Category Archives: Feminism

Updated: Goons Against Gays, Gun Owners & Other Good Folks

Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Feminism, Gender, Homosexuality, Law, Military, The Military, The State

I’ve been concentrating quite a bit lately on the way the State moves swiftly and speedily against good, patriotic Americans, who’ve transgressed some or another petty rule. But to dangerous or undesirable aliens—the very people upon which the state must clamp down and control — it almost always grants immunity and inordinate privileges.

Consider the latest SCOTUS decision that encourages and incentivizes identity theft. Or the many cases where a gun owner is nabbed for self-defense or for nothing much at all.

Deporting or bringing to book an illegal criminal takes forever, and often doesn’t take place at all. On the other hand, the military, a lumbering complex, moves against gays and lesbians who’ve come out at the speed of light.

Dan Choi, West Point graduate, Arabic linguist, and a Lieutenant in the United States Army, was fired for coming out in no time at all. No sooner did it become known that Choi was gay than he was dismissed.

The same goes for “Sandy Tsao, who was booted from the military after telling her superiors she was gay in January.”

That’s one fast and efficient bureaucracy.

Now, homo or hetero—you ought to keep you sexuality to yourself, and out of my face, be it in the army or in the office. I’ve lamented before that, sadly, “The closet has come to signify oppression, rather than discretion.”

Moreover, women ought to barred from the military completely, unless they are lesbian Amazons; a rare breed which can almost match men in physicality, and is unlikely to have the toxic effects straight women have on esprit de corps (and on rates of illegitimacy and welfarism).

Still, the way the state has hounded and proceeded against gays and gun-owners so quickly and callously goes to show again that in a corrupt, fascistic country, the law protects the outlaw, not the law-abiding.

Update (May 11): The Israelis use women in auxiliary roles; not as equals on the battle field or as candidates to consider for The-Right-Stuff sort of missions. I will say, that I’ve watched an Israeli woman (on American TV) instruct American men in face-to-face combat. She was as good as a man. But more importantly, Israeli women are different from American women; they’re tough, no-nonsense types, who do not whine much, speak quite well, and don’t report for duty with breast implants and painted finger-nails. The women I’ve seen who rise to prominence there inspire confidence; which is more than I can say for the flaccid empire’s females.
There are exception, of course. CNN featured a few tragic stories of upbeat, wiry little American girls, minus a few limbs, who graduated from military academies and were just gems. Still, these exceptional young women (tiny and nowhere near as resilient as a fit young man) do not belong near the battle fields, other than in supporting roles.

If you’re interested in the subject, STEPHANIE GUTMANN, a very good writer, whose book “The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy,” I recommend, wrote the best book on the topic. Fred Reed praised her books too.

Updated: The Bow

Barack Obama, Britain, Democracy, EU, Europe, Feminism, Foreign Policy, Gender, Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Middle East

Barack bows a little too deeply to the king of Saud, and people go ballistic. (Don’t be nasty; neoconservatives are people too.) I don’t get it, but I’ll try and deconstruct it—as well as explain why I don’t give a tinker’s damn what gestures Barry makes, so long as he keeps his mitts off my wallet and doesn’t destroy my neighborhood (fat chance for both) .

The same people were mum when Bush and King Abdullah skipped through a field of delphinium (that’s what the romantic setting looked like) holding hands and smiling adoringly at one another. Puzzling to me is the inability of some to apply the same rules to all their leaders.

“Their leader“: therein lies the rub. I think people are upset because they identify with Barry; they vest in him all kinds of symbolism; they see in him a representative.

I don’t.

Maybe I’m just a hopeless individualist, but I don’t identify with any politician; I consider them all corrupt and tainted by virtue of having chosen to make a living through the predatory, political, coercive means, rather than on the voluntary market.

Barry doesn’t stand for me, so I don’t care whose keister he kisses. I objected over his “Gangsta Gift” to the queen, not because he disgraced me; he has nothing to do with me, but because, as a traditionalist, I believe in hierarchy and civility. The queen might be a member of the much-maligned landed aristocracy, but she has acquitted herself as a natural aristocrat would—Elizabeth II has lived a life of dedication and duty, and done so with impeccable class. (It was a sad day when she capitulated to the mob and to the cult of the Dodo Diana.)

But I digress.

The other reason I don’t invest The Leader’s every move with such significance is because I consider him to have a limited role de jure. That he has usurped it is another matter. Certainly being polite to other national leaders is a good thing.

In this context, radio host Laura Ingraham baffled me the other day (and on most days) when she too became so exercised over Barry’s civility to the Europeans. This batty bird was furious that her leader’s plan was rejected by the Europeans. I know Ingraham is incoherent on the economic front. But if she disagrees with the stimulus, surely she would not wish to see Europeans stimulating. Isn’t a principle supposed to hold steady across continents? For the life of me, I could not fathom why this broad was mad because Barry was not being tough with the Europeans and they were not prepared to stimulate as obscenely as he was.

Basically, Ingraham had succumbed to the “Our guy vs. their guys” group think. They all do.

And this is what this fury over The Bow is all about: group think. He’s our guy and he should not be appearing weak (read respectful) to their guys. Collectivists have invested in the political process and in Obama a bit of themselves.

Now, neocons hate China, Saudi Arabia and Russia more than they hate, say, Mexico. Given my foreign policy perspective—shared with our founding fathers—I want other nations to keep our overweening leaders in check. I explained how in “Thank You, Nancy Pelosi”:

Those of us who want the U.S. to stay solvent—and out of the affairs of others—recognize that sovereign nation-states that resist, not enable, our imperial impulses, are the best hindrance to hegemonic overreach. Patriots for a sane American foreign policy ought to encourage all America’s friends … to push back and do what is in their national interest, not ours.

Doug Powers, my WND colleague, has his own theory about The Bow. It’s very funny:

“The president was only somewhat stooped over because he was trying to show King Abdullah what was on the iPod he brought over for him as a present. Naturally, it ended up being little embarrassing and somewhat insulting to the Saudis due to Obama’s insistence on “keeping it real” with what was loaded into the King’s gift.” (Be sure to check out the customized iPod tunes Obama made up for Abdullah).

Speaking of the confused Laura Ingraham, a shout out to Patrick O’Hannigan of The American Spectator, for actually bothering to tease apart the difference between my thinking on the economics of “pay equity,” and that of pro-life feminists like the radio host and Sarah Palin. O’Hannigan is referring to “Barack Against the Boys“:

Columnist Ilana Mercer was not at the ceremony, but asked the kind of economically-informed question that rarely percolates up through discussions of pay equity: If women with the same skills as men were getting only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, wouldn’t men have long-since priced themselves out of the job market? The fact that men haven’t done that might mean that different abilities and experiences are at work, Mercer guessed, “rather than a conspiracy to suppress women.”

Mercer’s glass slipper of a response to equity issues will not fit anyone in the Obama administration, but it still attracts more positive attention than Christina Hoff Summers’ argument that boys rather than girls need help, thanks to a culture that derides men as oafs, and an educational system that considers masculinity the root of intolerance.

Update (April 5): It’s time to despair of the discourse in this country when people get worked up over a man tilting his body toward another, but not about the bankrupting of the US by the man and his predecessor. Yes, columns dealing with the former routinely garner more fury than those addressing the latter.

Anyone who suggests Americans abhor signs of subservience because they are familiar with the Declaration of Independence cannot be serious, and if he is serious, should not be taken seriously. Reading so much into a tilt of the frame exemplifies a flight from reason and reality into empty symbolism–as Rome burns.

As to the notion that two men holding hands is less subservient than a fleeting bow–heavens! Two men rubbing flesh is way worse than a representative of the US showing respect to another with a quick bow. The Japanese are constantly bowing at each other. So what!

Me, Myself And I = Michelle O

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Britain, Education, Etiquette, Feminism, Race, The Zeitgeist

“Being smart is cooler than anything in the world,” America’s first lady told a gaggle of squealing, high-fiving, weeping girls at a North London school. And Michelle Obama should know, no?

“If you want to know the reason why I am standing here, it’s because of education,” she told them.

“I never cut class. I loved getting As, I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I thought being smart is cooler [should be “was cooler”] than anything in the world. You, too, with these values, can control your own destiny. You, too, can pave the way.” She urged them to believe in their dreams.

“For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady [There she goes again]. I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of. I was raised on the South Side of Chicago — that’s the real part of Chicago.”

Cut the cr-p.

Michelle Obama was raised in a country where affirmative action saw to it that mediocrities like herself usurped the real meritocracy. That pesky detail the first wife forgot.

I read Michelle’s university thesis; it’s the product of a banal, third-rate mind. I grant that her meteoric rise had to do with some hard work and pushy grit, but, more than anything, Michelle is a product of affirmative action—a product of a society where, as Joseph Farah put it “black [is] the new color of privilege.”

Update II: Barack Against The Boys

Barack Obama, Family, Feminism, Gender

The following is an excerpt from “Barack Against The Boys,” my new, WND.com column:

“…Barack’s latest Brownian motion promises to unleash on struggling American businesses armies of strong-arming (and buff-armed, no doubt) Girls Gone Wild, eager for their pound of flesh.

“Another of Obama’s economic prescriptions for a deepening depression was to sign a pay equity act, during which he carped that women still earn just ’78 cents for every dollar men earn—women of color even less.'”

“Such false assertions rely on comparisons of ‘the average wage of all women working fulltime with the average wage of all men working full time.’ Scholarly reams have been written disputing this phony calculus, as it omits vital variables: How long the woman has been in the work force, her age, experience and education; or whether her career has been put on hold to marry and mother.”

“Just as women are more likely than men to have had an interrupted career trajectory, so too are they more inclined to enter lower-paying professions: education instead of engineering, for example.”

“Nonetheless, allow me to dispel distaff America’s claims of disadvantage with a decisive argument:

If women with the same skills as men were getting only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, men would have long-since priced themselves out of the market.

The fact that the wily entrepreneur doesn’t ditch men in favor of women suggests that different abilities and experience are at work, rather than a conspiracy to suppress women. …”

Read the entire column, “Barack Against The Boys,” on WND.com.

Update I (March 13): “Unemployment: Men Getting Whacked Way More Than Women”:

Such is the word from University of Michigan Professor Mark J.
In the last 12 months, more than 8 of every 10 pink slips have gone to men, he writes.

According to Perry’s blog, Carpe Diem, the lousy economy has idled 1.9 million men, more than four times the number of women let go, 430,000.

The firings have been so gender-lopsided that the male unemployment rate is more than a percentage point higher than that of women.

Previously, women were slightly less likely to have a job.

Perry found suggestions of a cause from a May issue of BusinessWeek. It blamed male dominance in construction work and factory floors, two sectors hardest hit by the credit crunch.

Wall Street also is heavily male and square in the sites of the job-destroying credit crunch.

Update II (March 14): I’m glad Professor Haym B. posted his thoughts in the Comments Section, hereunder. There is a certain comfort in the elegance of immutable logic. At least to this bookish broad.