Vox Popoli

The crime of the young century:

Yesterday it was a matter of a ponytail, a pair of kitchen scissors and a bedroom in Dudley that prompted the learned minds of the High Court to consider the legal, moral and philosophical implications of the unwanted haircut.

Two senior judges spent almost an hour debating issues such as whether hair is dead or alive, what hair means to a woman and whether it is “intrinsic to the individual”, before reaching a decision on whether it was a crime for a man to cut off his ex-girlfriend’s ponytail against her will.

When, in 1712, Pope wrote his mock-heroic masterpiece The Rape of the Lock, following the hullabaloo that ensued after Lord Petre cut off a lock of hair of his beloved fellow aristocrat, Arabella Fermor, without her permission, the writer was assumed to be poking fun at the over-reaction of contemporary society. “What dire offence from am’rous causes springs, What mighty contests rise from trivial things”, he wrote.

But Sir Igor Judge, the president of the Queen’s Bench Division, and Mr Justice Cresswell took a different view.

In the first case of its kind, they ruled that hair could be regarded as a person’s “crowning glory” and that magistrates at Dudley, West Midlands, had been wrong when they decided last June that Michael Ross Smith had no case to answer on a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

And just imagine if he had clipped her fingernails! Again, we have a crime which is dependent upon how a woman feels about something. No doubt it will soon be a felony to fail to pay sufficient attention to a woman when she is speaking or to make her feel sad.

On the other hand, what sort of lunatic prefers a woman with short hair? I find myself insensibly favoring this new interpretation of the law criminalizing hair-cutting, as women would no longer be chopping off their locks on a whim and all those gay hairdressers would probably be happier in jail together anyhow.

Pretty Lady sees a mismatch:

Sweetie, I am terribly disappointed. It is unworthy of you to be shooting fish in a barrel–hardly what I would expect of a chivalrous gentleman like you. Little Miss Sally is undoubtedly about eighteen years old and from a broken home. I imagine she will be a much nicer girl once she has settled down a bit.

One can only respond to those who first present themselves. I have said before that I’m pleased to take on any critic, regardless of their supposed status. And one can’t take on a feminist on feminism – even a feminist who can spell and write grammatically correct sentences – without it looking like shooting fish in a barrel. The recent MacKinnon-related post should suffice to demonstrate that.

As for Sally, she was quite literally asking for it. And when a girl asks to be pounded, why, what chivalrous gentleman would force her to make do with soft and timid caresses?

In which Crystal Lake quotes Catherine MacKinnon

“When women choose women sexually, this is a very powerful challenge to male dominance. This is a choice that symbolizes the fact that men are not essential to life and to sex. But one of the strategies of male dominance to subvert this power is to make lesbians sexy and thus take possession of them for themselves, as an instrument for their pleasure.”

This quote could stand as a symbol for feminism’s inherent strategic flaw

A Man enters the room. Two attractive young Lesbian Feminists are engaged in bonding Sisterhood activities.

Lesbian Feminist #1: “We are striking a powerful blow”, (wipes chin), “against the male dominance of the Patriarchy!”
Lesbian Feminist #2: “Don’t stop!”
Man: “Don’t stop, strike that blow!”

As the girls return to their statement-making, the temperature rises, along with other things. Overcome with a sudden appreciation for his stark inessentiality to life and sex, the Man suddenly removes his pants and nails both screaming feminists, one after the other, as they shriek in helpless outrage.

Man: (puts on pants and walks to door) “Well, I feel very put in my place. That was a very powerful blow. Thank you for educating me.”
Lesbian Feminist #1: “I’m telling my Daddy… I mean, I’m calling the police!”
Lesbian Feminist #2: “Call me!”

From abortion to the Sexual Revolution, from education to the vote, feminists have only managed to make the average woman more bitter and less personally satisfied than the miserable sows at Seneca Falls ever dreamed. And then there’s the demographic thing… it’s the least self-sustaining ideology since Catharism.

Since the dawn of time, men have been the generals and the game designers. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise when they so easily come up with a strategy to maintain their dominance. Let’s face it, is there anything funnier than a movement that would consider Jenna Jameson to be at its symbolic forefront?

From NRO’s Corner:

“Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction.” – Al Gore

Al must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. Al will face his fear. Al will permit it to pass over him and through him…. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only Al will remain.

Sally shares her two bits:

This is the first I had ever seen your website. I would like to comment on your views of the article Why Women’s Rights Are Wrong. History has shown that men don’t really know what they are doing. Instead of blaming Women and Women’s Rights, trying blaming yourself and gender peers.

How has history shown this? Did Julius Caesar not know what he was doing when he crossed the Rubicon and put an end to the Republic? Did those who set up the Federal Reserve not realize that they were creating an inflation-engine machine? Did FDR attempt to pack the Supreme Court simply because he disliked the number nine? This statement strikes me as a tremendously naive one.

It was the men’s decisions that create the population boom that causes more men to decide to limit people in Asia to one or two children. It was men who brain washed everyone to believe that men are greater, stronger, and smarter than women, which is a lie (sin). That causes the decline in birthing to females. It was men that decided only men can pass on the families’ name, not that it is appropriate. It was men who abused their spouses and influence, it was men who suppressed their loved ones, it was men who craved war, it was men who did not appreciate what women do and how we play such a vital role in society and families, it was men who degraded us and treated us like we were second class citizens. Women’s rights came about because we have been treated badly and we want it to stop!

Yes, the population boom because of men, who had the bad taste to develop technology that allowed women to live to an average of 77 years instead of 30. Men are bigger, stronger and smarter than women on the average, by every measure, so there was no brainwashing necessary. There are men who crave war, to be sure, and since women are completely helpless to stop them, it is other men who must do so.

And how, I ask you, have women’s rights improved things for women? Consider some of the foremost aims of the early feminists: Divorce condemns most women to poverty because so many are incapable of providing for themselves without being handed a makework job in government, abortion allows a woman to murder her children and slaughters a disproportionate number of girls, one of women’s first political priorities was to ban alchohol and they have used their access to education to destroy the value of a college degree. The worst thing men could do to women is to leave them to fend for themselves; even giving them influence in government is turning out to be disastrous.

Women should wait till they are ready to have children. Women want to make sure that our children receive the protection and love that they deserve out of their childhood and life. Women want to make sure that their bodies and health and life will not be a sacrifice. Women take motherhood seriously! We want to be with our children because it is so important for a mother to mother but we don’t want the abuse, control, suppression, and manipulative degrading of our gender either. That is why we choose! Women have a right to decide if they want to have children at all. Many of us don’t want children, we won’t be force either!

Women who subscribe to this meme will die out, and deservedly so. They are already in the process of doing just that throughout the West, as they are considered less desirable by men, marry less often and later and have fewer children. The remainder will lose the ability to decide who they will marry, when they will have children and will again become the chattel of men that they were prior to the rise of the protective pre-feminist West.

Who cares if men don’t want to marry because of “liabilities”. Women do it all now anyways, with buying the houses, proving for the family, giving life to our own family, what do we need to marry for? Marriage for some women only becomes a burden. Most of us care only to mother our own small children, not someone else’s grown children. If a man can’t appreciate his wife and family enough to marry then, YES, do not marry!! We don’t want you. We are tired of the unappreciative manner.

This is complete nonsense. Women not only don’t do it all, they collectively contribute virtually nothing towards creating wealth and the technological advancement of society that has made our lotus-eating lives possible, furthermore,they do much to hinder it in destroying the natural workings of the free market. Sally is obviously quite young, otherwise she would know that it is not men who are complaining about no one wanting to marry them. The truth is obvious when even the most mysogynistic creep usually has several women hanging around hoping to marry him while many women will react with open fury to a successful, desirable man who announces that he has no desire to eventually marry.

I think now that women are in control of their destinies will be able to correct men’s self-serving, power hungry, bloody war craving, greedy wrong doings.

The short history of women in power shows no evidence of this whatsoever. More to the point, it will be interesting to see how they will keep power when men decide they will no longer submit to the Mommy State.

Women do have a deep appreciation of life. That is because we know what it takes for this to happen. Our bodies provide the housing and our bodies develop the new life. Men throughout history have destroyed this with war and hate and greed! Men will never have an appreciation for life like women do. Men can’t give life (birth)! That is what really bothers you! Such a powerful thing women have; the ability to create life. Is it you are only looking for control again? Men have such a small role in the process of it all which could probably be supplemented in evolution. After all… women do carry all the equipment. Evolution just might leave men to die out from old age and wars against each other. You are not God so how can you say you know where evolution will take us? That is typical behavior for men to play God.

It seems strange that women have such a respect for life that they regard ending it as one of their rights. Evolution requires millions of years and so has not entered into the discussion, the issue is demographics and it is not difficult to know where that is going as long as one possesses a basic grasp of mathematics. Of course, as we know, math is hard!

Did God make man or did man make God? The people who are good do not have to advertise it. The people who are evil are the ones that have the job of convincing others they are good, meaning your church. Have you molested many children today?

Apparently Sally is down with Mao, Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, none of whom wasted their time convicing others that they were good. The mind boggles at imagining this lightweight attempting to define good and evil, much less delving into theology. As for children, not today, no.

Oh, that’s right, you are not a priest, but you do follow in their foot steps. Is that one of your reasons for women to be baby making machines?

No, I simply have an interest in the continuation of Western civilization, which is more than a little dependent on women embracing their unique biological role and the only one that a functioning society actually requires of them. But if Sally doesn’t, well, perhaps a burqah will suit her.

Men are responsible for all outcomes; many can argue men are the true root of evil. That is only a fraction of what I really have to say to explain about Women’s Rights. I always welcome a response. Bring it on.

It comes as no surprise that Sally doesn’t believe in personal responsibilit
y for herself or for women in general. In fact, it is this very belief that requires women to be second-class citizens; if, like children, they cannot be held responsible for their actions or decisions, then, like children, they cannot be permitted any degree of responsibility.

Bisch is begging for a beatdown:

You guys talking about the interception that was called off by instant replay are whack. The tuck rule call was the correct call under the rules at the time (and still). The Steelers’ safety who knocked it out of his own hand with his own knee didn’t show possession as it’s defined in the rulebook.

A) Any discussion of the “infamous” tuck rule play is totally beside the point. The officials did get it wrong then, but not in the way that whiny Raidess fans think. Woodson clearly head-slapped Brady, ergo 15-yard penalty, first down, no controversy.

B) “The league acknowledged Monday that referee Pete Morelli erred when he overturned on replay Polamalu’s interception of a Peyton Manning pass Sunday in the playoff game between Pittsburgh and Indianapolis. Mike Pereira, the league’s vice president of officiating, said in a statement that Morelli should have let the call on the field stand.

By the way, I received this hilarious little rip on the Baseball Savant yesterday from JB: I recall you posting the Baseball Savant’s playoff picks a year ago, when he went 0 for 4 in the divisional round. He’s improving!

Here’s the latest: My winners this weekend are Washington, Carolina, Indianapolis, and New England.

No doubt gamblers everywhere are eager to know who he’s picking in the championship games… so they can safely go the other way. But he’s feeling no pain, not in comparison with the knowledge that his Colts have passed the Vikings and are fast approaching the Bills as the all-time NFL chokers.

Peter King on pass interference:

I think I would like to ask the zebras of this league one question: When will you learn how to call pass interference? It was a disgraceful weekend for PI calls. The 39-yard interference call against Asante Samuel handed the Broncos a 7-3 lead in the second quarter; if anything, obviously, that call should have been on Ashley Lelie. We all saw that. And in the Pittsburgh-Indy game, there was an infamous non-call on rookie corner Marlon Jackson, who interfered with Antwaan Randle El deep in Indy territory. Instead of continuing a drive that could have made the score 21-0 Pittsburgh, the Steelers had to punt, and Indianapolis drove the ball 96 yards to a resuscitating field goal.

So what else is new? They haven’t been calling it properly in the playoffs since at least 1975.

Did I mention that I am still displeased with an even more infamous non-call? Because I am.

The NYT covers the hikokomori phenomenon:

Like Takeshi and Shuichi, Y.S. suffered from a problem known in Japan as hikikomori, which translates as “withdrawal” and refers to a person sequestered in his room for six months or longer with no social life beyond his home. (The word is a noun that describes both the problem and the person suffering from it and is also an adjective, like “alcoholic.”) Some hikikomori do occasionally emerge from their rooms for meals with their parents, late-night runs to convenience stores or, in Takeshi’s case, once-a-month trips to buy CD’s. And though female hikikomori exist and may be undercounted, experts estimate that about 80 percent of the hikikomori are male, some as young as 13 or 14 and some who live in their rooms for 15 years or more.

South Korea and Taiwan have reported a scattering of hikikomori, and isolated cases may have always existed in Japan. But only in the last decade and only in Japan has hikikomori become a social phenomenon. Like anorexia, which has been largely limited to Western cultures, hikikomori is a culturebound syndrome that thrives in one particular country during a particular moment in its history.

Shoot, throw in Spacebunny, my exercise bike and free weights and I’m there. It’s an interesting response to social pressure, which in Japan really is unthinkably tremendous by Western standards. More later.

A friend shared with me an observation that I thought was provocative enough to get you all riled up. He says that when men tell a story about how their day went, it’s usually focused on something good that happened. When women tell a story about their day, it’s usually focused on something negative. BOCTAOE

As a cartoonist, I’m always interested in gross generalities. Does this one ring true to you?

I don’t think there’s any question about this… in general. It’s particularly telling that more than a few of the women in his comments who claim that they aren’t complainers – which is a largely meaningless assertion in that the opinion of one’s mate is rather more significant – often describe themselves as being atypical.

Now, everyone complains, the important question is if you do so more than one’s circumstances might reasonably dictate. I have no problem listening to an individual with a genuine problem talk about it, but overhearing wealthy, indolent women bitching about their lives at the coffee shop makes me want to walk over and snap their chicken-like necks.

But it defies belief to insist, with no evidence, that men and women complain exactly the same amount. I think Scott’s friend is right, in general, because men don’t seem to play the Martyr Game that so many women seem to enjoy so much. Even so, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t millions of men moaning about their terrible lives every day, bringing everyone around them down.

I imagine that I probably strike readers here as a complainer since I am massively critical of everything from the NFL officiating to the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and yet if I was truly a negative person, I wouldn’t do most of the things I spend my time doing. Of course, I can bitch about undesired spikes or drops in various markets like you wouldn’t believe. But really, Spacebunny’s opinion on this is more relevant than mine.

Here’s the beginning of that ill-conceived novel I mentioned in my column today. It’s just raw, unedited text, so don’t expect polished fiction.