College Chronicles

"[W]hite student was... accused of 'cultural appropriation' for having dreadlocks"

The 47-second clip shows a woman physically stopping a white boy with dreadlocked hair and confronting him for 'appropriating her culture'.

SF Weekly has identified the man with the dreadlocks as Cory Goldstein.

Both the woman and Goldstein are San Francisco State University students and the confrontation is believed to have happened on the school's campus.

In the video another male student, who is also black, defends the woman.

Elsewhere... "University Cancels ‘Vagina Monologues’ Because a White Lady Wrote It"

“I felt that limiting women to only Eve Ensler’s work was doing a disservice to both the women performing and to the audience at large,” Rachel Arco, the sophomore who organized the performance, told the Megaphone. “This performance will largely be done with works by women of color,” she continued. “In doing so, it will be more representative of the experience of women, rather than only offering the white woman’s experience.”

But wait, that's not all... "Atheist group targets Muslim prayer rooms at University of Iowa"

“The presence of such religious venues on a public campus raises a number of issues,” the group argued. “By instituting areas that are exclusively used by specific religious groups such as Christians and Muslims, the University of Iowa is violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. … The organization is also concerned that the university is facilitating the discriminatory practice of gender segregation practiced in the Muslim prayer rooms.”

The monotony of being Anita

I wondered, "What do you even look like?" This person who parlays a perfectly crap and truly dangerous education into cash. And good cash too. And when I saw for myself and looked through all the images allowing them to take hold something happened, I connected, I felt something disturbing and I realized what it is like to remove one's eyebrows and draw new ones on every day. Psychologically I put myself there and felt what it's like. Every day new eyebrows over the obliterated original ones. And I thought further, and this is really mean, I can do the same thing, draw little eyebrows on my bell end and have a similar result and it turned out like this. 

Former Social Justice Warrior in his own words

Reddit archive: Changing was a long process. I initially got into SJW groups sort of through popularity- feminism was supposed to be THE thing for equality, and I wanted everyone to be treated well, so I joined a bunch of feminist forums, which branched into more garden variety SJW circles. Initially I had no idea there was a dark side to it.

I had some weird views before; I think in a lot of ways I was a stereotypical white knight. I was depressed at the time, and being applauded for being progressive definitely was an ego boost. Fighting people I perceived as bigoted made me feel better about myself. My SJW tendencies were based mostly out of self loathing- I felt weird, like an outcast, had never had a girlfriend, hated myself, and thought that I was fixing myself by jumping deep into feminism. I armed myself with a lot of bad statistics (like the 1 in 4 rape stat) and felt smart because of it.

After a while it becomes second nature; you just sort of convince yourself that you're on the right side and see your opponent as a stereotype out of reflex. That can happen here too, but SJW's actively encourage it. You become utterly convinced that you're part of an elite, enlightened group fighting an aging generation of uneducated racists and sexists.

But eventually I started to realize that I had incomplete information. I lost a lot of arguments to people I'd stereotyped as being dumb. The people I called allies just jumped to ad hominem attacks and semantic arguments, and that made them secure in their beliefs. That's how they operate; when they lose, their mental gymnastics aren't supposed to convince you. It's to convince themselves, to justify not changing their sources or beliefs. And it's very effective at that. It worked for me for a while.

But eventually it wasn't enough for me. I started trying to revise feminist arguments with new, accurate sources. I'd correct people on my own side on forums and whatnot. They hated that, and jumped right to calling me a rape apologist and a woman hater. I was blown away, it contradicted my notion that we were the logical side.

At the same time I started college, my grades were pretty awesome and college was way less stressful for me than high school had been. I had so much more time I took an active interest in learning some real skills for the first time. I'm making my own indie game now in between my regular job, based on the skills I learned my first couple years of college in my free time. I also got a girlfriend for the first time. She was (and is) amazing, best thing that ever happened to me.

This stuff gave me a little bit of pride that was extremely harmful to the communities I was in. Whereas before when someone generalized most men as rapists, it had given me an opportunity to feel superior to other men while still hating myself, now all of a sudden it offended my new-found self worth. Their communities thrive on self loathing disguised as elitism. And then the womens' studies class I took in college cited people absolutely insane- like Andrea Dworkin. Even as indoctrinated as I was at the time, I still knew that class was too far.

I still find it funny that, though most of the class started out conservative and was roped into SJW mentalities, I started out SJW and by the end of the class it had practically ruined feminism for me. Because I'd been a part of it before. I knew when the professor was wrong. I knew how hollow the "peace and acceptance" spiel they preached was. I knew the counter points to their sources. It felt like a bad joke to me at the time; I knew how my classmates felt, I'd felt the same way months earlier. But I was powerless to actually explain that to anyone, they just demonise and talk in circles until the argument goes away. As I had done months earlier. At first I felt bad, ashamed, for going against everything. I wanted to be convinced again, I wanted to be a good SJW again. And all of a sudden I realized it wasn't going to get better. I was in a university class about feminism, overrun with SJW's, and they had worse arguments than I'd seen online. There was no smarter next level to feminism that I was just too stupid to see. That was it. I was at the top and our arguments still sucked.

The last straw was when I made a desperate, ditch effort to convert my brown female girlfriend to feminism with me. It failed; she said feminists in her country were crazy. We argued a bit. Finally it felt like a curtain was being pulled back and I realized the ridiculousness of it all. I was a stupid white knight arguing with a brown girl that she should be more feminist. I deconverted on the spot. I stopped being ashamed of myself, a lot of things changed about the way I see myself and the world. Ironically, I stopped seeing every situation as a men vs. women or race vs. race binary. SJW's insist their goal is to make everyone equal, and for a long time I believed it, but their communities actually enforce factionalism and division.

I know this post makes me look bad, I cringe every time I think about the things I used to believe and say. I feel bad about the good people I insulted and wrote off. The good news is, I'm not the same person as I was in my mid-late teens. My life actually functions and has a purpose now, so that's nice. I try to see every situation in terms of individuals now, not sides. I'm not depressed any more, I have a regular decent paying job, I'm developing a game on the side, and I'm about to marry my wonderful fiance'.

Sorry for the tl;dr, it ran way longer than I expected. Once I started typing I felt like I needed to get it off my chest.

"Women still outnumbered in medical leadership by men with mustaches"

Washington Post : The study, in short, found that mustaches -- while increasingly rare, with the researchers citing reports that less than 15 percent of men in the United States sport such facial hair -- still outnumber women in positions of medical power.

"We defined a mustache as the visible presence of hair on the upper cutaneous lip and included both stand alone mustaches (for example, Copstash Standard, Pencil, Handlebar, Dali, Supermario) as well as mustaches in combination with other facial hair (for example, Van Dyke, Balbo, The Zappa)," the researchers write in the study. "Department leaders with facial hairstyles that did not include hair on the upper lip (for example, Mutton Chops, Chin Curtain) were considered not to have a mustache. We evaluated each leader for the presence of facial hair regardless of sex."...

And before you get all up in arms about the suggestion that women should outnumber men, stop and think for a second about how few men with mustaches you know. If you don't live in Portland or Brooklyn, chances are pretty good the answer is very very few.

Of the 1,018 medical department leaders examined by the study, only 190 were moustachioed men. But only 130 were women. That's 13 percent women and 19 percent men with visible hair on their upper lip. Bringing the mustache index up to 1 without adding more leadership positions would actually still leave us pretty far from gender parity.

"Barbershop Fined For Refusing To Cut Woman’s Hair"

Link to video and story

Chrissie Hynde calls lewd pop stars 'sex workers'

"And now Chrissie Hynde has waded into another contentious area – the overly sexualised nature of modern pop music."

Miss Hynde added: ‘I don’t think sexual assault is a gender issue as such, I think it’s very much it’s all around us now.

‘It’s provoked by this pornography culture, it’s provoked by pop stars who call themselves feminists. Maybe they’re feminists on behalf of prostitutes – but they are no feminists on behalf of music, if they are selling their music by bumping and grinding and wearing their underwear in videos.

Truth to power.

Julie's list of things that are not sexism...

Things that aren’t sexism…

1.     Saying “I’m not impressed by your bull sh*t” 
2.     Failure to keep one's self from noticing that you are female.
3.     Treating a girl like one of the guys.
4.     The word “pussy.”
5.     The word “hysterical.”
6.     Treating a woman like a lady.
7.     The word “lady”.
8.     Ridiculous fantasy armor with operatic metal boob cones.
9.     A failure to suppress normal biological responses.
10.  And…. not being impressed by your bull sh*t.

Time: How Not to Be ‘Manterrupted’

Manterrupting: Unnecessary interruption of a woman by a man.

Bropropriating: Taking a woman’s idea and taking credit for it.

"We might have thought we were just being paranoid. But thanks to Sheryl Sandberg and Wharton business school professor Adam Grant (a man!) we can feel just a little less crazy when we mentally replay those meetings gone wrong. In a new op-ed in the New York Times, they point out the perils of “speaking while female,” along with a bevy of new research to prove that no, this is not all in our heads." (read more)

Why are some people 'hacking' things we already have a name for, like bad manners, making them into a battle of the sexes thing?

"Time Magazine Apologizes For Including 'Feminist' In 2015 Word Banishment Poll"

"Time Magazine has apologized for including the word “feminist” in its annual list of words to ban for the new year. Nancy Gibbs, the magazine’s managing editor, penned an apology that is included as an editor’s note above the article:"

ADVERTISEMENT

Time apologizes for the execution of this poll; the word ‘feminist’ should not have been included in a list of words to ban. While we meant to invite debate about some ways the word was used this year, that nuance was lost, and we regret that its inclusion has become a distraction from the important debate over equality and justice.

“Feminist” was nominated along with words like “bae,” “basic,” “disrupt,” “kale,” “bossy” and “turnt,” among others, with humorous explanations of the words. Previous castoffs have included OMG, YOLO and twerk. "Feminist" has since been removed from the poll."

Here's a word I'd like banned: "apologize." http://t.co/LiIayPwBAw
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 16, 2014

"Here’s #GamerGate In 5 Easy Bites"

1. What is #GamerGate?
#GamerGate is the hashtag (twitter) around which video game consumers have rallied to:

• Demand an end to unethical behavior, corruption, and overt politicization in the video game industry, particularly among video game journalists
• Boycott outlets that have attacked gamers with accusations of misogyny and sexism in response to the above demand
• Share research  on and evidence of corruption in the industry
• Support websites/causes that support gamers and inclusivity in the industry
• Support each other against accusations of misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc.

(gamers just want to play games)

Skipping down past the 'easy bites'...

For those reading this who may be sympathetic to the social justice argument, I would point out using accusations of misogyny et. al. to cover corruption and graft severely undermines the fight against actual examples of sexism, racism, and homophobia the world over.

But beyond that, I believe this is a cultural tipping point, wherein we can decide if we will continue the spiral down into splitting people up into groups of victims for the benefit of a few corrupt leaders, or head back towards valuing the individual on his or her own merit.

Video games are a wonderful hobby that promote inclusivity, friendly competition, and independent thinking. Let’s not allow them to become another political message board dictated to by unscrupulous narcissists. (please read the whole thing)

Video: Today's idea of Feminism?

 

Potty-Mouthed Princesses Drop F-Bombs for Feminism by FCKH8.com from FCKH8.com on Vimeo.

"University event says men can prevent rape through taco runs"

“How many of you guys have been at a party or been with friends, and might be under the influence and someone suggests food?” said Kat Hofland, who headlined the event. “If you are drunk and someone says, let’s go get tacos, everyone is up and moving to get the food, right?”

Alternatively, Hofland, an ASU student, said that people could try to persuade intoxicated male friends that the girl he is talking to is “ugly” and “not worth sleeping with.” She also suggested the audience just be that “annoying friend” and follow the intoxicated male around until he becomes frustrated and gives up his pursuit.

“You don’t want to have drunk blacked-out sex” said Hofland, “Just wait until the morning for some awesome morning sex.” (read more)

Cathy Young: What ‘Women Against Feminism’ Gets Right

"The latest skirmish on the gender battlefield is “Women Against Feminism”: women and girls taking to the social media to declare that they don’t need or want feminism, usually via photos of themselves with handwritten placards. The feminist reaction has ranged from mockery to dismay to somewhat patronizing (or should that be “matronizing”?) lectures on why these dissidents are wrong. But, while the anti-feminist rebellion has its eye-rolling moments, it raises valid questions about the state of Western feminism in the 21st Century — questions that must be addressed if we are to continue making progress toward real gender equality." (read the whole thing)

Blog Claim: "Why being nice to your husband should be your main priority in life"

"Here's the thing: even though I think Susan Patton is a media hungry nut who wants airtime so desperately she will say almost anything to create outrage, I actually agree with her on this. While I think it's ridiculous to go husband hunting in college (a time when I think men and women should be banging as many people as they feel like banging), I do agree that once you're married, you should respect and appreciate your husband. You should treat him like he's the best thing since the premiere of "Breaking Bad." You should smile at him and be pleasant to be around. You should apply rouge when you go out and pay attention to him and his needs. You should do that because (hopefully) you love him. And don't you want him to do the same for you? (Except the rouge part, unless you're into that sort of thing)."

"Not that this is easy to do; I have always found it hard and confusing to be both a feminist and happily married. Why? Because in a good marriage, where both parties are equally happy, no one is keeping score. Feminists emphasize equality of roles, but in a real life marriage, this isn't always realistic. Sometimes, you're going to be doing more of the housework. Sometimes, you're going to have to back down and be less equal. And sometimes, he will have to do the same." (read more)

Via Intapundit

In the comments...

theophany

"I have always found it hard and confusing to be both a feminist and happily married. Why?" Because latter waves of feminism demonize men as incipient rapists and demonize marriage as institutionalized oppression, and to the extent that you feel happy in your marriage you must, in your unquestioning feminist psyche, feel abused. Welcome to the world of cognitive dissonance.

Weekly Standard: Feminism and Its Discontents

"The hook-up culture denounced by conservatives is the very same rape culture denounced by feminists. Who wants it? Most college women do not; they ignore hookups and lament the loss of dating. Many men will not turn down the offer of an available woman, but what they really want is a girlfriend. The predatory males are a small minority among men who are the main beneficiaries of the feminist norm. It’s not the fault of men that women want to join them in excess rather than calm them down, for men too are victims of the rape culture. Nor is it the fault of women. Women are so far from wanting hook-ups that they must drink themselves into drunken consent—in order to overcome their natural modesty, one might suggest. Not having a sociable drink but getting blind drunk is today’s preliminary to sex. Beautifully romantic, isn’t it? The anonymous Harvard woman by getting drunk was unfortunately helping to pressure herself into consenting to a very bad experience. But she is right that the pressure comes with the encouragement of the culture. And the culture comes from the dogmas of feminism that made this mess for women and men too." (read the whole thing)

College "rape culture" is a big topic of internet 'conversation' these days.

I didn't go to college, and I don't say that with pride or anything even resembling that. I'm saying I didn't go college, concomitant this post, to say I don't have a hard and fast opinion, one way or the other.

I say both sides have an equally valid and fair agenda. Everybody is right and nobody is wrong ;)


Please click to view larger.

Why no Wonder Woman movie?

It can easily be argued that Wonder Woman was overtly feminist in design... she was an Amazon and came from a culture and place that excluded men.   It would be appropriate that she (if she had an origin movie set in 2015) spend a great deal of time experiencing culture shock and under-estimating the ability of men to be competent at anything... which only works if she's wrong about the men.   In other words, Diana isn't feminist... she's sexist.

Which is likely the biggest reason that we haven't gotten a Wonder Woman movie.  -- They need me to write it. :P --  Because what people pushing for a Wonder Woman movie want is a ode to feminism... and that wouldn't be right.  For all that Wonder Woman could be used to frame an exploration of gender roles and preconceptions, it doesn't work to do that flipping of perception unless the thing that Diana learns is that men are every bit as real as women are real.

Make Wonder Woman a female Captain America, as parochial and "Boy Scout-ish", as set in her ways and misconceptions and unwilling to easily get over what she knows is true... and we could have something rather amazing.

It's not going to happen... partly because the idea is pushed by people who think that Thelma and Louise portrayed "strong" women.  And who think, not that a Wonder Woman movie would be awesome, but that a Wonder Woman movie ought to be viewed as a moral need.

(I think this guy sells posters... )

'It's a Man's World and It Always Will Be'

Writes Camille Paglia in a remarkable essay in Time Magazine.  It isn't remarkable the Paglia wrote write this essay - she is a sometime contrarian on feminist issues - but remarkable that Time would publish it on Time's venerable and progressive pages.

A peevish, grudging rancor against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism. Men’s faults, failings and foibles have been seized on and magnified into gruesome bills of indictment. Ideologue professors at our leading universities indoctrinate impressionable undergraduates with carelessly fact-free theories alleging that gender is an arbitrary, oppressive fiction with no basis in biology.

Most men have been required to sit through indoctrination by "ideologue professors", trainers, officers, corporate human resources drones and others who have made dispensing feminist anger into a life's work. 

Paglia continues...

In France, Italy, Spain, Latin America and Brazil, in contrast, many ambitious professional women seem to have found a formula for asserting power and authority in the workplace while still projecting sexual allure and even glamour. This is the true feminine mystique, which cannot be taught but flows from an instinctive recognition of sexual differences. In today’s punitive atmosphere of sentimental propaganda about gender, the sexual imagination has understandably fled into the alternate world of online pornography, where the rude but exhilarating forces of primitive nature rollick unconstrained by religious or feminist moralism.

And then Paglia makes her key point, the one that will likely enrage some feminists:

 Indeed, men are absolutely indispensable right now, invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible. It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing the landscape for housing developments. It is men who heft and weld the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate-glass windows of skyscrapers 50 stories tall.

The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due! 

Strong writing, coming from a university professor, social critic and self-described dissident feminist.  What Paglia wrote needed to be said; let's hope others of her status have the clarity of thinking to agree, and build on the theme Paglia started in her essay.

Full essay linked here.  A very worthwhile read.

Equality vs. Equivalency

Okay, so perhaps 'angry feminist' is a slight exaggeration, but one of the main issues with the feminist quest for sexual parity is that it often conflates "equality" and "sameness". Men and women are different: I, for example, wear floral dresses; my boyfriend (at least to the best of my knowledge) does not. The differences should be recognised and accepted, not changed or eradicated. Of course, there are those who do support "difference feminism", but I would still question one's need to subscribe to feminism at all. Surely anyone with an ounce of common sense can appreciate the fact that men and women are both different and equal and treat them accordingly?  Melissa Bond

In chemistry, the notion of equivalency exists apart from sameness equality. For example, acid-base chemistry involves matching equivalents of H⁺ with equivalents of OH^-. A fair and balanced equation is:

           HCl + NaOH = H₂O + NaCl

Equivalency factors out sameness. No one pretends that H⁺ and OH^- are qualitatively the same, and yet they are quantitatively equal. In real life, chemical equivalents are often out of balance and this introduces natural forces to bring them back to equilibrium. In a sense, inequality drives the world.

"What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys..."

"Toronto literature professor and Giller prize-longlisted author David Gilmour has found himself at the eye of a literary storm after declaiming in an interview that he doesn't teach books written by women or Chinese authors, because he's only interested in "serious heterosexual guys".

Gilmour – not to be confused with his namesake Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour – shared his views with Shelf Esteem, a blog by Random House Canada, which offers "a weekly measure of the books on the shelves of writers, editors and other word lovers".

Eyeing the rows of books in his office, Gilmour said: "I'm not interested in teaching books by women. Virginia Woolf is the only writer that interests me as a woman writer, so I do teach one of her short stories. But once again, when I was given this job I said I would only teach the people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women."

He went on: "What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth."

The comments set Twitter atwitter."

A self proclaimed feminist student responds to the controversy.

I am a feminist, a writer, and, most importantly, a woman, who has voluntarily enrolled in David Gilmour’s 300-level course. I write this not as a staunch attack or defense of Professor Gilmour, but because the responses to his troubling interview have been troubling as well; this kind of dialogue, predicated on illogical, emotional responses to contentious issues, can easily snowball into a lynch-mob style reaction. And, from what I can tell, this is exactly what has happened.

For more go here.

the guardian, the globe and mail

"Obama lies... about not having smoked in six years"

"President Barack Obama casually lied about his smoking today at the United Nations in a hot mic moment. The news quickly went viral, but few commentators have noted that Obama was flagrantly misstating his smoking history."

One of those commentators was Ann Althouse.

If you want to mock or criticize Obama here, I think the more sophisticated speculation not that he's revealed he's subservient and pusillanimous, but that this is misogyny or male chauvinism. Obama is using his wife — both as a stereotypical woman and as the caricature of her that we see in the media — to make points with another man. Michelle Obama is not there. It's a remark about her behind her back. She's not named, but called "my wife." And she's scary. He's not actually scared, just tapping an old sexist mindset...

Back to the Daily Caller article.

The president said he hasn’t had a cigarette “probably six years,” but according to multiple well documented news reports he was still smoking as of at least late 2009 or early 2010."

Despite his claim to having had a cigarette in six years, Obama had one at least as recently as February 2010, according to Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman, who performed a physical and who was quoted in the New York Times on February 28, 2010."

“I’ve said before that as a former smoker I constantly struggle with it.  Have I fallen off the wagon sometimes?  Yes.  Am I a daily smoker, a constant smoker?  No,” he said at a press conference in 2009. “I don’t do it in front of my kids,” the president argued.  “I don’t do it in front of my family. And, you know, I would say that I am 95 percent cured.  But there are times where…There are times where I mess up.”

Daily Caller , Althouse