When I think about friends, I think about hanging out with the guys and accomplishing a whole lot of nothin’. What friendship doesn’t bring to mind is vicious beatings and locking people up in a room.
Floridan Jennifer Wolfthal wrote a children’s book about friendship (pictured above) so one might think she knows a few things about friendship. But, apparently she is not very well practiced in her professed area of expertise.
Jennifer’s husband initially covered for her, but he later admitted that she abused her children. When the abuse got bad enough for him to intervene, he claimed, Jennifer responded by attacking the man. He even claimed that she locked him in a laundry room to punish him.
If this is true, it sounds like this Jennifer was quite the vicious beast. How she was able to overcome and lock up a grown man is an interesting question, but it stands to reason that a few malnourished children were no match for her.
This story isn’t getting a whole lot of coverage from the usual three-letter networks, which may have a lot to do with the fact that it doesn’t quite fit the narrative. I mean, a woman being on the administering side of abuse? Who’d have thunk it?
Believe it or not, women actually can be abusive. In fact, they generally are better at getting away with it because they know how to take advantage of perceptions that favor them. In many cases, it’s psychological abuse, which is sometimes dismissed as not being real abuse, further enabling the abusers to continue in the abuse they know they can get away with.
I suppose that’s yet more reason to be careful about the people you make friends with. Perhaps that would have been a great point for Jennifer to have made in her book.
If you’re wondering what Jennifer Wolfthal is up to now, she’s since been released on $76,000 bail, and her children are now in protective custody. She had a WordPress page, but it since went private, which probably has to do with the fact that she’s not as big a fan of taking abuse as she is of dishing it out.
I’m no psychic, but I suspect that she’s going to be spending some time behind bars, where she’ll learn why locking people up is a hurtful thing through empirical observation. Then there’s the abuse… There’s a reason why people who abuse children are singled out for the worst treatment in prison. People in prison would give anything to see their children again, but Jennifer abused hers.
When it comes to this kind of thing, “innocent until proven guilty” usually holds up. But considering the preponderance of evidence, the occurrence of the alleged crimes seems certain. Still, she’s in the hands of the legal system now, so don’t go doing anything stupid. She’s the monster, not you.
If you’re like me, daydreaming can take you to places with ninja ladies, Nintendo, and nachos aplenty. This is because the typical man knows what rocks.
What would a militant feminist daydream about? There’s a reason that no one asks them, and that’s because they aggressively beat us over the head with it, regardless of whether anyone cares to know about it.
They don’t have artistic merit among them, but the U.N. scraped up the best they could come up with to show us the feminist utopia. You pretty much already saw it above, but here it is again, submitted for your amused disbelief:
Even ancient Greece in all its philosophical vanity and unconstitutional democracy couldn’t produce something this insane.
This locale, called Equiterra, threatens to unseat CWCville as Empress Regnant of deluded paracosms. It’s intended to showcase what an ideal society would look like in the eyes of an intersectional feminist.
It’s a huge, voluminous mountain of horse puckey, to the point that the prospect of making fun of it can take even a seasoned satirist aback. Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin. So I’ll pick an arbitrary point and then proceed on whim. Equiterra doesn’t proceed with sensible rules, so I’m under less pressure to do the same.
One thing I notice about Equiterra is the educational presence. This seems positive, until you realize that most degrees are consumer products, and most of them are absolutely useless. Most college towns fuel their economies with the debt of students that move into town, so Equiterra isn’t likely independent, especially considering Equiterra’s relative lack of production. Even if the education were “free”, who would be taxed to make this education possible?
Also, I’m noticing an emphasis on STEM. If women want STEM degrees so bad, they should just go for it. I’m not kidding. The college I went to was so serious about getting women into STEM that they even offered them private dorm rooms, something that men weren’t guaranteed. Even the fringe benefit of being surrounded by all the men they could dream of doesn’t seem to persuade them into STEM.
I noticed a wedding ad, a daycare, and reproductive services. Because Equiterra has no apparent source of food, how are its residents procreating?
There’s a “Violence-Free Alley”, as though violence weren’t already illegal everywhere. …grumble…
I noticed Hindus and Muslims co-existing peacefully near the Inclusion Square, which brings to mind just how well these groups get along in places like India. I did take notice of the lone Jew planting a tree, showing that at least one Jew survived the attempt to bring Utopia about, this time around.
But notice any signs of Christianity? Me neither. That’s kinda unrealistic, considering that it’s the most popular religion on earth. I suppose all the talk about sin, reconciliation, Natural Law, and superordinate principle made the untalented artist uncomfortable. Kinda like Hitler.
There’s a centre for recycling toxic masculinity, somehow. It’s pretty far from the only element that suggests that men are the only ones that need behavioral modification. While men have a view of women as idyllic, the fact is, women amongst themselves can be highly toxic, and sometimes even vicious. Don’t question how I know.
Also, we can do away with the notion that men are the only sources of sexual aggression, because women are certainly capable of the same. Though I suppose that not all men have made the same observation.
Equiterra has a government building, and to no one’s surprise, it’s filled with people sitting around, accomplishing not-a-damn-thing. When you’ve already screwed over all the freedoms that people already had, what would they have left to do?
Quick, how many vehicles did you notice in all of Equiterra? The recycling truck? And that’s it? Exactly. The already-dark environmentalist dystopia gets even darker with the implication that there’s no easy way out.
Not pictured is the wall citizens are climbing to escape, because people prefer a world where they can eat steak and have sex.
As ridiculous as Equiterra is, I almost want to see someone attempt it, preferably avoiding the bloodshed and genocide that precedes most failing utopias. If the U.N. thinks a town like this is such a great idea, let’s see them fund it. It’s hard to imagine they would, as the financiers of such a project would likely anticipate the return on their investment in a completely non-productive society. There’d also be an awkward moment in which they’d have to explain why they are turning down the pitch, in such a way that doesn’t explicitly confess that their professed political ideology is woefully insufficient for building a successful organized society.
“So, you want a few schools, a laboratory, your own government, oodles of reproductive services, a male toxicity treatment plant, and let’s not forget a fashion boutique. I’m double-checking; are you sure you’re not interested in any agriculture? Okay then, how many unicorns can we put you down for?”
The investment banker we all envy.
Maybe if it has a feminist tinge, socialism will finally be accepted as the real thing when it’s attempted, and we can finally apply the book-end to one of history’s most miserably stupid ideas.
A sexist Australian eatery is set to close. Because, of course it is. It’s sexist.
The sign pictured above was posted at Handsome Her, an Australian diner that gathered media attention, and many negative reviews, for its controversial chauvinist stance against men. Except it did a terrible job of riding the wave of controversy, because I didn’t even notice that it existed until it was time for the place to shut down.
Because rule number 3 in the sign above is ideologically incompatible with their first two rules, there’s little reason to suspect that the restaurant owner would possess the clarity of mind to last long in the highly-competitive restaurant business. But the restaurant staff gives us more reason to doubt them:
“We tried to demonstrate ways of doing business more ethically and responsibly by abandoning take-away cups, single use straws and napkins, by shopping locally and supporting woman owned businesses.”
As it turns out, making business choices informed by chauvinism and fad environmentalism doesn’t result in a lasting business. And, to further limit the appeal of their business, it’s also vegan. It’s almost as though Handsome Her is challenging as few people to give a care as possible.
Because the gender-wage gap has been debunked many, many times, there probably isn’t very much I can say about it that hasn’t already been said. But there is another aspect to the matter that doesn’t come up as often. It may very well be that most feminists are ignorant to the true nature of the gender wage myth. But it’s hard to imagine that all of them are so naive that they wouldn’t see past the obvious lie, but they peddle it anyway, recognizing it’s usefulness in cultivating a following. In either case, it looks really bad.
When it comes to a following, quality matters a lot more than quantity. When a lie is used to recruit, it cultivates a following of the gullible. The propagation of the gender wage myth to further the feminist cause has a lot to do with why the typical feminist is an overly-vocal ignoramus.
As I’ve said before, if it’s necessary to lie to get people to accept what you’re trying to sell them, perhaps you shouldn’t believe it, either.
You want to know something interesting? If you want to expose someone as being misinformed, just let them keep talking. The more they say, the more inconsistencies you’ll find in their arguments, and the sillier their non-sequiturs. The best part is, they’ll have no idea that, by giving them a platform, you’re really not doing them any favors.
“We strived to bring lesbianism back into fashion. What, you didn’t know it was out of fashion? Well for many of us, it is.”
I know that lesbians can speak for themselves, but I suspect that many of them would agree that it’s not a fashion choice. But considering that we’re talking about restaurant management that actually believes that it can sell chauvinism to a progressive society, it’s hard to put the idea past them.
“The Man Tax blew up the internet – an idea that we didn’t think was all too radical. Yet the way the world responded showed us how fragile masculinity is and solidified the necessity for us to confront and dismantle patriarchy.”
There’s something amusing about the self-centered morality and lack of introspection it takes to perceive a crime and then wonder at the backlash for committing the same crime. Also, hypocrisy. There’s that, too.
“Yes, we are the evil, discriminatory, man-hating dykes who charge men more when didn’t you know the wage gap doesn’t even exist!?”
If you know that the problem isn’t real, then you’re the malicious kind of recruiter. Again, if you have to lie to get people to go along with you, maybe it’s not a worthy cause.
“…While it is a shame to lose the physical space (and we understand how essential it is for women and lesbians to hold space),”
It’s because feminists love having a nexus with which to formulate collective action. For some reason, feminists do almost nothing outside of collective action. You see, if men get upset over something, we act for ourselves, even if it means that we are acting alone. We don’t have any need to run anything by a group, nor do we need to stew over a perceived wrong until a weekly gathering. Could it be that feminists don’t have real confidence?
“Meanwhile gentlemen’s social clubs live on and strong around Melbourne and the world over…”
“Gentlemen’s social clubs” exist because “gentlemen” like women. Natch. It’s a preference that’s apparently shared by the Handsome Her zeitgeist, so one could imagine that the restaurant owners could at least empathize.
It’s been a short ride, Handsome Her. I imagine that you’ll find more swords to fall upon in your quest to make whatever point it is that you’re trying to make.
A long-running tradition in the Pokemon anime is that of the poke-girl, the female traveling companion in Ash’s party. It started with Misty, continued with May, and went up until the seventh gen which gave us a few poke-girls instead of the usual one (Lillie, Lana, and Mallow). It would appear that the newest step in Ash’s journey would take things in a different direction by teaming Ash up with a boy named “Go”, and that a girl might not be traveling with Ash for this part of his journey.
Or is that really the case?
Japanese viewers have noticed that Go has been blushing a lot, which tends to happen often with female characters in anime.
I could also point out that Go has stylized eyelashes, a feature that is usually only seen in anime girls and women.
Is Go’s character a play on gender politics in a similar way to Samus from Metroid? Or is he simply an expressive male?
There is another mystery here, and that’s that Go is blushing at all. Blushing, or turning flush, is a feature of Caucasians. Blushing occurs when there is a sudden rush of blood, which is a physical reaction to awkwardness. With darker-skinned individuals, it’s less apparent that this rush of blood is taking place. When you put Go side-by-side with Ash, it’s plain to see that he’s not Caucasian.
As one could easily point out, Brock had darker skin too, and he was a legendary blusher. It would appear as though blushing in Pokemon was a stylistic choice, or perhaps was decided on by a team of Japanese animators who didn’t have access to many non-Japanese people to use as reference.
Also, what is up with those red clips in his hair? And those thin eyebrows? Were the writers of the Pokemon anime trying to pull one over on us?
A model is attempting to redefine beauty standards with a comically huge unibrow.
Because that sentence alone sets the stage for a long rant, I’ll just link to an article covering this story and accept that as the launchpad for the rant to follow, because it’s sufficient.
Believe it or not, beauty standards were not invented by Chick-fil-A and the patriarchy to try to be mean to women. Throughout the entirety of human history and the class Mammalia, beauty standards have been informed by biological viability. Putting bizarre trends aside, what has held up historically as being “beautiful” was considered a sign that a person was in sufficient health and capability to procreate. As far as this goes, biology and the continuity of humanity don’t really concern themselves with anyone’s objections, and all that usually happens when a person attempts to go against the flow in this regard is that a person makes it far less likely that they’ll be further contributing to humanity’s gene pool. I know that’s hard to ponder for those weaned on the notion of attraction to cartoon ponies, but a lot of things are.
When bringing up this topic, there’s usually someone who will bring up the myth that Renaissance artists depicted obesity as a reflection of cultural standards of beauty existing in their time. That’s not true. The reason why Renaissance artists painted fat women was because that was what many wealthy and affluent women looked like. Their physical condition was what one would expect when a person doesn’t have to work to get by, and has plenty to eat.
The fact is, Renaissance artists viewed lean women as having ideal beauty in the same way most people do today. When a person is attracted to something that is outside that norm, they are considered an outlier, and are usually viewed as a fetishist, like the people who are attracted to feet.
The fact is, the beauty standards that we have today and have had throughout human history exist for a reason, and it’s a very compelling reason. When a person attempts to eschew these standards, the expected outcome is akin to a boxer attempting to defeat the bodybuilding standards of his sport by allowing his muscles to atrophy; he may get some time in the Tumblr limelight, but we know that when he steps into the ring for a professional match, it’s light-out for him.
When a model intentionally takes on an unfavorable characteristic in an attempt to challenge beauty standards, they may get their praise from the usual blue checkmarks on Twitter, but we know that women all over the world are thinking, “Thank you for making yourself easier to compete against.”
Another irony that I want to point out is that the Glamour article dismisses as “trolls” those who criticized Sophia’s new look as ugly. When someone calls someone online a troll for saying something that they don’t like, they’re showing that they have no idea what trolling really is. Online trolling is really about influencing a person, usually to try to get them to do or say something that’s inadvisable. It can take on forms that are really quite subtle, and even someone who has been using social media for a long time might have a hard time recognizing trolling when it’s in front of them.
The irony is, the people encouraging Sophia to continue with the unibrow look are the real trolls, and they are laughing themselves silly at her ridiculous behavior, while those who call her new look ugly are expressing their sincerely-held opinions.
Putting aside the possibility that Sophia may be the victim of trolling, it’s very likely that she is pulling a publicity stunt. The idea would be to do something ridiculous in an effort to bring attention to herself. If that’s the case, then Sophia would actually be trolling people like me who blogged about her.
If that’s what Sophie was going for, then congrats, Sophie, you look ridiculous and got people to laugh at you because of it. But if Sophie really wanted to make a beauty statement, she could try something actually beneficial, like refusing to wear lipstick. Lipstick looks dreadful, and women everywhere would look much better for not wearing it. The reason why I doubt that models like Sophie would attempt to make such a statement is because doing so would mean fewer people buying lipstick, and a model’s job is to encourage more people to buy more things.
But for what it is on the surface, which is an attempt to redefine beauty standards, Sophia’s unibrow stunt pretty much accomplishes nothing.
The teaser for the upcoming Ghostbusters sequel doesn’t tell us a lot about the movie, other than the fact that there will be a new one. It’s pretty a much a minute of zooming up on the Hearse:
So, they’re making a new one. We also learned that it will be directed by Jason Reitman, the son of Ivan Reitman, who directed the original two. Here is what he has to say about it:
I’ve always thought of myself as the first Ghostbusters fan, when I was a 6-year-old visiting the set. I wanted to make a movie for all the other fans. This is the next chapter in the original franchise. It is not a reboot. What happened in the ’80s happened in the ’80s, and this is set in the present day.
Fans are thrilled about this, because they’re returning to the story in the continuity of the original two films. They’re also anticipating that this means that the 2016 reboot with the all-female team of Ghostbusters will be rendered non-canon, and strictly ignored.
Not everyone is happy about what’s going on, particularly Leslie Jones, who went on a Twitter rant that somehow brought Trump into this:
I had no idea that the President of the United States could decide what movies were made or who to cast in them. I’d have imagined that it would have been more difficult for a Republican to have pull over the film industry, considering the institution’s history as a left-wing vehicle. In fact, the entertainment industry in general has picked on Trump at every opportunity, so it’s hard to imagine that they’re being sympathetic towards him only just now.
The film industry is a business. Like any business, they make money by making products that people actually want. As the film industry found out the hard way in 2016, people don’t want a movie where the only joke told over and over again is “girls rule, boys drool”. Generally speaking, an on-the-nose political statement doesn’t go over well, but it’s mush worse when an established franchise that had little if anything to do with feminism gets turned into yet another tool on the intersectional workbench.
The film, comic, and the rest of the entertainment industry would do well to remember that they make products in order to sell them. Ham-fisted political statements don’t usually go over very well. Get woke, go broke.
The upcoming Ghostbusters film might be a sign that the film industry is starting to come up out of the intersectional muck. As they do so, we shouldn’t be surprised to see the usual shills banging on pots and pans as they seek out every opportunity to be offended. But because we already know what their opinions are, why even ask them? And if their opinions drag movies down, why should they even be considered?
The answers seem obvious to the rest of us, but we’ve been waiting for the film industry to catch up and come to the obvious conclusion.
I’ve decided to provide a critical analysis of an article titled “Conservatives will not stop pushing the ‘Pence rule’ as a solution to sexual harassment”. If you want to, you can read the article for yourself. This article mainly picks at the parts that I most feel like arguing against. The article may be a few months old, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still critique it.
For one thing, the title of the article is missing the last word, which, if inserted, would make it closer to correct. If the word “claims” were added to the end, it would come far closer to the heart of the matter.
The author Casey Quinlan opens her article with the following frilly statement:
As stories of powerful men masturbating in front of women, forcibly kissing and groping women, and forcing teenage girls’ heads into their crotch have gained national attention, it’s sparked widespread conversation about how to prevent sexual harassment and assault.
This opening paragraph is almost graphic enough to be a porno. It’s obvious that she’s trying to invoke some pretty strong feelings here. And what better way to spark productive conversation than to drive your audience into an emotional frenzy?
The solution seems obvious: The best way to prevent sexual harassment and sexual assault of women and girls is for men not to sexually harass and assault women and girls.
Because we’re not naive, we all know that telling someone not to do something is no guarantee that they won’t do it. After all, telling someone not to murder isn’t stopping murders from occurring. Therefore, the best we can do is criminalize the undesirable behavior and enforce the law when someone steps out of line.
And I do have some good news for you from the current year! Sexual harassment is already illegal! That means that all we need to do is enforce the law when we determine it may have been broken, and mete out punishments when (and only when) a court of law has determined guilt. Yay, progress!
But wait, there’s more. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Laws against sexual harassment were written, passed, and enforced primarily by men. If there really were some patriarchy that was out to get women (as many feminists claim), this would not have occurred. Looks like men aren’t your enemies, after all.
But conservatives appear to be less interested in finding ways to teach men how to co-exist with women, who comprise 47 percent of the U.S. labor force, than discussing how best to avoid women altogether.
In particular, conservative writers are increasingly focused on the “Mike Pence rule,” pointing out that Vice President Mike Pence does not eat dinner alone with women who are not his wife and does not go to events where alcohol is being served when his wife is not present. Pence first revealed this detail in a Washington Post article published in March.
Now, this is the heart of the matter right here: That men are starting to avoid women like Casey Quinlan, and they feel as though they are being punished. Not only that, more men are adopting the Mike Pence rule, which was obviously designed so that there’d be a witness in the event that yet another obvious false accusation arises, the likes of which we’ve been seeing on the news on a near-daily basis.
In a sense, the Mike Pence rule is a lot like the “stranger danger” that many of us were taught about as children. It’s a terrible thing to teach a child in any case, as it conditions children to distrust people they don’t know, they’ll lose the desire to meet new people, and their interpersonal skills suffer in the long run. And the type of people it was intended to protect them from are actually very rare. Yet, like “stranger danger”, the Mike Pence rule came to be because there are some messed up people out there.
A slander culture has developed that was intended to snipe the careers of men who were successful, so it stands to reason that men, particularly the more successful ones, take measures for their own protection. It’s an unfortunate side effect of the Pence rule that women sometimes feel that they’re being regarded with suspicion, but it’s amusing to see a left-wing writer complain that this is the case, considering that she’s done her fair share to manufacture the conditions of her own plight.
Casey, on the topic of a piece by writer David French, writes:
French argues that people are sometimes attracted to each other in professional settings, regardless of their marital status. He doesn’t explain why those people, regardless of their gender or marital status, can’t be expected to exercise judgement.
It’s not really surprising that Casey would (mis)use David’s article to prop up the idea that men can’t be bothered to exercise self control, but she brings up the main point in the next paragraph, even if with only a dismissive attitude. It’s as though she doesn’t want to admit what the problem really is.
French goes on to write that abiding by such a rule “protects both sides from” reputational harm, suggesting that high-profile men must always worry about women lying about them.
Do you suppose that perhaps these men’s concerns may be justified? After all, there have been copious allegations of sexual harassment against high-profile men in the last year. Just within the last month, Stormy Daniels and Michael Wolff were both found to have lied about claims of infidelity against president Donald Trump.
It’s as though we were in the middle of a false accusation epidemic.
Of course, it also doesn’t help to train people to be oversensitive to dating requests or mere pick-up lines. I suspect that Casey Quinlan would think it sexual harassment to be called “gorgeous”, though she doesn’t have to worry about very many men directing that at her.
As part of a 2016 survey, women told Harvard Business Review they were worried about retaliation from their harasser or the organization they work for if they reported. Women have a lot of reasons to ignore or downplay harassment, whether it happens to them or someone else because it seen as the price women have to pay for excelling in a male-dominated workplace, according to HBR.
I’m including this in my criticism because this is the worst citation I’ve seen in my life. The page she links to isn’t a study, it’s an article from Harvard Business Review, and it will be one of three article views you’re permitted on that site before having to sign up to read more. The article she referenced didn’t call harassment “the price women have to pay for excelling in a male-dominated workplace”, they called it “a cost to being attractive”. Apparently, Casey Quinlan doesn’t respect her own sources enough to avoid distorting what they’re saying.
The paragraph she referenced contained two links. One of which lead to a Huffington Post article. Did Huffington Post perform the study? No, they were merely discussing a study performed by Cosmopolitan. Yes, the same Cosmopolitan that sometimes takes a break from talking about sex to discuss celebrity gossip. So I followed the link that Huffington Post provided, and finally found the “study”. Except it wasn’t a study, it was an infographic. No information about methodology such as sample selection, variable consideration, or error control. Just a bunch of numbers on a chart which, for all we know, someone could have just made up.
The second link led to a study (yes, an actual study), but to view the study, you have to make an account or at least purchase short-term access. How unreasonable is it to assume that a college student has tons of money to throw around for citations for their research papers? If they’d have the $25 just to view this study, they’d probably put that money towards a month’s supply of ramen.
How is it that Casey Quinlan became a professional writer? When I did research papers in college, if I didn’t properly cite my sources, the professors would have given me a failing grade. They certainly wouldn’t have accepted me making them follow a maze that would maybe lead them to something of value.
If you’re going to cite a study, LINK TO THE STUDY ITSELF.
In any case, if a victim were concerned with the consequences of coming forward with a sexual harassment complaint, why does it seem easier for them to come to the spotlight of information media, rather than the anonymity of law enforcement? It’s law enforcement that would launch an investigation to determine guilt for the crime that had allegedly taken place. What would be the problem with that?
But French is not alone in his focus on the “Pence rule” in the midst of sexual harassment allegations. In October, former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, Sebastian Gorka, tweeted the alleged instances of sexual assault and harassment that dozens of women say Harvey Weinstein committed could have been avoided if Weinstein simply didn’t meet with women one-on-one at all — referring to Pence’s rule.
From this point, Casey provides several examples of the Pence rule being taken too far. As she was cherry-picking, her ability to detect sarcasm was turned off.
The subtle suggestion that Sebastian made was that those women were making things up, and if there were witnesses, they’d have had a much harder time getting away with it.
Stating the obvious in an ironic fashion. Of course, you’d have to tell an SJW that John was using his sense of humor. After all, SJWs selectively take things at face value.
It’s over-the-top and obvious why it’s not a practical solution. That’s an ample hint that Timothy was being sarcastic. Most of you could see that. Casey Quinlan did not.
Not only is it absurd, but it is also deeply harmful to the careers of women in the workplace. When men avoid women for fear of looking “improper” or for fear that they can’t control themselves, they deprive women of opportunities to gain sponsors in their careers and to build better working relationships with colleagues and supervisors.
Casey made it to the end of her article and still didn’t figure out that the Pence rule was crafted in response to something. Until she figures out what, she’s not likely to understand that the whole slander culture that she’s working so hard to enable is backfiring in a big way.
When you start making things up about people, don’t be surprised when they act in their own defense. Also, consider the possibility that things might end up with you not getting what you want. In any game of strategy, your opponent gets to make moves, too.
Anyhow, let’s not be too hard on writer Casey Quinlan. After all, if you offer most writers enough money, they’ll write just about anything.
For a short while, porn star Stormy Daniels has enjoyed the notoriety that stemmed from her claim that she had an affair with President Donald Trump. Just yesterday, however, she fessed up that the affair never happened, according to The Washington Post.
While on the page, WaPo’s emo header caught my attention:
Democracy Dies in Darkness? OH NOEZ!!!1 😥 😥 😥 That’s so sad... How can they be so mean?!?!?!?
But at least The Washington Post is being up-front with their objective.
As the #MeToo campaign gained in popularity, I’ve suspected that it was used to snipe celebrities and political figures as a means to bask in media attention for a short time, as I expressed in yesterday’s entry.
As the false-accusation trend reached its zenith, it needed a champion to act as its representative and ambassador of its virtues. Who better to fulfill that role than Stormy Daniels, who knows how to manage attention because the nature of her line of work demands it? And not only that, she had the plentiful gumption to level an accusation of infidelity at the very President of the United States?
Since taking her spot as the face of false accusation culture, she has been invited to appearances on Inside Edition and Jimmy Kimmel, as well as cashing in on sold out strip shows and having an appearance in a Las Vegas show known as the “Oscars of Porn”. She’s doing pretty well for herself, considering she shows her cunny for a living.
As many public figures do, Stormy Daniels has hired a lawyer. People who hire lawyers don’t usually understand what lawyers are about, so you can imagine her surprise when her lawyer told Stormy Daniels that she’d be a lot less likely to get into some legal hot water if she stopped going around lying to people. Was this what happened? I don’t know, but I imagine that this was what spurred her into coming clean with a full confession.
She made the whole thing up. Stormy Daniels had no affair with Donald Trump.
Suddenly, the #MeToo campaign and slander culture as a whole has lost their representative. She has done the worst possible thing that a person can do for their cause when what they represent is a total lie: she came clean.
There is more to this development than having lost a representative. The inference is obvious: if the chief representative of a movement founded on dishonesty has come forward and confessed to her dishonesty, then the dishonesty of the movement must be more far-reaching than is immediately apparent.
One can build up a skyscraper that can be seen for miles with the finest engineering that can be funded. But if the foundation of the structure is pure garbage, then the entire thing is eventually going to come crashing down, no matter how high it’s built. And so it is with the culture of false accusation that is made for cheap notoriety or as a cynical way to silence critics.
When you tell a lie, you’re playing a game you can’t win, as it involves speaking against reality itself, and may come with it struggling to maintain the ruse for a long time, possibly for the rest of your life, with the only way out being to finally come clean.
Steadfast adherence to moral principles wins the day once again.
Out of curiosity, I looked up man cards using Google image search. This one caught my attention:
The fact that it was made on an existing template wasn’t really new. It’s another symptom of meme culture, and can be likened to another 13 year old DeviantArt artist that thinks that they’re making something of their own by tracing/vectoring someone else’s work.
The reason why this “man card” is lame is because the feats listed are lame. I suspected that maybe the creator was aiming for something ironic, and I was ready to hammer on it anyway on the claim that I was taking it at face value. However, I found the blog entry that featured it prominently, used in a non-ironic manner. At least I didn’t have to go out of my way to credit the author, considering that the watermark was so huge. The fact that he was willing to go so far out of his way to take credit for it led me to the conclusion that he was really serious about this.
The problem with his man card is the same problem that I see with so many other man cards: the feats aren’t really feats, which leads me to suspect that the author is keeping expectations within his own ability to fulfill them.
In fact, here is a list of each of these accomplishments with me making fun of them one at a time:
Grow Mustaache (sic)
Stop for a moment and let it sink in that a spelling error is in the very first feat on his card. That’s the level of ineptitude we are dealing with here. Not only that, there’s the fact that he has growing a mustache listed as a feat. Growing a mustache isn’t a challenge. Your body does it by itself if you let it. Unless you live under some fanatical oppressive government that is cracking down on mustaches, growing one is no more an accomplishment than drinking beer.
Drink Beer
The simple consumption of a grown-up beverage. I’m sure your daddy is real impressed. If you’re one of those guys that avoids alcohol for whatever reason, then I suppose drinking barley juice would suffice.
Rescue kitten from tree
I’m giving the author this one, even though it’s another task that one can accomplish without leaving their back yard. After all, it’s the closest thing on his wimpy little man card that bears any resemblance to a real accomplishment. But somehow, I get the idea that he was so eager to put it on his card because it was the most exciting thing that he had ever done.
Survive a snake bite
Lame. For one thing, why would you want to give snakes a chance? What’s more, 90% of snakes are non-venomous and therefore surviving a bite from one is not an accomplishment in which you can take true pride. Unless it’s from something hardcore like an anaconda, there’s not much to brag about in surviving a snake bite.
Eat Bacon
Oh yeah, because we all know how much of a challenge it is to go to the supermarket, spend a few dollars on something, then prepare it for consumption after taking it home. By the way, everyone can get over bacon, already. Edward Bernays is dead, so let’s just move on.
Bait your own hook
If he wanted something on here about fishing, he could have made it something like catching a trout then killing, cooking, and eating it. Instead, he wants to brag about baiting the hook. At this point, he wouldn’t surprise me if one of these feats was “wiping from front to back”.
Wear spandex without looking fruity
That’s right, he wants you to wear spandex. Also, it matters to him whether you look “fruity” while doing so.
Adjust your own derailleur
That’s right, he literally listed changing gears on your bicycle. Something that can be done with levers mounted on handlebars for that very purpose. Notice the use of the word “own”, because adjusting someone else’s gears would not be satisfactory.
Fix your own bike
This is almost an accomplishment, but it’s not as though bikes are mechanically complex. Seeing as the author writes for a mountain biking blog, it’s strange that he’d list it as being a true feat. Obviously, he wanted to take the opportunity to elevate his own hobby by elevating a mundane task thereof to the status of manliness. It’s easy to see through.
Wear pink, confidently
No.
Kill Spiders
Did the author’s girlfriend write this? This isn’t exactly a feat of daring. Men are much bigger than spiders. Much, much bigger. The spiders wouldn’t stand a chance.
Drink Espresso
I’m sure that the guy who listed “Eat Bacon” as a manly deed would find just as much fulfillment by going to Starbucks, ordering one of their espressos, then drinking it. What kind of sheltered life does this person live if he’s listing such modern conveniences on his man card?
Ride a motorcycle
The reason why motorcycles are considered manly is by association with the manly men that ride them. When we see someone ride a motorcycle, we imagine that the rider does gutsy things, such as punching rattlesnakes. Now we know that there’s one biker out there that wants a gold star for eating bacon.
Shoot Guns
I suppose that BB guns count, and those tin cans in his back yard didn’t stand much of a chance. For the two or three communist-sympathizing net cafe refugees that read this, no, shooting a gun isn’t hard.
Work on any car
It doesn’t say “get it working again”, so you can be completely inept and claim full credit just for trying. Yay for participation trophies!
Grill Meat
When I came to this one, I decided to go back and make a tally of how many feats on this card involve food. It’s four. Great work, He Man. You can eat things.
Smoke Cigars
Smoking is one of the stupidest things that people today do. You know you’re dealing with something special when people willingly consume a product that tells you that it causes cancer on the label. If someone tells you that he doesn’t consider you manly unless you smoke, you don’t need his respect.
That’s it? That’s a relief. If he kept going, he’d probably have suggested walking the dog or eating ham. What a lame-o man card. I’d be embarrassed to carry something like that around.
While looking, I found a man card that I actually liked, and it was posted in a Wikia about manliness, of all things:
Now that’s what I call a Man Card. The fonts, the pic of Mike Conley, and the fact that the feats are actual feats, it’s great. I haven’t even done all the things listed on that card. That’s what a real man card is all about: challenging yourself to do things that you have to come out of your comfort zone to do. If more people carried man cards like this, and accomplished its feats, women would spend less time wondering where the real men went.
But if you’re wondering where the round-faced Nancy-boys are, they’re the ones that are at home giving themselves check marks for eating bacon.
It’s been another three months, and yet another feminist has exposed her breasts, and the drama has played out just as scripted. Because the game is old, fewer people are biting than ever before, so the production is more contrived than it’s ever been.
So, who’s the principle player, this time? It’s Emma Watson.
Look, each time this scripted scenario plays out, it begins with someone doing something that is well within their rights to do, and almost nobody cares. However, because at least one person out there takes the bait, the show is enabled to continue, and the actor can continue with their next line: by claiming to be a feminist, and that showing their boobs somehow advances women’s rights in a civilization that already grants women entirely the same freedoms as men (with preferential treatment over men, in some cases).
This time, the person who took the bait was Julia Hartley-Brewer, who tweeted this:
“Feminism, feminism . . . gender wage gap . . . why oh why am I not taken seriously . . . feminism . . . oh, and here are my t*ts!”
Thanks a lot, Julia. If everyone had just ignored Emma, she would not have been enabled to continue. But you answered her, and Emma continued with the next lines in the script:
“They were claiming that I couldn’t be a feminist and have boobs. Feminism is about giving women choice.”
Like any other feminist that has existed in the last several decades, Emma couldn’t make her critics look unreasonable without first building up a straw man so she can tear it down. No one is saying that feminists can’t have boobs or that women can’t have choice. The world would become a better place if feminists like Watson would just get over themselves.
“Feminism is not a stick with which to beat other women with.”
Agreed. Put that into practice.
“It’s about freedom. It’s about liberation. It’s about equality.”
Mission accomplished. In western civilization, anyway. What are you doing about the numerous sex slaves in the Middle East?
“I really don’t know what my t*ts have to do with it.”
Neither do I. You’re the one that brought them into this.
Look, we all know that when feminists bare their boobs, it’s not to advance the feminist cause, considering that there’s no conceivable way that such an action would make life better for any woman anywhere. It’s about exhibitionism. Some women love sharing their boobs, and they are using feminism to enable them.
One feminist, Sharron Foster, had this to say on the matter:
“I live by the beach and I’ll happily swim in a bikini and often go topless on holiday in a warm country – why should that mean I can’t also be a feminist? That’s simply ludicrous.
“Being a feminist means making your own choices and doing what you feel is right for you.”
Again, no one is saying that women can’t bare their breasts and also be feminists. And for those who would dig up one or two tweets from someone who actually said such a thing, you’d be cherry-picking. The majority has understood the tendency of feminists to use their cause as a pretext for exhibitionism. PETA pulls this, as well.
I, on the other hand, am not cherry-picking. I’m showing the feminists’ arguments in full force, and taking them on as presented. Here’s more of what Foster has to say:
“I do not care what men or even other women think in terms of how I dress or what I choose to do because if you live by the opinion of others you only devalue your own. As a jewellery (sic) designer I am financially independent, I make all my own decisions and hope I am an excellent role model to both my five-year-old son, James, and 19-year-old daughter, Sophia.”
Does anyone doubt that her children will turn out just fine with an exhibitionist mother who is a shill for a fringe left-wing cause?
“I have always tried to raise my daughter to believe that all women should feel empowered to follow their desires.”
This is one of the main problems with modern feminism. It’s not about what they think, it’s about what they feel. When she feels like showing her breasts, she does it.
“Posing topless, for example, is not an incitement to being touched. Are men really so little in control of themselves?”
The answer is no. Believe it or not, most men don’t think about sex every waking moment of the day, and society doesn’t benefit from the notion that they do.
If the men you hang out with behave like knuckle-draggers, your solution to this problem is to seek out the company of better men.
“People who criticise (sic) Emma Watson for her Vanity Fair photo are only projecting their own prejudice on to her.”
Please explain. Psychological projection has to do with defending one’s self from one’s own faults by attributing those faults to someone else. Who is Emma Watson prejudiced against?
If you want to show your boobs, that’s your business. But when you make it about feminism, people can see right through your ruse. Personally, I don’t see Emma Watson’s breasts as a big deal. If not seeing her breasts means not hearing her shilling her pet cause, I’d consider it a bargain.
Sophia Hadjipanteli (edited for sanity)
Magnetricity 