require a vast expansion of centralized government, the redefinition of freedom, and the destruction of equal protection and due process of law. This movement undermines America’s constitutional system, which limits the scope and character of the law with a view to protecting the individual rights of both men and women.

The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government

The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government


Many people assume that it is modern feminism, not the Constitution, that has secured freedom and political equality for women. In reality, the Constitution has always been compatible with women’s equal political rights and provides a framework for the expansion of those rights. Although contemporary feminists ostensibly pursue the goal of ensuring that men and women enjoy equal opportunity and treatment under the law, the feminist movement has largely strayed from this narrow mission in favor of a far more radical agenda. In the name of “equality,” it has sought to promote women’s full autonomy by eliminating gender distinctions and forcing gender parity. Achieving these goals would require a vast expansion of centralized government, the redefinition of freedom, and the destruction of equal protection and due process of law. This movement undermines America’s constitutional system, which limits the scope and character of the law with a view to protecting the individual rights of both men and women.

The Crucible: Redux (or College Campuses Lack Due Process for the Accused) — Lone Conservative

The Crucible: Redux (or College Campuses Lack Due Process for the Accused) — Lone Conservative

The problems don’t end with the falsely accused, though, or even their families. Real victims find themselves at the end of the gun, as well. Though these practices are surely designed to help women, the opposite ends up becoming true. Recently, a Stanford student was charged with sexual assault, and convicted. This case serves as a bright line standard. The man was found on top of the victim, who was unconscious. Regardless of alcohol, drugs, family history, or any other mitigating or aggravating circumstance, this is a clear case. Unfortunately (though this is only my opinion), there has not been enough outrage over such a despicable act. It seems that this is a direct consequence of campus feminists calling everything from rape, to an unwanted hand hold, sexual assault.

The “1 in 4” statistic has been paraded around by everyone, from the President to Tumblr blogs the world over. The problem – it’s a complete fabrication. In her book Who Stole Feminism, Christina Hoff Sommers delves into the study which created the numbers. She found that:

The one-in-four statistic was derived from a survey of 3,000 college women in 1982. Researchers used three questions to determine if respondents had been raped: Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs? Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man threatened or used some degree of physical force... to make you? And, have you had sexual acts...when you didn't want to because a man threatened to use some degree of physical force... to make you?

The questions used to complete this survey are incredibly vague, which allow for leagues of interpretation and personal spin to be put onto them. It is an an impossibly poor practice of the scientific method. These numbers were derived by the CDC, which on the surface gives them a certain authoritative credence. The FBI, however, reports a vastly different set of numbers. Even with a (needed) expansion of the term, campuses are nowhere near 1 in 4. Troy University in Alabama, for example, reported one rape. Its student population that year was over twenty-two thousand. Never has it been more true that “There are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics.”

Due process does not just exist as an idea to attain, though. It is put into action hundreds of thousands of times each day. I work as an intern for a district judge in my county, who often presides over juvenile cases. I recently had a chance to witness due process in action regarding a campus sexual assault case. A young man was charged with first degree rape by the accuser, which in my state means there was forced intercourse, against the will of the victim, through means of intimidation or duress. In other words, the person has to be shown to have had non-consensual sex, and the victim must have been in fear of imminent harm or danger: a textbook case of back-alley rape, for example. The accused was not a student on the same campus as the alleged victim, so the college could not handle it internally. The parents of the young woman pressed charges, and it went to a bench trial before the judge. Over the course of over five hours, I listened to both sides examine and cross-examine witnesses, including the accused himself. As would be expected, the stories of the accused and the accuser did not quite match up; as the adages goes, “there’s your side, there’s my side, and there’s the truth.” The judge came to the same conclusion I had throughout the course of the testimonies: that the defendant, beyond a reasonable doubt, did have sex with the accuser without her consent. In fact, she verbally said no. Nevertheless, the facts of the case trend toward a story less reminiscent of a predator roaming the streets, and more toward a young man who got caught up in sexual desire, and made a mistake. This distinction – between a violent, premeditated rape, and a rash, consequential mistake – is something that has been lost in our culture of demonizing every offender the same way. At the end of the day, the accused was found not guilty of the charge, but was found guilty of a lesser, more appropriate charge.

To be clear, I do not mean to gloss over the fact that the accused violated the woman’s right to her body. I am also not one to pretend this case is at all the same as someone being violently attacked and taken against their will. There is a very clear difference, and to suggest otherwise is a total insult to those who really can be called rape survivors. It is a sad case, undoubtedly. Two people had parts of their lives taken because of a mistake the defendant made. More importantly, however, this case also shows exactly how important, indeed vital, the system of due process is to justice. It would not be justice had the defendant been acquitted entirely because the charge was too great for the crime. Nor would it be justice for a young man to have his entire life ruined due to a non-violent mistake.

This is the reason so many of these campus tribunals fail. They fail to allow for the truth be found out, and opt, instead, for emotions to dictate the day. Some would claim that all accounts of rape, or sexual assault, must be believed. That would be a dangerous world, at best. The fact is, everyone must be considered innocent until found guilty. To be fair, no accusation of rape should ever be taken lightly. That would be an equal disservice. It’s crazy, though, to think that no one would ever lie about something so serious. We must stop conflating cat calls with sexual assault, and stop dismantling the lives of the innocent in the interest of making sure no guilty person ever goes free. Oberlin sophomore, Emily Lloyd, said that, “So many women get their lives totally ruined by being assaulted and not saying anything, so if one guy gets his life ruined, maybe it balances out.”

Asche Schow is a prolific contributor to the Washington Examiner. A high rate of her recent articles have dealt with the myth of rape culture, false assault accusations, and the lack of due process on campuses. In one article, she wrote about yet another case of due process being denied to the accused. Yet, in a turn of undeniable karma to campus feminists, and of incredible injustice to everyone else, this same lack of due process recently claimed the college career of a young woman. The young woman in question was drinking, as was the accuser. It was the male, though, who felt as though he’d been taken advantage of, and filed the complaint. According to the young man, the next day he felt regretful, and as though he had been taken advantage of by the young woman. Without any sort of due process, the woman was expelled for sexual assault. Yet again, sans due process, a student was booted from school for what amounted to a drunken mistake.

As C.W.E Bigsby wrote in his analysis of The Crucible, “John Proctor’s flaw is his failure, until the last moment, to distinguish guilt from responsibility; America’s is to believe that it is at the same time both guilty and without flaw.” The modern American collegiate culture has fostered a generation who operate only in the court of public opinion, and no longer recognize the necessity of due process and a fair trial.In Salem, twenty people were put to death, only because they were accused. There was no proof, there was no benefit of the doubt, and there was no due process. We are seeing similar occurrences, today, when people are accused of sexual assault. The public deems them guilty, and they are metaphorically killed. Due process must be brought to college campuses, if justice is really what we want.

At no point would I, nor have I, suggested that those who are guilty should not be punished. Rather, only the guilty should be punished. We are so consumed with making sure every woman is protected, that we fail to appreciate the damage false accusations can do to everyone. If it’s a witch hunt we want, though, don’t change anything. I’ll meet you out back with the torches and a pitchfork. Though, we may find ourselves hunting different monsters.

Christina Hoff Sommers » AEI Scholar

Christina Hoff Sommers » AEI Scholar

About the Network of enlightened Women (NeW)

About the Network of enlightened Women (NeW)

In September 2004, a group of students at the University of Virginia founded a book club for conservative college women and called it the Network of enlightened Women, known as NeW. Within a year, women on other campuses heard about NeW and wanted to start their own chapters. NeW began expanding nationally, growing one chapter at a time.

The Daily Bell - Three Myths of Rape That Need Sunlight

The Daily Bell - Three Myths of Rape That Need Sunlight

A pivot point occurred within feminism on the issue of rape in 1975 when the book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape by Susan Brownmiller appeared. In its pages, Brownmiller attempted to chart the history of rape from the Neanderthal through to modern man, placing great emphasis on periods of war and crisis. Against Our Will reportedly gave rape its history. It became a founding document of the "rape culture," which further propelled the feminist movement from liberalism to political correctness, which has also been called gender or radical feminism.

In her book, Brownmiller maintained that rape is the primary mechanism through which men subjugate women. "Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire, and the first crude stone ax. From prehistoric times to the present, I believe, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear." [Emphasis in the original.]

Some of today's most prevalent myths about rape were cemented into the culture by Brownmiller. In particular, Brownmiller presented three interrelated myths:

1. rape is a part of patriarchy;

2. men have created a 'mass psychology' of rape; and,

3. rape is a part of 'normal' life.

I dispute each one of them.

Article « The Rape Culture Lie « Commentary Magazine

Article « The Rape Culture Lie « Commentary Magazine

Is rape a serious problem and a horrible crime? Of course. Is there injustice in the world? Absolutely. Is America’s current “conversation” about “rape culture” a complete and total farce? Sadly, yes. In a September essay for Time, Camille Paglia argued that the modern campus is simply incapable of recognizing real evil, criminalizing “oafish hookup dramas.” She may be right, but the problem is deeper and more ambiguous than that.

Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say -- NYMag

Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say -- NYMag

Political correctness is a term whose meaning has been gradually diluted since it became a flashpoint 25 years ago. People use the phrase to describe politeness (perhaps to excess), or evasion of hard truths, or (as a term of abuse by conservatives) liberalism in general. The confusion has made it more attractive to liberals, who share the goal of combating race and gender bias.

But political correctness is not a rigorous commitment to social equality so much as a system of left-wing ideological repression. Not only is it not a form of liberalism; it is antithetical to liberalism. Indeed, its most frequent victims turn out to be liberals themselves.

....

Under p.c. culture, the same idea can be expressed identically by two people but received differently depending on the race and sex of the individuals doing the expressing. This has led to elaborate norms and terminology within certain communities on the left. For instance, “mansplaining,” a concept popularized in 2008 by Rebecca Solnit, who described the tendency of men to patronizingly hold forth to women on subjects the woman knows better — in Solnit’s case, the man in question mansplained her own book to her. The fast popularization of the term speaks to how exasperating the phenomenon can be, and mansplaining has, at times, proved useful in identifying discrimination embedded in everyday rudeness. But it has now grown into an all-purpose term of abuse that can be used to discredit any argument by any man. (MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry once disdainfully called White House press secretary Jay Carney’s defense of the relative pay of men and women in the administration “man­splaining,” even though the question he responded to was posed by a male.) Mansplaining has since given rise to “whitesplaining” and “straightsplaining.” The phrase “solidarity is for white women,” used in a popular hashtag, broadly signifies any criticism of white feminists by nonwhite ones.

If a person who is accused of bias attempts to defend his intentions, he merely compounds his own guilt. (Here one might find oneself accused of man/white/straightsplaining.) It is likewise taboo to request that the accusation be rendered in a less hostile manner. This is called “tone policing.” If you are accused of bias, or “called out,” reflection and apology are the only acceptable response — to dispute a call-out only makes it worse. There is no allowance in p.c. culture for the possibility that the accusation may be erroneous. A white person or a man can achieve the status of “ally,” however, if he follows the rules of p.c. dialogue. A community, virtual or real, that adheres to the rules is deemed “safe.” The extensive terminology plays a crucial role, locking in shared ideological assumptions that make meaningful disagreement impossible.

A reaction to the response shows up in freebeacon.com...

Now, some will say that Chait has been unnecessarily provocative in his writing. That he should’ve made a better effort to reach out to the people he’s criticizing. The problem with this framing is that it presumes the angry rage mobs roaming Twitter in search of someone who has insufficiently checked his or her or its privilege are open to debate, to having their mind changed. That they’re interested in having a calm, rational discussion. This is a faulty presumption. It’s impossible to have a polite discussion on this topic because the outraged don’t want to have any discussion on this topic. As Chait puts it:

If a person who is accused of bias attempts to defend his intentions, he merely compounds his own guilt. (Here one might find oneself accused of man/white/straightsplaining.) It is likewise taboo to request that the accusation be rendered in a less hostile manner. This is called “tone policing.” If you are accused of bias, or “called out,” reflection and apology are the only acceptable response — to dispute a call-out only makes it worse. There is no allowance in p.c. culture for the possibility that the accusation may be erroneous. A white person or a man can achieve the status of “ally,” however, if he follows the rules of p.c. dialogue. A community, virtual or real, that adheres to the rules is deemed “safe.”

It’s hard to have even a calm, rational discussion with someone who thinks your only appropriate response is silence. That the only thing you can do is sit there and listen and nod your head, admitting that you have been blind to the truth and, yes, deserve the vitriol heaped upon you. I kind of hope that Chait is offered a speaking gig on a college campus just to see how quickly it’ll take for him to be shouted down and demonstrated against, petitioned and picketed.

The Media Is Making College Rape Culture Worse - The Daily Beast

The Media Is Making College Rape Culture Worse - The Daily Beast

'No' Is a Woman's Most Powerful Word - Bloomberg View

'No' Is a Woman's Most Powerful Word - Bloomberg View

Whether or not "no means no" might have been adequate to prevent the problems of date rapes behind the sock hop, it was not adequate to all the difficulties we faced. My generation drank more than our mothers had, so that women were more frequently incapable of saying no, or much of anything else. There were no parietal rules to keep us out of each other's rooms, or force us to come home at an early hour. Nor could we fall back on "nice girls don't"; we had to refuse this specific man each time, not on the grounds that some external force was stopping us, but because we simply didn't want to have sex with him. That's an uncomfortable conversation, and modern though we may be, most of us still hated uncomfortable conversations, especially if we'd had a few and just wanted to go to sleep.

I'm not calling for a return to single-sex dorms, curfew rules, and the presumption that "nice girls don't." I'm just pointing out that these things gave our mothers an easy way to say "no" that didn't have to be explained or defended, and wouldn't be taken as a specific rejection of this person right in front of you. We were chanting a slogan designed for a world that no longer existed. In the world where we lived, it required an assertiveness and a confident self-knowledge that a lot of 19-year-old girls found hard to muster. It required actions we weren't always willing to take, like loudly saying "no," and leaving if he persisted. In other words, it left us vulnerable, though not in the same way that our mothers had been.

....

I understand what Dominus is trying to do, but I don't think it will work. Twenty-five years after I registered for college, we're still searching for an alternative to the stark simplicity of "No." And unfortunately, there's just no substitute. If you want to "teach men not to rape" -- a formulation that floated around the Internet a lot in the days after the Rolling Stone story was published -- then you need to give them a rule that can be clearly articulated, and followed even if you've had a few.

That's why "no means no" worked so well, even if it wasn't perfect. It's a heuristic that even a guy who's been sucking at the end of a three-story beer funnel can remember and put into practice. The rule obviously needed some refinement, by adding other equally clear rules -- like "if she's stumbling drunk or vomiting, just pretend she said no, because she's not legally capable of consent." But the basic idea, of listening to what the woman is saying, not some super-secret countersignals you might think she is sending, is exactly the sort of rule that we need in the often-confusing, choose-your-own-adventure world of modern sexual mores.

Compare that with "we're in the red zone." What does that mean? It seems to me that a guy can take this one of two ways: either as "no," or as something less than "no," something which means that there's still hope and he should consider asking again in 15 minutes. If it means "less than no, but maybe more than yes," then we haven't fixed things; we've just added another layer of confusion.

....

But even a good rule needs good women to make it work: proud of our decisiveness, confident in our right to self-determination, courageous enough to bear the awkwardness of disappointing those who badly want what we don't want to give. Women need to learn "no" not just to protect themselves from aggressive men in the bedroom, but also to make themselves more powerful in the world outside. We need to embrace "no" in all areas of life, and teach men to expect to hear it from us more often. We need to insist on our own right to have opinions about everything, and to have our opinions count for just as much as a man's do.

So we need to tell men "no means no," and that fierce punishment will follow any violation of this simple rule. But we women also need to tell them "I mean no," not "we're in the red zone" or "I shouldn't -- I have an early class tomorrow." Most important, however, is what we need to tell women: that the power of "no" is their inalienable birthright, and that those who are given such great gifts have an obligation to use them.

The Daily Bell - Victims Frantically Search For Offense

The Daily Bell - Victims Frantically Search For Offense

Microaggression. The word may soon be knocking on your door to demand supplication or another form of payment. Microaggression is the new politically correct campaign being launched by "disadvantaged" elites who are running out of even vaguely real transgressions to complain about.

What You Can Expect to Be Accused Of

Microaggression is unintended discrimination that demeans the "disadvantaged" even if the perpetrator does not intend to do so and is well-meaning. Coined in 1970 by Harvard psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce, it described unconscious racial insults delivered by whites to minorities. An example is a white teacher who asks a black student if he needs help with a math problem.

The concept includes micro-insults or insensitive communication such as asking an Asian coworker where she comes from; the question allegedly suggests she is a foreigner and not a true American. It also includes micro-invalidations that negate the feelings or reality of a black, such as speaking well of Southern cooking; the comment allegedly suggests an approval of past slavery. These behaviors lead to micro-inequities; the behaviors are conveyed through unconscious messages that allegedly devalue the "disadvantaged" in the subtle communication of facial expressions, gestures, tone, word choice, nuance and syntax.

In 1973, MIT economist Mary Rowe expanded Pierce's term to focus on discrimination against women. A classic example of microaggression against women is using the pronoun "he" to indicate people in general when it is also a gender-specific term. Merely substituting the pronoun "she," however, is microaggression as well because it sweeps the insult of the original situation under the rug.

The "disadvantaged" now include racial minorities, women, sexual minorities, the poor, the disabled ... that is, any group considered to be marginalized. It includes almost everyone but white males or any white female who disagrees with political correctness.

Who You Can Expect to Accuse You

A predictable vector of transmission is PC feminism. And, as with the current gender insanity, it will begin on campuses. In fact, it already has. But seeing microaggression in everyone everywhere is not limited to feminists.

In 2013, Prof. Van Rust was fired from UCLA due to microaggressions against black students. Susan Kruth of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reported (Jan 8, 2014), "Rust's alleged offenses comprise his seemingly typical feedback on students' work. As demonstration leader ... Kenjus Watson argued, Rust created a hostile climate in his class by, among other things, correcting "perceived grammatical choices that in actuality reflect ideologies." Another of the alleged microaggressions appears to be that Rust required students to use The Chicago Manual of Style ..." In other words, he insisted that university students use the standard spelling and grammar they would need in professional life.

On December 5, Princeton University students set up a "Tiger Microaggressions" service through which students can anonymously report and publish microaggressions. The page calls this form of discrimination "papercuts of oppression" that are "small but slice deep." The National Review (Dec. 11, 2014) quoted the service operators as saying "microaggressions are all around us" and literally anything can qualify as a microaggression because "there are no objective definitions to words and phrases."

As a columnist for the Miami Herald commented (Dec. 29), "So if I write, The sky is blue you are perfectly within your rights to assume that what I actually meant is, 'Everybody but white guys should writhe in Hell for all eternity'. Because, really, who's to say?" His example may sound extreme ... but it is not because there is no reductio ad absurdum possible with political correctness.

That became clear in a column by microaggression advocate Jessica Valenti in The Guardian (Dec. 10) in which she claims to love everything about Christmas. Except one thing. Gender oppression makes her responsible for wrapping presents for family and loved ones. While women are being trafficked in Africa, raped in Afghanistan, killed for 'honor' and having acid thrown in their face, the gender oppression of Western women devolves to being surrounded by what Valenti says is a loving family who hopes you wrap your presents to them. That expectation, in her own words, makes Christmas into "a godd*mn clusterf**k."

Why the Utter Madness?

A seeming simply question, the answer is multi-layered. Addressing just two aspects of the madness:

1) "There are no objective definitions to words and phrases." Without becoming philosophical or providing details, this statement comes from the belief that there is no reality whatsoever beyond what is constructed by the culture through its language, texts, history, assumptions of biological sexuality, philosophy, legal theory, etc. Objectivity and conclusions through reason and evidence do not exist; only the subject narrative presented by voices exists. In order to radically change society, it is necessary to deconstruct the current narrative and replace it with a desirable one; it is necessary for their voices to be the ones that are heard. The deconstructionist approach dates back to the postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida and has been adopted in a wholesale, cartoon version by gender feminism.

2) Politically-correct victims are desperate to preserve their own victimhood. In terms of gender feminism, this means preserving the myth of the "rape culture"; this is a culture that so profoundly encourages rape, "rape" becomes the one word defining the culture. This may be an appropriate description of Afghanistan but it is palpably untrue of North America. In order to sustain the myth, therefore, it is necessary to define more and more innocuous behavior as sexual assault so that words, attitudes and other non-violence become assault. Equally, in order to sustain the myth that the "disadvantaged" are being constantly victimized, it is necessary to define more and more innocuous behavior as acts of violence. Or, even worse, the need for definition is being trashed and a victim now self-defines him- or herself by an entirely subjective standard.

As insane and vicious as it seem to reasonable and decent people, micro-aggression is the new cutting edge of political correctness and its subset of gender feminism.

Conclusion

The claim of microaggression is a justification for censorship and social control. To advocates, the slightest hint of insult becomes evidence of epidemic oppression in society. What you say, what you don't say, when you do not show up either to speak or stay silent ... all of these can be evidence of microaggression. That is, as long as the act or non-act is committed by a white male or by someone who disagrees with the PC theory of victimhood.

The actual oppression occurs, of course, when micro-victims band together and harm those who have been "constructed" as oppressors, as they harmed Prof. Van Rust for requiring proper grammar. Those targeted by the micro-warriors are the true victims. And the self-righteous crusade of the privileged masquerading as the oppressed will continue until one thing happens. Individuals (especially white males) need to stop feeling guilty for their innocuous acts and non-acts. They must stop apologizing for the whiteness of their skin, their genitalia, their system of belief ... Individuals must stop apologizing for the hubris of peacefully occupying space on the planet.

Your guilt is the main weapon wielded by the politically correct. Take it away.

The Self-Enforcing Nature of the Old Moral Code — It’s Gone

If it's too late to get it back, what do we do now, “rape crisis” and all?


By William Murchison – 12.12.14


Yeah, yeah, I’m I’m olllllld. I know and confess it. I remember the Kennedy assassination. I remember when all the guys wore coat and tie at college football games. I remember when the New York Times could be characterized as more or less a pro-American institution.


I mean, look — I even recall when a kind of moral consensus about sex, and sexual relationships, denied the likes of Rolling Stone magazine and Lena Dunham the privilege of whomping up national crusades against the Predatory Male.


We no longer have that consensus. But, boy, do we have Lena Dunham. And Taylor Swift. And the president of the United States — to sound the alarm about the male multitudes who view women as disposable playthings, fit for ravaging at will. Presently, America’s rape “crisis,” as we’re probably supposed to call it, vies with CIA torture and Obamacare for Topic of the Moment status.


I intend to lay down a marker for present purposes. The topic of how real, and how widespread, the crisis may be — if it’s a crisis at all — has attracted so many disputants on both sides that I think it better to hang back on that question. The frequently heard assertion that nearly one in five American women has been raped in her lifetime strikes me as grossly overblown, and anyway how would one know such a thing as that?


Well, we do know the male thirst for sexual satisfaction, whether carried out with the cooperation of women or against their will, is not trending on Twitter. That might be called, in theological terms, a consequence of the Fall — the splashy descent of newly created humanity into sustained misbehavior. Oh, you don’t believe in all that religious twaddle? Fine. Around here we protect the right of belief. The point to keep in mind is the timelessness of lust, whether perpetrated out of unconquerable desire or out of (as is widely believed nowadays) the hope for imperial conquest. I take it that understanding requires no spiritual affirmation.


Society figured out the problem long ago. It concocted rules. The rules, a subset of enactments under the moral law, said, hold it: a woman isn’t to be forced; coaxed, that was different (though not necessarily OK). That was because the rules recognized unchecked lust, and the brutality surrounding it — war evidenced these traits in ghastly form — as counter to the purposes of civilized society. You couldn’t have the powerful (men) working their will on the less powerful (women) without major harm to human dignity and social peace. It was a bit like empowering kings and emperors to do as they liked, without responsibility to anyone, least of all their victims. Unchecked power over others would destroy not only the others but the destroyers themselves in the end.


A particular problem arose in the context of unchecked power over women — power unrestrained by love or pity, either one. The woman was — is — the other half of the human race, her responsibilities and pleasures congruent with the responsibilities and pleasures of the other half. The two halves met as one whole, and thrived, or failed to thrive, as they recognized their mutual dependence.


The moral law, its features reframed a bit in every age, held that the mothers and wives on whom depended so much that was good and vital, were owed by the society in which they lived a due measure of respect, and of freedom from unmerited injury.


And they all lived happily ever after… yes? Not quite. We know this. The reason for rules in the first place is the human instinct for self-aggrandizement and the resulting need for boundaries. Rape we’ve always had, the breaking of rules being a feature of the human landscape. At least there were rules. These stayed in place in Western civilization for centuries. They were still around at the time of the Kennedy assassination, and in the days when the New York Times could be counted on for more-than-occasional commendations of America’s purposes and methods.


Those would be the times I remember myself — when the idea of a “rape crisis,” had such a notion been broached, would have sounded incredible. Some powerful institutions stood in the way of such a crisis. There was the family, first of all —the major teaching institution in any country and age. There were bad families aplenty, and broken ones; there were seemingly, even so, more good ones than bad, with two married parents under the roof, working to some degree or other to make sure the rules were understood and enforced. The schools backed them up, both parents and rules. Around the time of the Kennedy assassination, the colleges that some see now as the center of the rape culture stood firm for the doctrine of in loco parentis. The college authorities, that is, stood in for the parents who had entrusted to them the care of precious Johnny and Susie.


There were — imagine it! — rules. And dorms reserved for one sex or the other but not both at the same time. Curfews curtailed the nocturnal activities of women students, for whom the “house mothers” were always keeping an eye open on weeknights and weekends alike. What a sight at curfew hour — passionate good-nights; often enough breezy farewells. (A lot of girls from that era saw curfew as blessed deliverance from a dull, never-to-be-repeated date.)


A signal virtue of the old moral code was its self-enforcing nature. No kidding. There existed what we might call internal restraints: matters of I-really-shouldn’t-do-this. Not everybody owned or exercised such restraints, but they were out there in the general environment, and if you yourself didn’t possess an ample supply your friends might; likelier, your parents would. Parents — you remember; the villains whom the Yippie prankster Jerry Rubin urged you facetiously to “kill” lest they squash your delicate ambitions to express the inner you.


What the self-enforcing nature of the moral code meant was that cops and courts rarely involved themselves in personal matters. Citizens in our land of the free enjoyed entitlement to what is now a rare commodity — trust: a trust broken sometimes, of course, after the manner of fallen man, but not so often as to set university presidents by their ears over frat parties.


It was assumed that, if left generally alone, we would —under the promptings of the moral code — conduct ourselves responsibly enough to let the authorities focus on murder, robbery, and, yes, rape. Not the kind of rape — drunken, overbearing — Lena Dunham makes a centerpiece in her best-selling (if undocumented) account of a hard upbringing; rather, the kind of rape — cruel, vicious — for which government until fairly recently allowed the death penalty. Society, I mean to say, had the innate capacity to draw important behavioral distinctions, and to judge and act accordingly. Not anymore, it seems.


What happened is Question No. 1. A lot of things happened. Being old, I lay particular blame on events of years ago summed up in the rubric of “the counterculture.” The explosive content and consequences of the youth rebellion, c. 1964-1971, have never been adequately measured, it seems to me. Repeated blasts, each one larger than the last, blew down the front doors of the old culture with its rules and regulations: scattering authority figures from deans to parents who were “always telling people what to do;” suppressing joyous passion and the aspirations of oppressed classes — not only blacks but, as the story went, women eager to make their own decisions, live their own lives. The passions of the time quickly overflowed. There had been no culture of rape, 21st century style, in the era that mourned John F. Kennedy. The culture grew slowly; it battened on the new freedoms of the time. Who cared about old rules? Old dead people cared — that was who; dead mentally, dead emotionally, or just plain dead and buried.


And now what? That would be the second question. Enter the authorities, with sheaves of programs and recommendations. President Obama declared in April 2012 that “We must do more to raise awareness about the realities of sexual assault; confront and change insensitive attitudes wherever they persist…” A year later Obama signed the third reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act — a measure attributed to the vision and inspiration of Senator, now Vice President, Joe Biden.


The compass of this now 20-year-old act is predictably spacious. As Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s right-hand woman, noted with satisfaction: “[T]housands of women and men…who are victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking will be able to access resources they need in their communities to help heal from their trauma. In addition, thousands of law enforcement officers will be better equipped to stop violence before it starts, and respond to calls of help when they are needed.”


As for campus rape: “[O]ne in five women will be the victim of an attempted or completed sexual assault while they [sic] are in college…This act will help by requiring colleges and universities to provide information to students about dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking and improve data collection about these crimes. We call on all of our colleges and universities to make ending sexual assault a top priority.”


Well, that should take care of it! If not, the act reposes authority for violence prevention in an office of the Justice Department. And, thanks to another of the president’s now-famous executive orders, the National Dating Abuse Helpline now has federal funds for digital service. Nor should we overlook creation of a White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault: the last nail, we may assume, in the coffin of Unrestrained Male Lust.


Or maybe not. What recent events on the rape front reveal — among other things, all of them bad or dispiriting — is the distance American culture has traveled since the Kennedy assassination. The freedoms so eagerly grasped in the ’60s turn out not to be so liberating after all. Yes, men and women students can live in the same dorms, if not the same rooms, and stay out all night if they like, and drink themselves insensible, and tell deans of student life and house moms (if any there still are) to take a hike, we’re in charge of our own lives now. Do these varied rights and privileges make life objectively better? That proposition would be hard to establish and maintain. We certainly didn’t talk about date rape, frat house rape, dorm rape — the whole catalog of current excesses — back when mom and dad conspired in the cause of maintaining insofar as possible certain well-established moral principles; e.g., your date — a fellow human being — is your responsibility, not your plaything. The practical essence of the old moral code was respect for others. They were entitled to it. So were you. Under that canopy of understanding you worked out and adjusted behaviors.


Plenty of slips and falls there were. That’s the nature of human beings, a tribe generally informed as to the nature of right and wrong, yet beset by temptations of all kinds: personal, financial, professional, sexual. The moral code observed in most particulars up to the past half-century or so helped keep the lid on. Better a code hitting on five out of eight cylinders than on none at all.


Ironically, the feminist quest for power and privilege, in the very act of liberating women from former expectations, ripped from their hands some of the old protections: respect based on admiration as well as friendship, and expectation of fruitfulness, not to mention abiding love, in the man/woman relationship.


Yeah, well, lemme tell you about my husband (or dad or brother or uncle), a genuinely aggrieved woman may reply to such an assertion. Lemme tell you, Mister, about the nights he came home drunk and…and…


We need not ignore such disturbing narratives, with their component of truth. We need them most of all in some sense to remind us of the futility of expecting laws and regulations and federal grants and Valerie Jarrett memos to smooth out male-female relationships and build up the respect that must flow from man to woman and woman to man. The restoration of the old moral code is the proper work for men and women who hope to cure this age’s varied infirmities. It is likewise the hardest possible work.


The Christian and Jewish religions were formerly fundamental to the task of affirming the mutual duties of men and women — partners in service to God in His world. Religion, if not yet flat on its back, no longer commands even the curiosity it once enjoyed.


A moral code — to what end? That would be a modern-sounding query. Why not, instead, Acts of Congress? (Based on whose perceptions of right and wrong?) Why not police lineups and arrest warrants? (Enforcing whose perceptions of right and wrong?)


Why not Valerie Jarrett and Joe Biden? Ah, forgot — they’ll both be elsewhere in a couple of years. What does that leave us with, seen or unseen, to maintain the tricky balance between the responsibilities (how’s that for a musty old word?!) whose fulfillment makes civilization possible?


The question dangles, unanswered, in the air of the 21st century.

The coming war between sex-positive feminism and affirmative consent | WashingtonExaminer.com

The coming war between sex-positive feminism and affirmative consent | WashingtonExaminer.com

Ever since the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released its “Dear Colleague” letter in 2011, colleges and universities across the country — and the entire state of California — have been adopting policies that define consent so broadly as to be meaningless and nearly impossible to prove.

Now, under the “affirmative consent” or “yes means yes” standard, consent must be active and ongoing. Competitive Enterprise Institute counsel Hans Bader, a critic of these policies, has argued that they constitute “dry legal contracts” requiring every step of a sexual encounter to receive a “yes” or “no” response.

These new policies do not consider silence or lack of restraint to be a sign of consent, and consent is revoked if an accuser was intoxicated. But intoxication is never defined. Is it the same level of intoxication police use in a DUI arrest? If so, where can students get Breathalyzers to test their dates? And if there is no legal level of intoxication, how can a college or university accept a woman’s word that she was too intoxicated to give consent?

These new policies contradict the idea that women should be free to explore their sexuality. It’s hard to reconcile the idea that, on one hand, women shouldn’t be judged for engaging in drunken sex, using a standard under which they cannot legally give consent even if they consumed just a little alcohol. How can the same action simultaneously be a manifestation of feminine sexual liberation and an example of the heinous crime of rape? Feminists can’t have it both ways.

Now it’s not just that women can have as much guilt-free sex with as many partners as they want, but if they do feel guilty about any sexual encounter, it must have been rape.

I don’t see anything wrong with women enjoying sex as much as men, but just as men regret some sexual encounters, women do too — but that doesn’t mean they were raped.

The new definition of rape and sexual assault — that women are too weak to handle alcohol and therefore aren’t responsible for their decisions — flies in the face of those supposedly fighting for equality. Women should be free to get blitzed at parties and hook up with whoever they want — but just as men aren’t excused from being drunk, neither should women get a pass.

I know many will call this victim-blaming, but I’m not talking about women who say “no” or pass out and are raped. I’m talking about people who get drunk, consent to sex, and then wish they hadn’t in the morning.

The original sex-positive feminists opposed any kind of limit on consensual sexual activity. That belief is now being turned on its head by people claiming that consent is not consent if alcohol is involved, and that schools and government must redefine sex.

This new view of alcohol-fueled sex makes no sense in a truly equal world, as men have as much a right as women to claim they were too drunk to consent to sex. This discrepancy is highlighted in cases of same-sex sexual assault, when the patriarchy can’t be blamed.

For heterosexual men, the only rational response to this new contradiction is never to sleep with a woman who has had even one drink (and to be wary of bad breakups or “friends with benefits”). That seems to be what the current crop of feminists wants, but if men stop sleeping with women who are under the influence, doesn’t that limit a heterosexual woman’s freedom to engage in sexual activity?

The Authoritarian Left Was on Course to Win the Culture Wars... then Along Came #GamerGate - Breitbart

The Authoritarian Left Was on Course to Win the Culture Wars... then Along Came #GamerGate - Breitbart

by MILO YIANNOPOULOS
12 Nov 2014

In all of the distracting, hysterical, evidence-free and unfair allegations of misogyny and bigotry hurled at supporters of GamerGate, the consumer revolt that continues to surface outrageous misconduct in the video games press, something is being forgotten.

GamerGate is remarkable—and attracts the interest of people like me—because it represents perhaps the first time in the last decade or more that a significant incursion has been made in the culture wars against guilt-mongerers, nannies, authoritarians and far-Left agitators.

Industry after industry has toppled over, putting up no more of a fight than, say, France in 1940. Publishing, journalism, TV… all lie supine beneath the crowing, cackling, censorious battle-axes, male and female, of the third-wave feminist and social justice causes.

But not gamers. Lovers of video games, on seeing their colleagues unfairly hounded as misogynists, on watching journalists credulously reporting scandalous sexual assault claims just because a person was perceived to be “right-wing” and on seeing the games they love attacked and their very identities denied and ridiculed, have said: no. This will not stand.

The reaction in the press has been bewilderment and, then, apoplectic rage, driven at least in part by a media establishment that sees video gamers—the supposed dorks and basement-dwellers of popular imagination—mounting a credible and effective defence against the liars, frauds, neurotics and attention-seekers who have already destroyed morale and wrecked culture in the comic, sci fi and fantasy worlds.

In other words, some of the bitterness comes from people who are shocked that it took video gamers to say, “No more of this, thank you.”

Because hard-core gaming is overwhelmingly male—don’t believe cherry-picked statistics that tell you women now make up 50 per cent of gamers; they don’t, in any meaningful sense—and because those men are often of a stubborn, obsessive, hyper-competitive and systematic bent, it has produced an army finally capable of launching offensives against the censors—using the censors’ own tactics, such as advertiser boycotts, against them.

And thus a front has opened up in the culture wars; an opening through which others might peek and from which others should be seeking inspiration. The language of the authoritarian Left is quite often outrageously hateful—you can regularly hear even mainstream journalists talking about “killing all men” and excluding “all white men” from industries and cultures.

What gamers have done is draw insistent, unapologetic attention to the fact that, were the tables turned, such language would be regarded as socially unacceptable. They have exposed it for what it is: bigotry and hate speech. And they have not shied away from revealing the personal shortcomings of some of the far-Left loons who seek to poison their hobby with finger-wagging about “sexism.”

They are right to consider those shortcomings. The opponents of GamerGate include a former soft-core porn actress who claims to have stabbed someone in the face and killed him but not reported it to the police, and who, by her own definition, is a rapist.

They include a neo-Nazi who has written that Hitler was “my f—cking idol” and has written things about Jewish people not repeatable here. They include a dishevelled, psychologically unstable transsexual, said to have been the subject of a restraining order, who is a proven liar yet whose claims are repeated uncritically by a credulous press.

No arrests have been made as a result of her reports and many suspect her threateners are figments of her own feverish imagination.

And they include a former multi-level marketing scammer turned feminist heroine, who has never really been particularly interested in video games, but who can be seen at conferences revelling in her newfound fame and wealth which has come about not because her critiques are effective, but because she embarked on a massive press tour off the back of threats she says she received, not a single of which has ever been traced to a GamerGate supporter.

This is the pantheon of self-promoters, opportunists and oddballs who have made gamers’ lives a misery over these past few months. And yet: gamers are not going away.

For years, it was accepted that once the finger-wagging feminists moved in on your industry, you would capitulate quickly to their pseudo-academic treatises on the “male gaze.”

Video games, and GamerGate in particular, have bucked the trend, showing that with politeness and persistence bogus feminist critiques can be rebuffed and self-obsessed attention-seekers can be subjected to the same degree of scrutiny they set out to shine on others… with occasionally gruesome results.

There are signs of political consequence to this awakening—a realisation among gamers that in fact their hobby is intrinsically what we might call libertarian, since it focuses on individual agency, personal responsibility, ties between allies… all in service of goals and specific achievements. That is the essence of libertarian psychology.

Left-leaning media typically luxuriate in the helplessness of a perceived victim in the face of oppression, whether real or imagined. Observe the focus on narrative, and deprecation of gameplay, in soppy indie games such as Gone Home, to which the Left-wing press of course gave glowing reviews.

Jonathan McIntosh, the writer behind far-Left feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian’s videos, says that: “The core value of patriarchal masculinity is control. It’s not a coincidence that control is central to many video game mechanics & stories.” He intends this remark to be pejorative, but in fact it is individual agency that represents mainstream gaming’s greatest achievement: it gives power to typically powerless people.

It sounds odd, when the press is so full of claims that women are being victimised—never with any proof beyond personal testimony, mind—to say that gamers are the real victims in all this. But it’s true, just the same. Often marginalised, lonely people, sometimes with challenging psychologies, gamers retreat into “vidya” to escape a world in which they feel they have no control.

So video games aren’t an expression of patriarchial tendencies. It’s absurd to even call gamers representative of the patriarchy: at the risk of generalising, they are more often sensitive, introverted, sexually inhibited or even confused people. Rather, games allow people on the margins of society to experience what it’s like to have their actions matter, in a safe, virtual environment.

That’s the essence of the clash between GamerGate supporters and everyone else: most people don’t grasp what sort of people gamers are, nor why they play games. And how could they? Most of them have barely a passing acquaintance with the immersive action games that make up most of the libraries of most gamers. (Just enough of one to see a scantily-clad woman and cry: “Sexist!”)

Great art asks questions. It is provocative, and it empowers. That’s what immersive games such as Call of Duty provide for players. Feminised, infantilised, social justice-oriented art sets aside creativity in favour of politics, wallowing in faux victimhood, robbing players of agency and individualism in favour of identity politics and meditations on “oppression.”

So that’s the real war here. It’s not just about who slept with whom, and whether that affected coverage, nor even about whether some outlets have financial relationships with publishers that go beyond what readers consider acceptable. It’s a battle for the soul of the games industry and a wake-up call to journalists that their personal politics simply aren’t welcome in their coverage, because they don’t reflect anything like the views of their readers.

As Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, puts it: “The concern is that game developers and publishers will compromise the artistic vision of their game in order to avoid Metacritic-related punishment or negative editorial coverage rather than based on what gamers actually want to play.

“Many in the gaming press, see any objection to encouraging feminism, social justice and alternative-lifestyle representation in gaming as misogyny and bigotry. It doesn’t occur to them that most people who play games aren’t political and simply don’t like seeing game publications using their platforms to push their ideology on them.”

In perhaps the clearest sign yet that the authoritarian Left knows it is losing this war, perhaps because it realises gamers have the upper hand in numbers, intelligence and purchasing power, repeated personal attacks on supporters and even on sympathetic journalists are now a staple of coverage. This comes at the same time as lifelong gamers publish funerals to their own feminism and declare their support for the GOP.

Chillingly for free speech, mass suspensions of Twitter accounts that have the temerity to publicly support press reform and reject feminist critiques of video games as irrelevant, sneering, pseudo-academic drivel are now being attempted by impotent feminist groups whose only weapon is the silencing of dissent.

GamerGaters should be joyful. But they should also remember that, rather than responding in kind with personal attacks, doxxing, threats and totalitarian tactics, they should concentrate on the very real concerns they have and have had for a decade with a press that, swamped with discredited far-Left ideology and unintelligent, poorly-trained writers, refuses to tell basic truths.