Category: Uncategorized

Bandersnatch notes an amusing little kerfluffle:

Oh man, Vox, you’re missing out on quite the dramafest. Some students at feministe blogger Jill’s campus are considering a Miss NYC calendar – this has upset young Jill for obvious reasons, she posted on feministe about this, some students read her posts and have been bashing her on a public forum, Jill found out about it, she posted about that, they dissed her some more, etc, etc and now there’s talk about campus police getting involved, sexual harassment, etc. This is hilarious for three reasons:

1) I remember a post you made last week about wimmin not being strong enough to take blunt criticism – behold, a real world example happening before our eyes in real time!

2) I recall Jill has blogged about you a few times and the comments posted about you weren’t very nice and pleasant and I think a few even hinted at physical violence. Funny, how it’s only a police matter when a precious dainty little feminist is being verbally insulted.

3) I always get a kick from seeing strong independent wimmin being reduced to little scared cats crying to the big brave campus police to protect them from a bunch of guys calling them fat and ugly online.

And just how does Jill prove my earlier point about those tuff, tuff Zeta feminists?

She writes: “Unfortunately, supporters of the calendar are coming out in full force, and seem to be choosing to counter feminist questions with personal attacks instead of having a reasoned discussion…. What’s more interesting is how they choose to discount feminist arguments — calling us “hairy,” “overzealous,” “hippies,” “ungrateful bitches,” and “ugly.””

She later adds:“A Follow-Up… to yesterday’s very short post on the discussion board about how I’m hideous and a fat ugly pig…. I was a little bit in shock, and a little bit upset, when I first read the message board, so I didn’t really get into why I even posted it or why it bothered me so much…. The fact is that it feels threatening to know that people I go to school with are reading this board and posting on it. It’s gross, it’s cowardly, and it’s intentionally hurtful. It shows a remarkable amount of cruelty toward a person that, as far as I know, they’ve never met.”

Naturally, the response of the little friends of this strong, independent woman is to recommend running to Daddy… the Dean of Students. The great irony, of course, is that this is the very girl – how completely unsurprising to learn that she’s a college student – whose blog features the following gross, cowardly and intentionally hurtful comments showing remarkable cruelty – sniff – to someone she’s never met:

“So in case you ever wondered how conservative assholes like Vox Day actually view women, it’s as straight-up property.”

He’s clearly a borderline sociopath and a full-on misogynist.

He’s just a vile idiot.

Can we castrate all these people? Please?

will someone please shoot this man in the face?

“V.D.” has no female friends at all, guaranteed. And boy oh boy, is he ever pissed off about it! And it’s all their fault.

Nothing more irritating than an in your face bible thumping maniac who spouts scripture like a broken faucet. The only thing worse is an out and out chauvanist. Guess what, this guy’s both. If in fact someone does find where he lives, I have some fun ideas of what to do with him involving my fencing equipment.

He’s the most female-hating piece of shit I’ve ever seen on the internets, bar none–and I myself am very much a conservative. Frankly, anyone who identifies himself as a “Christian Libertarian” freaks me out, like a David Duke or Timothy McVeigh.

But y’know, all that angry misogyny…he just screams “self-loathing closeted queen” to me. He practically broadcasts it. I know stereotypes are unreliable at best, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t fit it.

Wow, the anti-Semitic defenders of the Jew-hating Vox Day are now turning around and calling Cindy Sheehan an anti-Semite! You guys project better than a Bell and Howell tungsten-bulb unit. (Note – this comment is especially weird, since it wasn’t any of my readers who got on Sheehan, but other Feministe commenters. I’ve never written about Sheehan and she’s never been discussed at VP.)

I say Cindy Sheehan is an anti-Semite, and I say that Vox Day is a piece of shit.

I think Vox Day’s tune might change if HE were the one to be raped, especially if the prepetrator is a 350lb black guy; Vox Day sounds a little racist, doesn’t he?

He should be anally raped with the thick end of a baseball bat with rusty fishhooks and see how HE likes it!

Read the comments on Vox’s website- you realise most of the commenters there aren’t decent people after all. Assholes.

Clearly, we insufficiently civilized denizens of the Right have a great deal to learn about etiquette and intellectual consistency from our moral superiors of the Feminist Left. And Jill, you’re absolutely right, it was totally unnecessary for those people to call you fat and ugly. Given that you’re a feminist headed for law school, everyone already knew that.

Kim waxes optimistic:

All people want the same basic things out of life. We want to be happy, most of us want to love and be loved, be successful, have a good family, have good friends ect. Having different paths to the same goal doesn’t change the goal.

No, they most certainly do not. Because Kim, being a generally decent individual, does not slaver after power over others like a dog salivating after a large steak, she makes the common mistake that no one else does.

This is manifestly untrue. Even a thirty-second survey of history demonstrates otherwise. My libertarianism does not stem from rosy-hued optimism as some self-professed pragmatists claim, it is an ideology that stems from a profoundly skeptical view of humanity and human desires.

Man is dual-natured. Both the Dark and the Light call to him. The man who tenderly tucks his beloved children in at night may harbor a secret desire to bury an axe into the head of his neighbor. The woman who selflessly gives of herself to her friends, family and church may dream of seducing the twelve-year old neighbor girl next door. The vegetarian animal-lover painting harmlessly on the street corner may burn inside with visions of Teutonic supremacy.

There are no universal goals; even an individual harbors inherently conflicting desires.

From the Star & Sickle:

Many thought the older, more experienced women who beat Team Canada last weekend in a warmup to the 2006 Winter Olympics would win against the high schoolers. Especially after coaches agreed to a no-checking rule.

But the young Warroad Warriors lived up to the town’s long history of hockey honor, winning 2-1 by beating the women at their own game of finesse and speed.

I find it curious that it is still considered a major political event for a professional women’s tennis player to have beaten a 55-year old man in an unsporting match – it’s seldom mentioned that Riggs had to cover the doubles court and still only lost 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 – while one of the world’s top women’s teams can’t beat a squad of high school boys.

Interestingly enough, it’s seldom either the male or female athletes who get worked up about sex issues in sports, since everyone who plays a sport knows perfectly well how things stand. It’s only the feminist propagandists, the dweebs with two left feet who go into academia, and the clueless wonders who take both types seriously that think there’s anything to discuss. Remember when the media was prattling about how the US women’s soccer team would beat the US men? To their credit, Mia Hamm and company didn’t want any part of that claim.

One of the many reasons I quit critiquing amateur fiction at the Critters Workshop is that I kept running into writers of both sexes who insisted that a Xena-style uber-warrioress was perfectly credible; that no magic sword or divine heritage was needed to explain why a woman was inexplicably faster and stronger than the trained warriors she was dispatching with ease. They would defend their silly stories with tales of a cousin who was a martial arts champion and so forth… naturally, not a single one of them had ever so much as witnessed a round of fencing, sparring or any other related activity.

VOX: “Can’t you just make her a half-elf or something, all right?”

WOULD-BE WRITER: “You’re just being sexist! My sister….”

VOX: “Okay, look, if she suddenly started flying, would you feel the need to explain it?”

WOULD-BE WRITER: “Um… well, yeah, of course!”

VOX: “You’ve described her as a peasant farm girl. She’s strong, she’s independent, she’s survived the tragic murder of her parents, etc. Fine, if cliched. But the reader will find it no more credible for her to suddenly dispatch 15 elite warriors of the Kingsguard than it is for her to inexplicably fly.”

WOULD-BE WRITER: “That’s because no one can fly. But women are just as tough and strong and fast as men. My sister….”

VOX: “You’re right. Keep it just the way it is. No, I have no more suggestions, I’m sure it will be a best-seller.”

Vox have you seen the discussion on various blogs about how your wife Spacebunny believes Japanese runners are as fast as blacks? It’s pretty funny, but tell me it isn’t true! I know she’s blonde, but she can’t be as stupid as this guy is making her out to be! He claims to be using direct quotes from your blog. Knowing you, I find it hard to believe your wife is that dumb.

No, nor do I imagine that most people have seen any such “discussion”. And while I quite like pretty dumb blondes, Spacebunny is far more intelligent than the 100-IQ norm. Once you understand that her brother is a former NCAA Division One champion runner and she’s married to a former NCAA Division One sprinter, I think you can guess where the probability lies with regards to Queerty having understood the issue previously under discussion and the accuracy of his subsequent efforts to characterize it. The quotes may well be accurate, but the context is significant.

You see, what happened was that the guy made an assertion to which no one seriously objects but with minimal supporting data. Spacebunny pointed out that there was data available which actually indicated the falsity of the original statement, despite its extreme obviousness. (The IAAF’s world top 50 rankings for the 50m through 100m show a number of non-black sprinters, including Japanese and Chinese sprinters). Instead of simply explaining how the IAAF data did not necessarily contradict his assertion, Queerty managed to confuse the criticism of his failure to support his assertion for criticism of the assertion itself, then obsessively posted about it in unrelated discussions until I banned him. Apparently he is still posting about it… which is fine as long as it is elsewhere.

Considering that I ran against the current world record holder of the 60-yard dash as well as a member of the US Olympic 4x100m team, Queerty appears to have chosen a particularly quixotic crusade with which to attempt impugning Spacebunny’s intelligence.

From the Telegraph:

David Cameron faced criticism from the Right and Left last night as he tried to reposition the Conservative Party as a defender of the historical principles of the NHS. In his biggest speech since becoming leader, Mr Cameron tore up the policy he helped to promote under Michael Howard – which offered subsidies to patients who go private – and rejected Margaret Thatcher’s commitment to tax breaks for private medical insurance.

Risking the wrath of the Tory Right, he said his party was changing and had to accept that it had been wrong to try to use taxpayers’ money to encourage people to opt out of the NHS. Instead, a modern Conservative Party should champion a health service fully funded by the taxpayer and able to offer free care to all.

Note that in the UK, as well as the USA, modernity indicates an acceptance of big socialist central government for “conservatives” as well as liberals. Of course, the only thing they are attempting to conserve is political power for their bi-factional ruling party. Keep in mind that the FIRST major thing that the new “conservative” British leader did was turn around and stab British conservatives in the back. Clearly, someone has learned something from George Bush.

Back here in the colonies, the Republican vs Democrat “conflict” is less meaningful than the Patriots vs Colts rivalry. Both parties intend to bring America to precisely the same place: to heel.

Mike doesn’t connect the dots:

I was arguing that restriction of gender roles is sneaking towards totalitarianism; VD said the opposite. He said that the loosening of gender roles contributed to the rise of totalitarian governments. I pointed out that totalitarian governments love strict gender roles.

These two statements are not opposites, they simply describe different parts of the same process. For example, the Italian Fascists were loud proponents of the women’s right to vote and hold office; it is the very first point in Mussolini’s Fascist Manifesto. The National Socialists campaigned hard for the women’s vote and enjoyed great support from women; if you watch the old clips, you can see that Hitler was received with the sort of ecstatic rapture that was later seen in reaction to Elvis and the Beatles.

Once they’ve made use of women to obtain power, these totalitarian demagogues have little further use for them except as breeding stock. They then use the power of the central state to forcibly return women to those strict gender roles. I don’t believe women were essential to the Soviet Communists attaining power, as that was done through revolution, not the ballot box or negotiation, but the Soviets, too, enforced the same strict gender roles that we would consider conservative.

This apparent dichotomy makes sense, because totalitarians need women to attain power, but once there, they need to produce as many soldiers as possible to support their typically aggressive foreign policies.

The Chinese Communists, on the other hand, appear to have embraced looser gender roles in the hopes of reducing their birth rate. But since there are over a billion Chinese and they vastly outnumber their neighbors, the same logic would not apply.

Pretty Lady must be Japanese:

Sweetie, what makes you think women over 30 would like to be married? So tiresome, having to live with their socks and NFL and things. We much prefer the scruffy little creatures to quietly pay our bills and live somewhere else, taking us out to dinner now and then, when they can be persuaded to dress presentably.

What makes me think that? The vast publishing industry dedicated to:

1. Telling women how to find a husband
2. Telling women how to keep a husband
3. Complaining how many women can’t find a husband
4. Explaining why a woman’s failure to find a husband isn’t her fault
5. Explaining why a woman’s failure to keep a husband isn’t her fault

Of course, the vast majority of these books and magazines are written by women, not infrequently by women who have shown no ability to either find or keep a man, so they’re as useless as a sociology major. And then, of course, there’s the fact that you can’t date a girl for six months without her bringing up marriage, wondering aloud where this relationship is going, asking you what you’d name your children and so forth.

Now, it’s true that some women do prefer to have a man pay her bills, live somewhere else and take her out to dinner now and then. There’s even a word for such a woman. It’s called “mistress”.

A publisher sends an email:

Thought you might like to see this: “Male Pride and Female Prejudice“. And you were onto this trend three years ago . . .

New York Times columnist John Tierney has an interesting op/’ed today on the looming crises of too many edumacated uppity wimmin chasing after a dwindling supply of eligible (edumacated and white collar) males. The “crisis” stems from the fact that nearly 3 women graduate from college for every 2 men who do. Tierney points out that under 35 year old men say in polls that they have no big problem marrying women who make more money than they do. However, women who have gone to the trouble of getting a college degree do not want to marry a guy whose pint-sized paycheck would occasion malicious gossip among her friends.

What the gentleman is referring to is a book proposal entitled “Screwing Themselves: Why no one wants to marry 30-something women” that I sent to him at his request following a rather notorious column I’d written. The review board was quite positive about it, but the Marketing VP – an unmarried 40-something woman – felt very strongly that no one would be interested in reading it. I submitted two more book proposals and actually got paid for one before realizing that there was no way they were actually going to publish my non-fiction.

Which is fine. I can’t complain about getting paid not to write and I prefer writing fiction anyhow. If I was serious about it, I’d start my own publishing company. That or whine about how I’m being oppressed, there seems to be quite a cottage industry going.

In what feels like a very strange moment indeed, I find myself in complete agreement with the epitome of the left-wing blogosophere, Kos:

When our nation was founded, we had men of real character and courage fighting for their nascent America, one in which liberty and freedom trumped the authorative tendencies of the monarchy. Patrick Henry gave words to those efforts:

“Give me liberty or give me death!”

My, how far we have fallen, with an administration that parlays the incessant fear of its supporters into increased authoritativeness to the point where he now resembles the very despot we fought in our war of independence.

And his supporters bellow, as they cower under their beds:

Here’s our liberties, just spare us from death!

These blowhards pretend they are macho even as they piddle on themselves in abject terror from every “boo!” that comes out of Osama Bin Laden’s mouth. They like to speak about how tough they are, even though they send others to fight their battles and couldn’t last a day in places like Iraq, or Sudan, or the El Salvador of my youth, or any other war-torn nation.

This sounds rather like what I wrote in a column two weeks ago:

“America was founded on the principle that it is right to sacrifice blood for liberty. It is telling that the Bush defenders make precisely the opposite argument, that it is right to sacrifice liberty in order to avoid the shedding of American blood. In this they are, like the Dear Leader, avowedly anti-American.”

This cowardly conservatism is quite strange, especially given that twenty nuclear-blasted cities couldn’t destroy America, any more than a pair of them could destroy Japan. The only thing that can destroy America is if Americans permit their government to eliminate the concepts of individual freedom, the rule of law and limited government that are the essence of the nation.

As the Apostle Paul writes, we are not given a spirit of fear. Decisions predicated on fear are seldom good or right, nor do they often bring about the safety desired.

UPDATE: The good ones are going. Fred rings in the New Year from Mexico with a shot or three of tequila: Being in Mexico adds perspective, at least if you watch the great booby hatch to the north. I especially like the Warn Terr, the preferred toy of the latest Bush. Down here we read all about how the feddle gummint is keeping terrace out of the US so everyone will be safer than probably lots of them want to be. (I’d rather be in danger. Just leave me alone.)

That is the essence of the America That Was. “I’d rather be in danger. Just leave me alone.” No doubt it was safer back in 18th century England too.

One of the many Mikes wonders about the topic:

It’s amazing, an entire blog dedicated to smashing the red herring of feminism. And hundreds of comments per posts. Is there a single person here capable of discussing gender issues without once using the words “feminist,” “bitch” or “lesbian?”

There’s a few mistaken assumptions there:

1. Although “gender issues” is one of the regular themes of this blog, it’s not the only one nor even the primary one. Had you visited last August and September, you would have similarly assumed that the War in the Pacific was the sole interest. Another name for this blog could easily be “Beating Dead Horses”.

2. “Gender issues” are of great interest to a lot of people. I happen to have a few thoughts on them, although I actually spend more time thinking about the NFL and Elliott Wave patterns as they apply to certain markets. Right now, I’m particularly into the Pelopponesian War, radiosity in 3D Studio Max and the question of multiple light channels, but I doubt that these are things of interest to anyone else.

3. To dismiss what we are informed is “the most successful revolution of the 20th century” as “a red herring” is interesting. How do you justify doing that?

4. I am certainly capable of discussing the aforementioned issues sans inflammatory rhetoric and have done so in the past, but I do wonder why Mike would include the self-professed title of the most relevant movement with other nouns he presumably considers to be pejorative. Would he likewise hope to discuss economic issues without mentioning Marxists, Keynesians, monetarists or Austrians? How very peculiar!