NEW COLUMN: Bogus Stats Of The Violence-Against-Women Industry

Canada, Crime, Feminism, Gender, Pseudoscience, Sex

NEW COLUMN IS “Bogus Stats Of The Violence-Against-Women Industry.” It’s now on WND.Com and The Unz Review.

Excerpt:

Speaking recently to Fox News’ Arthel Neville, Andrew Napolitano, also of Fox News, repeated old feminist canards about sexual assault against women being an under-reported, ever-present crime in American society.

The violence-against-women industry in North America—you know, the one-in-four-women-are-assaulted rot—is propped up by the sub-science or pseudoscience of violence-against-women statistics.

In particular, violence-against-women surveys are based on inflated numbers nobody questions; numbers the advocates bandy about and the politicians rely on when drafting policy and plumping for resources.

I’m thinking of the original 1993 StatsCan Violence Against Women survey, and its preposterous statistical offshoots, which, in turn, were spinoffs of the American violence-against-women statistical sisterhood. Canada follows America’s lead.

Anyone who’s studied research methodology at a good school (check) knows that research is shaped by the researcher’s hypothesis. Duly, the corpus of violence-against-women statistics reflects an exclusive ideological focus on female victimization. It thus consists of single sex surveys—never two sex surveys—with no input from men, to the exclusion of violence females incur from other females, or acts of violence women commit against the man in the relationship.

Developed at the height of the “war against women” moral panic, these foundational questionnaires are the product of a collaboration with advocacy groups and feminist stakeholders, and are thus fraught with problems of unrepresentative samples, lack of corroboration, a reliance on anecdotes, a use of over-inclusive survey questions and, to charitably understate the problem, the broadest definition of assault.

There’s a lot that goes into skewing data.

The “statistical myths” that pervade the rape-is-rampant claims, states libertarian feminist Wendy McElroy, start with “deeply biased researchers,” who proceed invariably from a “false premise or assumption,” who then use biased and small samples whose selection, in turn, is further slanted by paying participants.

Surveys are, of course, inherently dodgy. The general pitfalls of survey methodology, such as asking leading questions, are legion. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN IS “Bogus Stats Of The Violence-Against-Women Industry.” It’s now on WND.Com and The Unz Review.

‘Vocal Fry’ and ‘Uptalk’: On The North American Woman’s Ghastly, Gravely Voice

Aesthetics, Comedy & Humor, Feminism, Gender

Talking in “staccato tart tones” is how I’ve always described the American Woman’s gravelly voice. These days, it’s improper to suggest that the sound emitted from the gobs of tele-ditzes, and lots of other women, is just vile.

So the famous Economist column, “Johnson,” is explaining the politically proper terms for this audial assault.  Incidentally. Dr. Samuel Johnson, the ultra-conservative polymath after whom this liberal column is named, would have taken his cane to any woman who addressed him in such “staccato tart tones.”

Two vocal features are associated with young women: vocal fry and uptalk. Uptalk, as the name suggests, is the rising intonation that makes statements sound like questions? And vocal fry—often said to be typical of Kim Kardashian, an American celebrity—happens at the ends of words and phrases when a speaker’s vocal chords relax, giving the voice a kind of creaky quality (a bit like something frying in a pan).
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From these descriptions, an alien observer would be bemused to learn that these harmless phenomena drive some people to scorn, or even anger. But they do. When Christine Blasey Ford testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, had sexually assaulted her, some viewers were so infuriated by her speaking style that they denounced it on Twitter: “Christine Blasey Ford’s little girl voice…vocal fry, and uptalk worse than clubbed toenails down a chalkboard.” …

… And men fry all the time, too. Critics of the fry-panic have discovered it in the back catalogues of George W. Bush, Kurt Cobain (who was the lead singer for Nirvana, a grunge-rock band), and Ira Glass (an American radio host). None are known as sexy babies.

Moreover, vocal fry is, in a way, uptalk’s technical opposite. It tends to happen when speakers are relaxing their voices to try to make them sound deeper than they naturally are.

THE REST: Johnson: “Women’s voices are judged more harshly than men’s: Assailed for imaginary vocal foibles, women walk a thin line between shrill and mannish.”

UPDATED: Trump’s Stand-Up Letter Puts Pelosi In Her Place. It’s Funny, Too.

Comedy & Humor, Democrats, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy

Fifth-grade tit-for-tat is what practically all the tele-pundits are calling President Trump’s classic rejoinder to prissy Nancy Pelosi’s bullying. (She’s threatening to cancel his State of the Union address, out of spite.) Nonsense. It’s comic. Vintage Trump. Let’s have more of the same.

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Madame Speaker:

Due to the Shutdown, I am sorry to inform you that your trip to Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan has been postponed. We will reschedule this seven-day excursion when the Shutdown is over. In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate. I also feel that, during this period, it would be better if you were in Washington negotiating with me and joining the Strong Border Security movement to end the Shutdown. Obviously, if you would like to make your journey by flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative.

I look forward to seeing you soon and even more forward to watching our open and dangerous Southern Border finally receive the attention, funding, and security it so desperately deserves!

Sincerely,

Donald J. Trump

UPDATE:

Who’s Going To Chase MS-13 Killers Like Jeff Sessions Did?

Crime, Donald Trump, Family, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Law, Nationhood

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions did the job nobody is doing on immigration, and nobody WILL likely do on immigration. Just you wait and see.

What’s past is prologue, said one wise wag.

Immigration is the issue most important to The People, even if The People (followers that they are) don’t know it. Period. Full stop. End of story.

We Deplorables will be getting close to nothing now on immigration, except pep-talks at rallies and some meager fence footage. There will be no bills proposing e-verify, a moratorium on the legal intake of 1 million per annum; no end to catch-and release and the (very extended) family reunification insanity; and no halt to the glut of tech visas—NOTHING.

Sessions was getting the job done. Check out the PBS program on how the “terrible Sessions” was energetically jailing and exiling MS13 teens. He was also separating kids from their unfit parents at the border, as he needed to do by law and for deterrence. Nobody is doing that now.

Via a disapproving PBS:

Last year, Sessions directed officials to pursue all possible charges against MS-13 members, including racketeering, gun and tax law violations. He also designated the gang as a “priority” to a multiagency task force that has historically focused on drug trafficking and money laundering, which he called a “powerful weapon to use against this vicious gang.”

Documentary, The Gang Crackdown,” about the “horrors” Sessions visited on Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13: