Guest Post: Feminist Nonsense in Woke Entertainment, by Moira Greyland Peat

In Hollywood, woke projects abound. Batwoman exists to show us that putting a pretty, capable black actress in the leading role will make us interested in discovering that we are all racists, and that she is perpetually discriminated against. She is described as “wildly undisciplined” as well as being a karate expert, who grew up homeless and now lives in a van down by the river, like that SNL skit.

Furthermore, the notion of a “wildly undisciplined” martial arts expert is simply ridiculous. It would be like a clumsy Jedi master, who constantly dropped his lightsaber, whacking off random body parts as he did.

The writing makes the show absurd. It is not Javicia Leslie’s fault that the scripts are so bad. They are not meant to tell us stories, but to “educate” us.

Instead of writing a story about an INTERESTING black lesbian, they’ve written a story about a woman who is black, a victim, and a lesbian, and has no other characteristics whatsoever. The actress is stuck with a non-character to play, and her potential is wasted.

Similarly, in Star Trek Discovery, Sonequa Martin-Green, who was dynamite in The Walking Dead, is meant to play the part of a walking diversity lecture. If her character had been written to be an interesting human being, the show would have topped the charts. But since it is all about diversity, rather than all about PEOPLE, the show falls flat and has been propped up and propped up.

Sonequa Martin-Green’s character Michael Burnham is unfeminine, somewhat amoral, willing to commit murder when enraged, and her defining characteristic is being AMAAAAAZING. She can do amazing things just because, and is smarter than everyone. She also taught Spock to spock, because apparently his absolutely adequate father mysteriously didn’t teach him with every word and every breath, nor did Spock’s comprehensive education on Vulcan manage to do that. Nope, a few lectures from the amaaaazing Michael Burnham was all it took.

This kind of lazy, foolish writing is becoming a bad habit. Dr. Who, a show which had enjoyed popularity and legendary status for over fifty years, is floundering with the female Dr. Who. Once more, the stories are not about PEOPLE. They are environmental lectures, diversity lectures, and representation lectures, and Dr. Who’s only feminine characteristic is the ability to NAG.

Dr. Who #13, the woman, is sexually ambiguous, has a non-gendered costume which would be absurd on any human being, and she lacks both heroism and character. The show is more about her being female, while lacking any trace of femininity, and less about what she actually DOES.

Most recently, the graphic novels of The High Republic have had an embarrassing start. Despite money poured into their creation, for example strings being pulled to obtain a New York Times bestseller ranking for a book very few people have seen, let alone read, the books are failing. The characters are placeholders to drain the dirty sinkful of representation into.

The parts I have seen do not interest me, because the stories as well as the characters are a big nothing. No purpose, no need to accomplish a goal, no war, little to no conflict, and the primary characteristics of the female characters is to be amazing, and to admire one another. For what? Unclear. The male characters are either fat, or gay, and they are sidelined in favor of the much more important teenaged girls, amazing for some unclear reason.

The defining characteristic of a leading man or woman is heroism. They might look at Ahsoka Tano in The Clone Wars for a cartoon character that is both heroic and fallible, even vulnerable. Heroism means moral virtue, a purpose, and the willingness to sacrifice oneself in the service of something greater.

It has nothing to do with navel-gazing about how “strong in the force” some witless teenager allegedly is! What have they actually DONE?

Firing the writers would be a good start.

Why is the writing on these shows so bad? Could it be that with the focus on the “voices” of people in alternative communities that absolutely anything they come up with is allowed to stand exactly as is?

That in itself belies bigotry, because any “normal” writer would be subjected to many edits and challenges, so the story would be the best it could possibly be. Seeking out writers as checkboxes rather than writers offends the profession. There are plenty of excellent writers of every diverse brand who have become famous for their competence, not for their diversity!

One important issue is the set of assumptions that the writers are saddled with. To begin with, rather than writing stories about people acting like people, the characters are tasked with acting the way that the writers have decided they should, in order to influence our own reactions.

Let us draw a contrast with the “strong female characters” of the previous era. Janeway from Star Trek Voyager was strong, and female, but she remained female. She put on strength to make her crew feel confident in her leadership, but she retained her femininity and her desires for pairbonding and love, even though they could not really be realized in her situation.

One splendid example of this was when she fell in love with a alien who had been trying for some time to find contraband cargo on her ship. He pretended convincingly to defect from his regime, and found out the realities of life on her ship. But when he went back to his regime, hoping to use the information he had found, Janeway had outsmarted him, and he only managed to embarrass himself by claiming he had found contraband, where the containers contained only vegetables.

Yes, she fell in love. Yes, she let the man find out too much. But she also kept her wits about her and put the safety of her crew above her own heart, and it was delightful to see the dastardly alien beaten at his own game.

The assumptions behind Janeway were that although she was strong, she was human, that is, fallible, and still she was female.

In the case of so many other characters written today, the assumptions are that they are infallible, and their femininity is given up in favor of being more sexless.

Their “strength” is invariably physical, and thus unbelievable. Why would a woman who weighs 105 lbs be able to beat a pack of 200 lb stuntmen who could literally break her in half? Why not write these women a way to handle physical conflict which does not require a direct contest to strength?

Worse, their emotional strength is written as being invulnerable, tough, and rigid, lacking any trace of femininity. The only feeling regularly expressed is anger, expressed in an overt masculine style, rather than in a range of more feminine styles, such as snarky humor, cutting remarks, or sidelong putdowns.

No, once again, the women of today are written to eschew any sign of actual feminine characteristics. It is almost as though the real assumption is that being female is bad, and the only way to be an acceptable female is to be as male as humanly possibly, while remaining physically female.

Of course, for some writers today, even looking physically female is too much. Breasts must be reduced or eliminated, lest men actually be attracted to the women who have them. The “male gaze” is not only normal, but universal, and yet women are still supposed to not look like women, or react to men like a woman would, with attention, physical responses, and even, perhaps, interest.

No. Women in major TV and movies today are meant to be as mannish as possible, and that means they do not want relationships with men. Several major female stars, like Batwoman, are supposed to desire women only, and to have promiscuous, visible sexual encounters with them.

We are meant not only to accept that huge numbers of lesbians exist everywhere, as though there were more lesbians than straight women, but we are also meant to admire, and if possible, to emulate them. We are meant to accept that defeminzed women are normal, and straight relationships are either abnormal or unhealthy, and that strong women, by and large, do not breed. Or marry. Or have relationships with men.

Worst of all, if we have relationships with men, they are either submissive men, like Book and Michael Burnham, who in reality are quite intolerable for strong women, or maniacs, like Kylo Ren and Rey, who kissed once before he died... because she killed him.

In my own background, as the daughter of Marion Zimmer Bradley, a famous feminist lesbian author, I knew that she thought that the guy should not ever “get the girl” at the end of the story, and instead of having a pairbond, women were supposed to walk off into the sunset to go get self-actualized or some nonsense like that.

She brought me up to believe that my desire to marry and to have a family was awful, a failure, and in reality I should be a lesbian, placing my Great Purpose above all else.

I see this reflected in so many of the currently fashionable, failing TV shows and movies.

Women are not allowed to be women, and naturally, men are not allowed to be men. Any show of masculine strength and protectiveness has to be twisted into being a crime, and never interpreted or displayed properly.

Men themselves must be prepared to either be gay or to have no pairbond at all, and either to be a limp, sexless sidekick to a “strong woman” or a villain.

The question I am left with is “WHY?”

Where writers and showrunners natter on about representation and diversity, actual women, who make up most of the female half of the human race, find nobody to identify with. Sure, the character might be female, but they don’t act female. The character might be a lesbian, but how many lesbians are so masculinized that they are overtly promiscuous? The character might be black, but they are never allowed to be beautiful or feminine. How can a woman identify with someone who is nothing like who she is or what she wants to be?

For those of us who actually are strong women, even with a warlike background as I had (fencing champion, socialized to be masculine) there is one shining example of a woman we can really identify with: Cara Dune from The Mandalorian. She was strong, gorgeous, not overpowered, sensible, realistically able to grapple with actual men due to her training, and obviously loyal, kind, and yes, feminine under all that armor.

And what happened to her? She was sacked, despite being the most popular character on the show other than Baby Yoda. She was universally loved, by both women and men, and her firing resulted in countless people canceling Disney+, including me.

And still Batwoman is in her show, trying to “inspire” women to quit being women and to become bad imitations of the worst possible men.

Of course, there is a worse possibility. Queen Latifa, hilariously cast as “The Equalizer” is meant to inspire women of *cough* SIZE to believe they can go be action heroes just because.

And what happens when reality just refuses to cooperate?

Blast from the Past: A Father's Day Reflection

Originally posted in 2016.

I've never had the patience or the time for today's brand of western feminism. The reasons for this are several; indeed, recent outrages have inspired me to resurrect and update an old multi-part essay I wrote several years ago on the follies of feminism's later incarnations. But to stuff all my thoughts into a tiny little nutshell: I'm not a collectivist, I'm leery of any movement that seeks to use government force to manipulate human society, and - to be even more blunt - I've simply got my priorities straight.

And you know what's even more important? You know what drives me to reject the covert and overt misandry of third-wave feminism more than anything else? I had - and have - a wonderful relationship with the first man I ever met.

Granted, I don't actually remember our initial meeting. All I have are photographs lovingly collected in two old books -- photographs captioned with the same neat hand that recorded the story of my birth. When I was in high school, I tried to imagine what that first day might've been like for this man that I loved, and I wrote a sappy poem about it -- a bit of doggerel that has since been lost (probably fortunately) to the mists of history.

The first man in my life read Scientific American articles to me when I was a wee little Steph. I don't actually remember that part either. I do remember his giving me other books to read on my own as my literacy blossomed and eventually outpaced what was being taught in school. Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke -- I know all of these names now because of him. This man - who let me steal books from his collection and allowed me to run lose in the East Lyme Public Library without a chaperone - made me an incurable, inveterate Reader with a capital R and a lifelong science fiction fan.

The first man in my life was a nuke; consequently, he was often temporarily absent from our lives. That didn't really matter to me though. When he was here, he made that time count. He openly and passionately loved the woman who bore me, teaching me through example what St. Paul means when he enjoins husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the Church. In fact, even today, this man treats my mother as if she personally hung the moon and would do anything to make her happy. Once, on a YouTube podcast, a commentator remarked half in jest that if it were announced that women everywhere prefer men to walk on their hands, acrobats and gymnasts would make a solid living as hand-walking instructors. When I think of the very first man I ever met, I know at once that this is both funny and 100% true.

With us kids, the first man in my life was a trickster who subtly undermined our lessons in manners by blowing straw wrappers in our faces in family restaurants, cracking jokes at seemingly inappropriate times, and giving us pointers on how to spit phlegm out the window of a moving car without getting back-splash. His antics would often mortify Mom, but when all was said and done, I think they also taught both Matt and me the importance of balance. Sometimes you have to be serious, and sometimes it's okay to just let your hair down and be silly. I can't be too sure, but I suspect my appreciation for weird tourist attractions and hilariously wrong doodads comes from this particular man's joie de vivre.

Today, the first man in my life is getting on in years, and a mild stroke has imposed upon him a new fragility. But in all the ways that matter, he is still the same man I fell in love with as a girl -- and I hope with all my heart that God does not welcome him home for many years yet.

Dad -- I love you, and I am both proud and grateful to be your daughter. The vision of manhood you embodied in your very being and actions seems to have inured me to one of the worst ideological mistakes of our age.

Today, Dad is in the hospital recovering from a shoulder replacement and is now more significantly disabled due to the second stroke he had in the fall of 2017, but the sentiments above remain true.

Grumpy Thoughts, 7th Edition

First, before the grumpiness:

Happy Easter to my Christian friends -- and chag Pesach kasher vesame’ach to the Jews!

Now let the perturbed muttering commence.

---

I hope everyone who's reading this is praying for the victims of the terror attacks in Sri Lanka. That the perpetrators chose to murder innocents who were gathered to worship the risen Christ just further highlights, for me, the fallen nature of our world -- and the need for the Crucifixion.

---

To Macron and the rest of the French government:

From what I hear, your countrymen are already very upset with you. If you ruin a central landmark of the French nation (and of Christianity) by adding glass or any other modern bullshit, you will only make things worse.

We have complete 3D models of Notre Dame before the fire. You don't need a redesign competition. You don't need an architect. What you need are skilled tradesmen who can repair what was damaged and restore the cathedral to its former glory.

Sincerely,
Me

---

So apparently, library collections are evil now because they're just so hu-white. Clearly, what we need to do is throw out all those dusty tomes to make way for the "marginalized." After all, it's not as if old books can teach us anything of universal importance.

SIGH.

Ideas don't have skin colors, you unbelievably racist buffoons. To be sure, it's true that, for a good chunk of our history, certain races were barred from full participation in our educational institutions and consequently don't appear often in the products of our intellectual patrimony. But once upon a time, prominent people-of-color still claimed so-called "white ideas" as their own; indeed, they were rightfully angered to be denied access to those ideas. W.E.B. Dubois, a firm African-American critic of the U.S. and a leftist, once famously wrote:

"I sit with Shakespeare, and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm and arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out of the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed Earth and the tracery of stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?"

Though Dubois struggled mightily with the dual consciousness brought on by his second-class status, you can see here that he still considered the works of Shakespeare and the others to be his by birthright. Why? Perhaps because we all have a common humanity that these writers, in their brilliance, brought to the fore.

If you want more people-of-color to be represented in our libraries - a worthwhile goal, I think - don't start by tearing down what's already there. Instead, tell kids in minority communities that "white" books belong to them too -- that conversing with "dead white men" does not make them any less authentically themselves. Allow them to plunge into a knowledge-rich curriculum that interrogates whether certain notions are true or false -- not whether certain notions are advanced by writers of the proper shade. Do this and you will equip these kids to enter university as skilled, confident scholars ready to go toe-to-toe with their white peers. Do this and you will see the demographics of library collections and journal citations organically shift.

---

And lastly, a Twitter thread:

I would like to echo the frustration I've seen in my TL regarding the equation of "strong woman" with sassy bitch. BRITTLE women are bitchy. Strong women can assert themselves w/o resorting to rudeness, and they generally don't get in a lather over minor insults.

— Stephanie Souders (@TheRightGeek) April 19, 2019

Podcast #9 w/#1 Marmaduke Fan & Disney Princess Nonsense

The return of my podcast went well -- audio issues aside. If you were unable to watch the stream live (I know I was up against some big channels whose audiences are my targets), click play below:



Now, for the rest of this post, I'm going to expand on my brief remarks regarding one of this weekend's controversies du jour: the supposed sexism of Snow White, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid.

I've always been a little skeptical of the romantic tropes featured in many Disney princess films. I don't think you can know someone is your "true love" the instant you meet them; infatuation can happen in a split second, perhaps, but love requires conversation and a great deal of time in your potential partner's company. And truthfully, if I had girls who were old enough to be interested in boys, I probably would remind them that Disney movies are (often sanitized) re-tellings of classic fairy tales whose deep historical purpose was not to serve as a mere guidebook to dating in the real world. However --

As I mentioned in last night's broadcast, I watched Snow White yesterday for the first time since my childhood, and yes: the fact that the prince is essentially a non-entity in that film does bother me at the superficial level. But does that mean I think Snow White is sexist -- or that it teaches terrible lessons about consent? No.

Granted, Snow White is a very stereotypically "feminine" character. She's frightened of the woods. Her vulnerability and beauty quickly attract a crowd of adorable forest creatures. She enjoys housework and basically mothering the dwarfs. But - mark me, feminists - I don't think there's anything wrong with this. There are plenty of nonfictional women who fit this mold. All of my own mother's talents - sewing, interior decorating, flower arranging, cooking - fall firmly into the "feminine" category, and I will fight anyone who attempts to argue that Mom, therefore, is not strong or worthy of admiration.

I think it's terribly confining and narrow to say that all women must be housewives. I think it's also terribly confining and narrow to say that all women must be butch, independent bad-asses. There is room in the world - and in fiction - for both types.

As I remarked somewhat clumsily last night, the feminist reading of Snow White also fails to see the ways in which the film gently lampoons men. Pre-Snow White, the dwarfs don't know how to keep a tidy house and are, apparently, totally clueless when it comes to table manners. One long sequence in the movie argues pretty explicitly that it takes a woman to remind men to wash and present themselves respectably for dinner. And I know - I know - that every single woman reading this right now is smiling and nodding because we have all seen this exact phenomenon in our own lives. I love you, gentlemen, but it wasn't for no reason that we girls joked about "the four smells of Morgan Hall," the all-male dorm at my first college.

When you get right down to it, Snow White is presented as the civilizing force. That's extraordinarily complimentary to women.

And the prince? The flat character who wakes Snow White from her coma with a kiss?  Twitter has done an okay job mocking the #MeToo hysteria over this moment, which has been replicated by happily married couples on many a morn since time immemorial, but I have yet to see anyone on my TL address the Christian cultural genesis of the original story and what its beats are actually supposed to signify. As I said, Snow White's eating of the poisoned apple is an undeniable allusion to Eden -- which means the prince, who resurrects Snow White after her apparent death, is meant to represent Christ, Who has rescued humanity from the death of original sin and will bring about the general resurrection at the end of time. Bottom line, we're talking about a literal deus ex machina here; thus, on a deep level, it doesn't matter that the prince has no apparent reason to love Snow White. Christ has no reason to love us either; His love is perfect and unconditional.

The feminist readings of Cinderella and The Little Mermaid, meanwhile, are just as shallow. That Cinderella suffers as much as she does and yet never becomes bitter - that she is able to remain kind and good and capable of forging real friendships - is a testament to her strength as a character, not her weakness. And I'll say it again: She isn't rescued by a man. She's rescued by little mice who are the beneficiaries of her compassion -- which means, in the end, she does rescue herself by being the sort of person who inspires heroism in others.

And Ariel's crush on Eric is only part of the reason she gives up her voice; she's also driven by a profound curiosity about the human world and a desperate desire to escape her father's strictures and strike out on her own. I was ten years old when The Little Mermaid was released, and because I was precocious and already a little rebellious, I deeply related to the yearning Ariel expresses in "Part of Your World," which goes far beyond the desire for romance.

This rush to condemn any creative work that doesn't hew to the strict, politically-correct script of 2018 is ahistorical, lacking in imagination, and frankly anti-human; we definitely shouldn't be encouraging children to read and interpret texts in accordance with said rush. Instead, we should be helping kids understand each story's context and should encourage them to have empathy for its author(s), who lived in radically different times and places and thus saw the world in radically different ways. 

Is the USA Over?

Sarah Hoyt is probably going to smack me over the head for asking such a question, but I can't help but wonder: Is it time for a divorce? Should we just split the current US in two?

I can live with liberals. In many ways, I am a liberal -- at least in temperament. Though I have very firm opinions on what constitutes the "good life," I generally don't want the state to make my case for me via force of law. Additionally, old-style Democrats and I share many fundamental end goals. I want to alleviate poverty, narrow achievement gaps, help people who have fallen behind -- in essence, work towards a more egalitarian world. Old-style Democrats and I disagree on the type and quantity of the government intervention that is needed to achieve such a goal, but that's okay. Old-style Democrats and I can still discuss those differences and negotiate.

But the new left? The left that has swallowed today's Democrat Party? I can't negotiate with such people. How, pray tell, can I have a functional dialogue with anyone who denies that the truth - whatever it may be - is objective, universal, and accessible through empirical inquiry? How, pray tell, can I build workable public policy with anyone who believes I should be hounded out of society - or even locked up - for questioning the new left's consensus?

And that second question is not hyperbolic in the slightest. Recently, an unknown member of a campus LGBT group argued on Twitter that gulags are pretty great actually and should be used to punish anyone who opposes his/her/zir agenda. Meanwhile, this past week, a "professional" in the comics industry expressed shock that members of the Comicsgate community hadn't been jailed - yes, jailed - for criticizing minority creators. And what about the multiple conservative politicians whose private lives have been disrupted by screaming protestors who refuse to respect boundaries?

At best, they want us completely silenced and humiliated. At worst?

No, I can't "work with" those who are possessed by this diabolical ideology. And if I can't do that, I can't live in this country with them either. I can't live with people who crap all over due process just to indulge their bigotry and/or desire for revenge. I can't live with emotional abusers who accuse me and people like me of the nastiest things imaginable -- then gaslight us and tell us we're babies crying over nothing when, like normal human beings, we get pissed off. I can't live with anyone who flat out doesn't care about evidence, science, logic, or reason because their "lived experience" proves all.

Like Sarah Hoyt, I feel like I'm chained to a bunch of lunatics -- and I want to take a blow torch to that damned manacle. If there's another way to do this besides national dissolution, please tell me. Otherwise? What will be will be, and I won't be sad. In fact, I'll be dancing.

Because I'll finally be free.

The Left Needs to Retire These Rhetorical Tics

(Or at least severely limit their use.)

It was probably a terrible mistake to get a Twitter account.

In my defense, my original intent was to follow a favorite kitten foster of mine; one of the kitties was sick, and I wanted access to breaking news on his condition. But before too long, I started following some favorite authors. Then some favorite YouTube personalities. Then...

274 follows later, my feed is full of absolute trash -- not because of the people I follow, thank God, but because of the stuff they retweet and criticize.

A significant minority in this country (and in the West in general) has gone absolutely insane. Many - including people I used to respect - have embraced a creed that not only rejects the basic foundations of liberal democracy but also seems to reject reason itself. Whether the correct label for this creed is "cultural Marxism," "post-modernism," "identity politics," or some other term not yet devised, the result of its adoption is the same: the wholesale destruction of critical thought. In thought's place, these ideologues deploy the tools of unthought: buzzwords, blanket insults, and ridiculous demands designed to silence dissenters in disputes both large and small.

Whether we're bickering over comic books or Supreme Court appointments, we keep getting bitten by the same intellectual mosquitoes. Can I exterminate them all by myself? Not in one blog post. Probably not even in a hundred blog posts. But right now, I can at least smack a few annoyances and, hopefully, entertain my readers in the process.

1. Believe All Women.

No. I'm sorry for the upcoming language, but that is bug-fuck crazy. Were these people never the targets of mean girls in junior high? Some women absolutely are evil enough to spread bullshit if it gives them a social advantage and/or sympathy points.

Sure: like male rapists, female pathological liars are very rare. But we don't even have to assume a large population of prospective malicious accusers to understand the importance of due process. We just have to understand some basic human psychology.

In brief: Our memories are not digital cameras. On the contrary, our memories are susceptible to influence. For example, in one study, participants who were asked to remember the sentence "the ball hit the window" later reported being told that "the ball broke the window." These people were sober, yet their own assumptions altered what their memories recorded. Do you really think the recollections of a drunken tryst are going to be any more reliable? Or the memories of something that happened more than three decades ago?

We cannot rely on one person's account of an event. That's why we presume the innocence of the accused until we can gather more evidence. Yes: a full-scale investigation and cross-examination is very stressful for someone who sincerely believes she's been the victim of a crime, but the alternative leads to Salem.

2. Stay in Your Lane.

When white people opine on race relations, this denial of the universal accessibility of the truth always manages to make an appearance. Recently, I tweeted the following reply:

"I have severe rheumatoid arthritis. I am an expert on how this has impacted me personally. But I would never presume that I am therefore more qualified to speak on RA than a board certified rheumatologist, even if he/she were healthy.

"My understanding of RA is pretty educated, but it's still a layman's understanding. Thus, it would be ridiculous for me to pass myself off as an absolute authority based just on my personal experience alone.

"Hell, I can't even speak for other sufferers of RA! There are commonalities among us sufferers that led to our diagnoses in the first place, but our disease courses are still going to be individualized based on severity, life situation, etc.

"The same is also going to be true for issues surrounding American race relations, gender, sexuality, etc. If you identify as a particular minority, you definitely have some important insights to share. But to declare yourself an absolute authority is wrong.

"'Outsiders' may have access to important data that are germane to the discussion. Your perceptions could be wrong, so have some humility and recognize the limitations of your viewpoint."

3. Alt-Right Hate Group.

There is such a thing as the alt-right, but it has a very specific, narrow definition. To be alt-right, one must believe that national identities are racial/ethnic in character -- that the idea of a nation-by-creed is fundamentally ridiculous. That's why members of the actual alt-right have attacked author Sarah Hoyt, a libertarian and extremely patriotic Portuguese-American immigrant, as a pseudo-American.

According to the left, however, Sarah is herself "alt-right." So am I. And so is anyone else who has participated in any or all of the consumer revolts that have dominated discussions in geekdom over the past several years. Gamergate, the Sad Puppies, Comicsgate -- all of these have been smeared as "alt-right hate groups" by leftwing journalists and creative "professionals" based on the thinnest of evidence. Why? Because they want to silence our critiques of popular culture and its increasingly obtrusive political tilt.

I'm not saying we've never been salty. We're human beings, after all. But have you noticed that SJW's keep using the same few lapses in judgment to build their weak-sauce case against us? When ConCarolinas rescinded its invitation to John Ringo this past year, for example, everyone defending the decision used the same Ravencon panel from twelve years ago as evidence that Ringo was a "sexual harasser." And whenever anyone wants to discredit prominent Comicsgate personality Richard C. Meyer - a.k.a. Diversity and Comics - they always, always dip into that one ill-advised "dark roast" from 2017 for ammunition. If Ringo and Meyer were as bad-bad-terribad as SJW's claim, we would have been presented with evidence of long-standing patterns of behavior a long time ago. But we haven't -- because they aren't.

Hey, we're imperfect. I'll cop to that. But that makes us neither "alt-right" nor members of a "hate group." See above. "Alt-right" has a meaning, and it's not "opposes identity politics" or "is generally conservative or libertarian" or even "criticizes the works and behavior of minority creators." The alt-right calls itself the alt-right precisely because it wants to distance itself from conventional rightwing beliefs. Thus, if you're calling ordinary individualist fans "alt-right," you either don't understand what you're talking about or you're being a dishonest prick.

4. Racist/Sexist/Homophobic.

Racism, sexism, and anti-gay sentiments also exist, but once again, the left is playing games with their definitions to mendaciously attack people they disagree with. If you're calling Frank Oz a homophobe simply because he won't accede to your wishes and agree that Bert/Ernie is canon, you are part of this problem. If you are calling fans sexist simply because they don't like the all-female Ghostbusters, you are part of this problem too.

The leftist's world is a bizarre world in which treating everyone the same is in fact proof you're a monster. The aforementioned Richard Meyer has repeatedly gone after Mark Waid and other straight white men for their unprofessional behavior and crappy product -- but since he's also gone after "creators-of-color" or LGBTQ creators for the same, he's a Nazi. As Meyer himself has accurately observed, "They hold minorities to a different and lower standard." Indeed they do. Why this hasn't been called out as rank bigotry is beyond me.

As a teacher in a majority-minority neighborhood, I understand that certain groups face extra challenges in the aggregate. But the solution to that is to provide struggling people from all groups whatever additional resources or encouragement they need to clear life's hurdles and meet the same standards demanded of everyone else -- not to treat them like helpless babes and tell them they don't have to "git gud" to succeed because they're oppressed and are therefore owed that success -- and the fawning praise that comes with it.

*****

So what say you, readers? Are there other leftist nonsense arguments that you wish would just disappear? I encourage you to comment below!

What Did James Damore ACTUALLY Say?

Dr. Peterson basically covers the whole thing in this interview. As you might expect, the memo was as mild as can be. The fact that it's giving the usual suspects the vapors further intensifies my dislike for feminists and other social justice bullies.

The True Feminist Message: Don't Hire Women

Hello, Western employers!

As you may have noticed, today's feminist activists have a great deal to say about how women are and should be treated in the workforce. And yes, I understand how difficult it can be to sift through their rhetoric and tease out exactly what you, as an employer, are expected to do. Fortunately, I think I've finally managed to figure out their underlying message: Don't hire women.

I know how bizarre this must seem. After all, feminists claim to be looking out for women's best interests. And yet, in presuming to speak for all of us, these activists have managed to paint our distaff sex in a very unappealing light. Indeed, if feminists are to be accepted as our spokeswomen and exemplars, the following must be true:

Women don't understand math or science.

They don't comprehend, for example, that you can lie with statistics. Certain numbers - such as the earnings gap - can be explained by phenomena that aren't nefarious, but women are simply incapable of analyzing said statistics in a critical manner. Additionally, women can't tell the difference between science and scientism. They conclude that because, for instance, so-called scientists once claimed that hysteria and neuroses could be cured by giving a woman a good poke, the entire scientific enterprise is a sexist joke. But of course, it was the process of science that eventually disabused us of these ideas -- and a lot of other pseudoscientific, bigoted nonsense besides. In reality, if science stays liberal (in the classical sense), the truth will win out -- and the truth can't be sexist; on the other hand, if you mix politics with your science, you get Lysenkoism and the eugenics movement.

In general, women just don't have the brainpower to learn math and science as they are traditionally taught. In fact, in order for women to overcome their marginalized status in the STEM fields, we have to deemphasize efficient algorithms and computational fluency in our math classes and, hell, even reinvent quantum physics in order for these subjects to be more assimilable for the inferior female mind.

Women are uneducable -- especially by men.

You may have men at your workplace who have a strong grasp of your field thanks to a rigorous education and years of experience, but women will dismiss them as patriarchal "mansplainers" and refuse to accept them as knowledgeable mentors. Women, you see, are so brittle that they can't handle being contradicted. If their "lived experience" has convinced them that something is true, no amount of logic or factual argument will persuade them that they are mistaken; after all, they are women and must be believed.

Women expect to advance in their chosen profession regardless of the quality of their work.

Further, they expect highly qualified men to "get out of the way" to allow that advancement. As far as women are concerned, men dominate in positions of institutional power and prestige because they are privileged -- not because they've studied useful subjects, made conscious sacrifices in their personal lives to leave room for 60+ hour work weeks, accepted discomfort and danger on the job, or just been the best at what they do. And because women believe that men have not earned their place, they've therefore concluded that women must be preferentially considered in all hiring and promotion decisions in order to balance the scales. Some women will even go so far as to insist that men currently in power be demoted to allow for the elevation of female competitors.

Women will be unable to work several days out of every month.

Men come to work when they are sick. Men will even ignore dangerous foot infections to stand post during several consecutive overnight shifts if they happen to be supervising important military operations overseas. (Ahem. I'm looking at you, Dad.) But women are too weak to do that. Women are so physically fragile, in fact, that they can't even be productive during their periods. Yes, that's right: the pain of menstruation, a standard and healthy bodily function, is so crippling that women can't be expected to show up while they're on their cycle and need mandated paid period leave once a month to be happy.

(Don't get me wrong here: I understand that some women do experience extreme symptoms while on their periods. But these are disorders; they should be addressed by gynecologists, not accepted as something normal that necessitates special accommodations.) 

Women will complain about trivial inconveniences and will expect your workplace to constantly cater to their desires.

Have you heard that even an employer's air conditioning can be sexist? If you don't turn up your thermostat and force the men in your office to sweat, you are guilty of marginalizing women. Sorry, fellas: It's just too hard for women to bring their sweaters. You may think that is, in fact, a perfectly reasonable solution given that being too cold is easier to fix (with the aforementioned sweaters) than being too damned hot. But women, ultimately, don't feel they should have to take responsibility for their own comfort; the office world must, at all times, revolve around them. 

*****

Okay: So we all know that none of the above statements are actually true of all women. Most women want to live by the same exact rules that govern men and don't want to be treated as delicate, wilting flowers -- either in the workplace or anywhere else. And that's why, as of this moment, only a small percentage of Western women are actually willing to embrace the feminist label. They understand what feminists are really implying -- and they rightfully resent it.

Thoughts on Trans Activism

Reading Lindsay Bentley's excellent post just now has reminded me that I should probably share my own viewpoint on the whole transgender issue:

The primary beef I - and other conservatives - have with trans activism and its demand that we 1) open up bathrooms, locker rooms, sports leagues, etc. to people who "identify" as a particular gender and 2) use everyone's "proper pronouns" or else be subject to legal penalties is that absolutely no objective standards of accommodation have been offered beyond a person's say-so. And yes, it is entirely reasonable to worry that these new licences will be abused -- not by actual trans individuals, but by other skeezy - or power-hungry - folks who find it convenient to take advantage.

Regarding the above, I have a sneaking suspicion that no objective standards have been offered because no objective standards exist. Seriously, think about this: How do you know you are a particular gender? In reply to this question, what trans activists have offered me is a contradictory muddle. On the one hand, "Clothes have no gender, and I can wear whatever I want!" On the other, "Johnny likes dolls and dresses, so Johnny must want to be Joanne."

Speaking of which: The article I linked above resonated very strongly with me -- and it probably resonates very strongly with other women who also happen to be Odd. I definitely remember wishing I could be a boy. Mind you, I did have some girly interests. I did like caring for my baby dolls, and I loved Strawberry Shortcake. But while other girls were often inscrutable to me, boys were perfectly sensible, and I often preferred their company. Back in my childhood, this was called being a tomboy; today, I'd probably be encouraged by activists to identify as "gender fluid" or "neuter" or something else in their Baskin-Robbins-style menu of gender flavors.

Personally, I think many trans activists confuse gender identity with gender expression a whole hell of a lot. Why can't a little boy who likes Barbies just be considered a boy who likes Barbies? Why do we have to slap new labels on everybody when we can just accept that kids are individuals and are going to express their genders in different ways?

But I digress. The second big issue I have with trans activism is the same issue I have with all other forms of hard-left activism: its embrace of cognitive distortions that are elsewhere found among the mentally ill. Mind-reading? Yep: If someone uses the wrong pronoun, they are automatically assumed to be transphobic instead of sincerely mistaken. Catastrophizing and fortune telling? Yep: Trans activists obviously believe that allowing a thoughtful dissenter like Jordan Peterson to speak on campus will result in - oh, I don't know - a massacre of the gender nonconforming? Whatever they think is going to happen, it must be terrible; nothing less than the threat of death would justify their behavior. Blaming? Yep: If a trans activist doesn't feel good about herself/himself/themselves, it must be the fault of Others. There is no recognition whatsoever that you can in fact control your own emotional state and not allow every asshole in the world to get you down.

I myself am a fairly liberal person (in the classical sense). As such, while I have doubts about sex-reassignment, I have sympathy for those who genuinely feel they've been born in the wrong gender, and I'm willing to accommodate quite a bit. But the best way to sort this out, I feel, is through two-way dialogue, not categorical demands. We have to be allowed to be skeptical and to ask questions. We have to be allowed to demand proof. And we have to be allowed to say no sometimes when a person who's very clearly a dude wants to enter the ladies room. Otherwise, suspicion and resentment will only grow -- making the lives of trans individuals who just want to pass and be left alone even more difficult.

Bonus Post: Don't Forget #OperationCounterStrike!

Tomorrow is the supposed "Day Without Women." If you're not a feminist and feel these protests are simply the mass temper tantrums of privileged whiners, don't forget there are things you can do to make sure your own opinions are heard.

Bring snacks. Love and serve the men in your lives. Speak out about men's issues. Let people know that you don't buy into the narrative that Western women are oppressed and men are their oppressors. Don't let the protesters speak on your behalf!

Bonus Post: #OperationCounterStrike

The leaders of the Women's March have finally announced an official date for their "General Strike": March 8. This means it is time for me to propose a counter-action.

I'm just a microblogger. I have no clue whether anyone else will think this is a good idea. But here's my thinking: As those of us who are right-of-center - or hell, even moderate - already know, the intersectional feminist narrative does a poor job at explaining the roots of apparent injustice. It also conveniently ignores facts that complicate its black-and-white categories of "oppressor" and "oppressed." Consequently, I think the best way we can respond to this "General Strike" is to focus on inequities that these Women's Marchers are all too happy to overlook.

For example, it is a demonstrable fact that men are more likely to be homeless. Thus, on March 8, I would like to make sandwiches for my local winter shelter (which primarily serves men). And I would like other folks to take up this cause and do similar volunteer work in their own communities.

You don't have to focus on homelessness. Men also struggle more in school, are more likely to be hurt or killed on the job, are more likely to commit suicide, etc. There are many, many ways we can acknowledge men's struggles and implicitly rebuke the pussy brigade and its toxic ideology.

So the question is: Who else wants to work extra hard for American men and be cursed strike breakers in the process? Who else wants to thumb their noses at these silly bints? I'm game. Are you?

A (Belated) Father's Day Reflection

I've never had the patience or the time for today's brand of western feminism. The reasons for this are several; indeed, recent outrages have inspired me to resurrect and update an old multi-part essay I wrote several years ago on the follies of feminism's later incarnations. But to stuff all my thoughts into a tiny little nutshell: I'm not a collectivist, I'm leery of any movement that seeks to use government force to manipulate human society, and - to be even more blunt - I've simply got my priorities straight.

And you know what's even more important? You know what drives me to reject the covert and overt misandry of third-wave feminism more than anything else? I had - and have - a wonderful relationship with the first man I ever met.

Granted, I don't actually remember our initial meeting. All I have are photographs lovingly collected in two old books -- photographs captioned with the same neat hand that recorded the story of my birth. When I was in high school, I tried to imagine what that first day might've been like for this man that I loved, and I wrote a sappy poem about it -- a bit of doggerel that has since been lost (probably fortunately) to the mists of history.

The first man in my life read Scientific American articles to me when I was a wee little Steph. I don't actually remember that part either. I do remember his giving me other books to read on my own as my literacy blossomed and eventually outpaced what was being taught in school. Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke -- I know all of these names now because of him. This man - who let me steal books from his collection and allowed me to run lose in the East Lyme Public Library without a chaperone - made me an incurable, inveterate Reader with a capital R and a lifelong science fiction fan.

The first man in my life was a nuke; consequently, he was often temporarily absent from our lives. That didn't really matter to me though. When he was here, he made that time count. He openly and passionately loved the woman who bore me, teaching me through example what St. Paul means when he enjoins husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the Church. In fact, even today, this man treats my mother as if she personally hung the moon and would do anything to make her happy. Once, on a YouTube podcast, a commentator remarked half in jest that if it were announced that women everywhere prefer men to walk on their hands, acrobats and gymnasts would make a solid living as hand-walking instructors. When I think of the very first man I ever met, I know at once that this is both funny and 100% true.

With us kids, the first man in my life was a trickster who subtly undermined our lessons in manners by blowing straw wrappers in our faces in family restaurants, cracking jokes at seemingly inappropriate times, and giving us pointers on how to spit phlegm out the window of a moving car without getting back-splash. His antics would often mortify Mom, but when all was said and done, I think they also taught both Matt and me the importance of balance. Sometimes you have to be serious, and sometimes it's okay to just let your hair down and be silly. I can't be too sure, but I suspect my appreciation for weird tourist attractions and hilariously wrong doodads comes from this particular man's joie de vivre.

Today, the first man in my life is getting on in years, and a mild stroke has imposed upon him a new fragility. But in all the ways that matter, he is still the same man I fell in love with as a girl -- and I hope with all my heart that God does not welcome him home for many years yet.

Dad -- I love you, and I am both proud and grateful to be your daughter. The vision of manhood you embodied in your very being and actions seems to have inured me to one of the worst ideological mistakes of our age.

More Food for Thought from YouTube

The phenomenon TL;DR discusses here with respect to the upcoming Ghost Busters reboot is a phenomenon I've also witnessed in my own fandom. Those of us who have doubts about the current direction of literary science fiction are repeatedly told that we must hate women writers/"writers of color"/gay writers/etc. when we have never actually said anything of the sort. What we have done is complain that works boosted by self-described progressives as being oh-so-new and subversive are either uninteresting as stories or are otherwise flawed in comparison to award winners of the past.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to discuss my thoughts on this in greater detail, but let me note briefly now that I think rendering any group of writers essentially immune to criticism because oppression actually harms the writers you're trying to help. Criticism makes us better. Without it, we end up like those contestants on American Idol who are crushed - crushed, I tell you! - to hear for the first time that they actually can't sing. 

Anti-SJW YouTube: A Glance at My Subscription List

Given that most of these commentators are moderate liberals and, as far as I can tell, atheist or agnostic, I'm sure they and I would discover some pretty fundamental disagreements if we ever sat down in a bar to chat. All the same, I find their channels both enlightening and enormously entertaining -- and so I'd like to share them all with you!


Yorick is a transgender man from Scotland whose relatively new channel seems primarily focused on trans issues. While he believes there are biological reasons why people would experience a disconnect between their experienced gender and their apparent physical gender and is convinced that sex-change surgery is the best approach to deal with this dysphoria, he is very critical of the supposed "gender spectrum" beloved by Tumblr enthusiasts. To be quite frank, he thinks it doesn't exist. He also thinks these new gender activists are being profoundly unrealistic and are consequently giving transgender people a bad name. A very interesting perspective!


Blair White is a transgender woman from, I believe, the U.S. who makes short and sassy videos responding to any SJW nonsense that happens to catch her fancy. Like Yorick, she's grounded, she's confident, and she hates it when political radicals try to speak for her.


Oh - and remember that super long post I wrote a while back countering the SJW brand of disability activism? Well Shannon - aka Liberal Lunacy - is a wheelchair user who refuses to be resentful. She loves "cripple jokes" and even got herself a "Most Valuable Cripple" trophy just for the fun of it.


Shoe0nHead, meanwhile, focuses mostly on responding to feminist ideologues. Her common sense come-backs are great -- and I love her wage gap button!


And from the Land Down Under, we have SugarTits and Bearing! They curse freely (a trait that seems to be common among Aussie YouTubers), so I wouldn't call their response videos "safe for work." They are funny, though. Thanks to them, I've actually tried Vegemite!

Others you should check out:

• That Guy T, a black libertarian from the Atlanta area whose responses to #BlackLivesMatter in particular should not be missed.
• Kraut and Tea, a German YouTuber who does live streams with some very interesting folks.
• Sargon of Akkad, a classically liberal and atheist Brit whose "thinky" videos I've linked at least once before.
• skagg3, who's also clearly thoughtful and intelligent.
• And lastly, Harmful Opinions and TL;DR.

Happy to help feed your internet addiction!

A YouTube Recommendation: The Fiamengo File

She's dry, but when she discusses the toxicity of modern feminism, she's right on point.

And by the way, a quick note: I'm pulling double duty at work for the next two weeks, so posts will only appear on this blog on Fridays. The regular schedule will resume in May.