The Healthy Media for Youth Act

Tina Korbe reports, at Hot Air, "Government to the rescue: Saving young women from low self body image."

Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) have teamed with actress Geena Davis and the Girl Scouts of America to introduce and promote the Healthy Media for Youth Act, a bill to facilitate research on how the media affects women, create a grant program for youth empowerment groups and establish a National Taskforce on Women and Girls in the Media to set standards ”that promote healthy, balanced, and positive images of girls and women.”

The progressive utopia is to make women feel bad about looking good. And that's sick. See Stuart Schneiderman, "Feminists Against Beautiful Women" (via Maggie's Farm):

The feminist assault against femininity and female beauty has been going on for decades now. So much so that I suspect that feminism has caused women to suffer an unhealthy obsession with beauty because it has forbid them to be normally concerned with how they look?

It’s been twenty years since Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth launched a full frontal attack on the fashion and beauty industries. After twenty years of Naomi Wolf and forty years of contemporary feminism, lo and behold, many young woman are obsessed with their looks.

To me it feels more like a backlash against feminist repression and tyranny than anything else.

RTWT for the context. An excellent essay.

RELATED: Caroline May, at Daily Caller, "So much for the obesity epidemic." Also, legislative background from Congressional Research Service (via GovTrack).

Dr. Helen Smith — 'On Fire but Blacked Out: The Thomas Ball Story'

At Pajamas Media:

As one of my commenters pointed out in a post I put up on the case, when a woman burns her husband to death in his sleep, it’s seen as a major wake-up call regarding violence against women, and is immortalized in an award-winning movie starring Farah Fawcett titled The Burning Bed.

But somehow, when a man like Thomas Ball burns himself up, it is not seen as a wake-up call for how men are treated unjustly by the court system. Instead, some “compassionate souls” see his death as yet another wake-up call regarding the needs of women. Do men ever matter to these “feminists,” or do they get pleasure out of men’s pain? I am thinking the latter.

RTWT (via Dr. Helen on Bloggger). And then compare to Rob Taylor at Red State, "The Death of Morality and the End of America." Red State? Some people writing on the right are really on the left, although they they think they're more right than the conservative right. But to be honest, the dude's not right in the head. Seriously. Psychologically FUBAR, IMHO.

VIDEO: 'What Liberal Women Don't Get About Liberal Men'

At Right Wing News, "Liberalism in 120 Seconds":

Kathy Shaidle blogs at Five Feet of Fury.

Male Being and Unhappiness

An excerpt from a rant by Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon (via Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology):

The way society is organized at the moment, we have no choice but to blame men for bad behavior. If we allowed men to act like unrestrained horny animals, all hell would break loose. All I’m saying is that society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness. No one planned it that way. Things just drifted in that direction.

Adams' blog is here.

I'm interested in this primarily in that I've been following the Thomas Ball suicide. I'm politically incorrect. But I'm also happily married. Society develops normative regimes to control and satisfy men and their desires. There's something about Adams that's extremely discomfiting, and that's saying a lot. That said, Adams' rant bothers me less than Amanda Marcotte's response to Tom Ball's self-immolation. It's all wrenchingly interesting, in any case.

And here's a radical feminist take, FWIW: "Scott Adams' defense of rape mentality."

Wikipedia Removes Thomas Ball Page

And Dr. Helen Smith asks, "Why has Wikipedia removed the Thomas Ball page?"

Following the link takes us to A Voice for Men.

Now, lets imagine a world so totally twisted that the media totally blanks this as a news item. That dismissive and scant reporting of this act of political self immolation is written off with throw away lines calling you, the burned corpse – a deadbeat, a lone nut.

Imagine all that. It's pretty far-fetched, but try.

At the video, the self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc in Saigon, June 11, 1963.

A Voice for Men made a copy of Thomas Ball's page.

Update on Thomas Ball Self-Immolation Suicide

I hadn't planned on doing too much writing on this, since my main interest is how once again we see Amanda Marcotte as the extremist personification of the radical feminist agenda.

But the story continues to develop in the blogosphere, and I'm part of the debate. Marcotte responded to me on Twitter this morning, which was her initial statement since first commenting on the Thomas Ball suicide (and she's updated on Twitter here).

I also tweeted Robert Stacy McCain, knowing his occasional Amanda Marcotte blogging, and he's got a post up: "The Beast of Babylon Wears Bangs: Amanda Marcotte’s ‘Pure Feminist Evil." And he writes:

Being a tolerant sort of person, I have sometimes entertained the thought that maybe Amanda Marcotte is merely misguided or ignorant, an idea I kicked around when she made a complete fool of herself over the Anthony Weiner scandal. But perhaps it is time to consider whether she is in fact deliberately and consciously evil.

RTWT. Robert goes out of his way to point out that he's not a men's rights activist. Neither am I, but more often than not I hear of men bearing the brunt of unjust legal separation from children, although I have neither the experience nor expertise to comment more widely on the phenomenon. Note, though, that Thomas Ball was in fact an activist with the Central Massachusetts Chapter of the Fathers' Rights Movement. And those initially blogging on the story are clearly advocates for men's rights. So, it's a pretty fascinating story all around. Indeed, Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology has an update on the story, "Amanda Marcotte Continues to Say That Men Use Suicide to Hurt Women." And Snark responds to Robert Stacy McCain, "Amanda Marcotte Is Not Evil." I disagree fundamentally with that post, however, not so much over Amanda Marcotte's alleged demonology, but on the underlying premise of her comments themselves. These aren't one-off, throwaway statements, as Snark suggests. Marcotte claims that men inflict pain on themselves --- even kill themselves --- as a way to further victimize women. THAT is representative of radical feminism and THAT is inflammatory, if not evil, with all due respect to Thomas Ball. But the context is key. Marcotte speaks in furtherance of extreme feminist praxis. (So that's not to say some leftists aren't indeed evil --- Scott Eric Kaufman and Carl Salonen come to mind --- but more that Marcotte's statements, as reprehensible as they are, reflect attempts at political speech rather than actions intended to destroy.)

In any case, Dr. Helen Smith has weighed in, "My take on the Thomas Ball case." And the crucial passage, regarding Thomas Ball's last testament:

His statement is not the ramblings of a madman, it is the mission of a warrior in some sense. He was fighting for his rights and for yours, if you are male. He was trying to bring some urgency to the male plight in this country, one that no one appreciates or cares about until they are engaged in the battle of the courts. If you want to understand more about how men's rights are being stripped by family courts, take a look at Stephen Baskerville's book Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family.

Oh, and Instapundit updates his original entry with comments from Assistant Village Idiot.

Image Credit: HyperVocal.

'Pure Feminist Evil' — Amanda Marcotte's Response to Thomas Ball's Courthouse Self-Immolation

She's constantly in the news!

See the "pure feminist evil" commentary at Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology, "Man Burns Himself To Death; Women Hardest Hit" (via Instapundit). Also at Snark, "Amanda Marcotte Weighs In On Thomas Ball." I think Amanda's comments are so vile that SHE may need a bodyguard, and that's saying something. (And I don't see her commenting on Twitter, which is telling.)

Read about the suicide at the Holden Daily, "Holden man sets himself ablaze in front of New Hampshire Courthouse," and Keene Sentinel, "Last statement sent to Sentinel from self-immolation victim."

And more, at In Mala Fide, "Fatwa of the Week: Keene Sentinel Whitewashes Tom Ball’s Suicide."

More later ...

'I can tell you there are not much worse feelings than waking up knowing you've been pounded and not remembering it...'

That's the comment from FreudianNips, at Althouse's interesting post on the homosexual left's response to Althouse's suggestion that Bristol Palin may have been raped: "'I've never understood the assumption that if a woman was drunk and doesn't remember giving consent that it must be rape'."

'What Third World Women Want'

"According to First World Feminists," by Charlotte Allen, at Weekly Standard.

It's about an academic conference, "Driving Change, Shaping Lives: Gender in the Developing World." I love this part, especially the "Battle of the Filipina Hostesses":

The first speaker was Valerie M. Hudson, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, leading off a panel titled “Shifting Populations.” Hudson delivered a genuine population-shift shocker: In China and India, which between them account for about 40 percent of the world’s 7 billion people, women, who in the West slightly outnumber men because they tend to live longer, are outnumbered by the male sex to the tune of 33 million in China and 28 million in India. The reason? As Hudson explained, it was the female-lethal combination of sex-selection abortion following the advent of fetal ultrasound during the 1980s and China’s longtime one-child policy, which has resulted in widespread female infanticide along with many forced abortions. As she rattled off disturbing statistics​—​120 boy babies for every 100 girl babies in China in 2005, and 121 for every 100 in India​—​Hudson pointed out that sex-selection abortion and female infanticide are illegal in both countries, but the laws on the books have failed to dent the cultural phenomenon of “son preference” in Asia, in which sons are valued because they’re expected to support elderly parents, whereas daughters often cost dowry money. “That’s 90 million missing women,” Hudson said.

In 2004 she and Andrea den Boer, a lecturer in politics and international affairs at the University of Kent, had published a book, Bare Branches, about the negative repercussions for a society, such as in China, that produces large numbers of surplus young men who cannot find wives and form families. “Those who don’t marry tend to have no skills and no education,” Hudson explained. “They are already at risk for violent behavior, since young men without stable social bonds tend to commit most violent crimes. They tend to be targets for military recruitment, and societies with surplus males tend to be marked by an aggressive foreign policy and ethnic groups pitted against each other.”

Maybe it was because abortion makes women’s studies people skittish, but Hudson’s ominous statistics​—​and indeed her entire presentation​—​were promptly forgotten, submerged in what might be called the Battle of the Filipina Hostesses. The combatants were Hudson’s two fellow panelists, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California and self-described former Filipina hostess, and Amy O’Neill Richard, a senior adviser in the State Department’s Office of Trafficking in Persons, a priority project of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During the 1980s and 1990s tens of thousands of young women were imported into Japan by labor contractors from the chronically impoverished Philippines to sing, dance, flirt with, and coax drink purchases from stressed-out salarymen in bars and nightclubs​—​until a 2005 crackdown by the Japanese government reduced the hostesses’ numbers by 90 percent, from 80,000 in 2004 to 8,000 in 2006. Few of the Filipinas, it seemed, had any training as the professional entertainers that their visas said they were. The Japanese government maintained that most of them were actually prostitutes or near-prostitutes, pushed into long hours of dubious servitude by the contractors and the clubs, many of which had ties to yakuza mobsters. A spate of brutal murders of hostesses​—​along with some murders committed by hostesses of their pimps​—​fueled the drive to clamp down on the hostess business and send most of the women back to the Philippines.

Taking the podium after Hudson, Parreñas went on the warpath. She announced that she had no intention of abiding by the 10-minute presentation limit for panelists and then proceeded to read a fiery 20-minute paper that she titled “Migration as Indentured Mobility: The Moral Regulation of Migrant Women.” The paper blasted the hostess crackdown as part of “a U.S.-backed war” against “sex work” fueled by “moral imperialism and conservative values” (the U.S. government funds anti-trafficking programs in about 70 countries). In the crackdown the hostesses were “stripped of their livelihood,” Parreñas lamented. “They go to Japan of their own volition​—​they’re not drugged or forced to go. They find it empowering to be a hostess.” Parreñas’s theory was that “there are multiple moralities in society,” and that some Filipinas’ moral codes happened to permit “paid sex with the men they call their boyfriends.” The problem, as Parreñas saw it, was that many Japanese clubs tended to have a different “moral culture” from that of the hostesses who worked there, but the hostesses couldn’t quit until their indentures were up. Nonetheless, Parreñas insisted, “most of them resent the United States, and they resent being rescued” from the hostess life by being kicked out of Japan. Her solution to the hostess problem: open immigration in the West for developing-world sex workers so they could get jobs in, say, the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal.

Parreñas proved to be a tough act to follow. Richard, the human-trafficking expert from the State Department, seemed dumbfounded. “I think America is a wonderful country,” she said. She rattled off some information about the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 2000, along with some alarming-sounding numbers: 70 percent of the estimated 12 to 27 million human-trafficking victims in the world these days are women and girls, most of whom end up in bondage, often sexual bondage, in East Asia and the Middle East. Parreñas was having none of that. “It’s quite tricky to lump all trafficked people together,” she sniffed. “Most migrant workers are domestic workers, and many countries, including the United States, don’t even count domestic work as an occupation.” Nor did Parreñas have any positive words for Hudson and her bare-branches research. “Did you interview any of those single men you describe as psychopathic and poor?” Parreñas demanded of Hudson. “Did they see themselves as unmarriageable?”

Why Are Male Bloggers Pretending to Be Lesbians?

I blogged Jonah Goldberg's commentary piece yesterday morning, and now here's an interview with Glenn Reynolds:

How Many Male 'Lesbian' Bloggers Are Out There?

Radical anti-American lesbian feminism is on the rocks, but you knew that. The twist is that even radical anti-American lesbian feminists need fake radical anti-American lesbian feminists to keep the flame from being extinguished.

At Washington Post, "‘Paula Brooks,’ editor of ‘Lez Get Real,’ also a man."

And don't miss Jonah Golberg, "The 'Gay Girl in Damascus' hoax is worse than a lie. It's propaganda" (via Instapundit).

Amanda Marcotte's #Weinergate Embarrassment

I checked out Amanda Marcotte's Twitter feed yesterday morning. She's a strange woman. I was tempted to write something but didn't. Kinda burnout out on #Weinergate, although the complete destruction of progressives on this is simply too much. (Joan Walsh was off Twitter all day Monday, hoping to avoid an expected backlash.) Anyway, count on Robert Stacy McCain to come through with an epic report on Ms. Marcotte, "WeinerGate Götterdämmerung":

Life is a big joke and Ms. Marcotte is the punchline, so that all we need do is to say, “Hey, go read what this idiot wrote,” and everyone will see for themselves why she is so transparently absurd.

Yet Amanda Marcotte is taken seriously by influential people, who pay her to preach to the rest of us, and it would be wrong to dismiss her without at least attempting a serious analysis of her errors. It may be true of Ms. Marcotte, as Mary McCarthy said of Lillian Hellman, that every word she writes is a lie, including “and” and “the.” But exactly why and how her writing is so pervasively false requires further explanation.

Note how Ms. Marcotte deploys “ideologue” as an epithet against Breitbart when she is herself an avowed adherent of the ideology of feminism. Indeed, if it weren’t for her idolatrous devotion to feminism, Ms. Marcotte would have nothing to write about. Her entire raison d’être as a writer is to filter the world through a feminist lens.

She is one of those writers who, despairing of achieving notoriety in the larger literary world, seeks a readership in some ghetto niche occupied almost entirely by third-rate talents, so that her occasional second-rate contributions appear conspicuously impressive by comparison. And in her feminist niche, the only standard by which anyone may be judged is according to their zealous devotion to The Sacred Cause:

Weiner has an outstanding record supporting sexual rights of others, with100% ratings from NARAL and Planned Parenthood, and has a strong record of support for gay rights.

See? He votes the right way. And isn’t that what really matters?

RTWT. It's a long exegesis of Amanda Marcotte's utter depravity. She's got some kinda record. Wow. Even Jill Stanek piles on: "Liberal Feminists Blow Off Weiner Sex Scandal." (And linked there is Jessica Dweck at Slate, "The Case for Tolerating Left-Wing Lotharios.")

My interest wavers on radical feminism, because it's so complicated, frankly (radical feminists can be found on the left and right, although those on the latter side deny it). But considering all that's happened of late, I should probably have more on this in upcoming posts shortly.

Photo Credit: Flickr.

Where's NOW and Planned Parenthood? Anthony Weiner Stands for Women?

I meant to post this earlier. I promised I'd have more on my dislike of Anthony Weiner, which goes beyond his epic personal moral failures. His policy advocacy is way, way to the left. His fall is thus a major defeat for Democrat party progressivism, and I'm glad.

Here's the embattled congressman speaking at the New York Planned Parenthood's Rally to Protect Women's Health in February.

I don't see statements from NOW or Planned Parenthood, but if they comment I'll update.

Meanwhile, see Jenn Taylor at FrontPage Magazine, "Anthony Weiner's Feminist Rhetoric Meets Reality."

Hotel Maids Get Panic Buttons

At Jawa Report, "Dear Foreign Visitors to NY: Hotel Maids Are Not Meant to Be Laid."

And Wall Street Journal, "After Hotel Attacks: Panic Buttons."

The Pierre hotel has suspended a supervisor and agreed to equip all room attendants with panic buttons in the wake of two alleged sexual attacks on Manhattan hotel housekeepers in about as many weeks.

The decision came after meetings with union officials, who pressed for strengthened protection for workers.

"Let everybody in the world traveling to New York know that when they stay in a hotel room, the person cleaning that room is armed with a button that they can immediately press if you're stupid enough to get inappropriate," said Peter Ward, president of the New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council, which represents about 30,000 workers.

A Pierre spokeswoman, Nora Walsh, confirmed that the hotel will give room attendants the alarms—modeled after those used by some elderly people to alert a central security office—as soon as a system can be devised.

The Sofitel New York—where former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of an assault—has also agreed to arm attendants with panic buttons, union officials said. Sofitel officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Well, I doubt if it's just visitors. See, FWIW, "Sex, Lies, Arrogance: What Makes Powerful Men Behave So Badly?"

Laura Ingraham Accepts Ed Schultz's Apology

Laura's been quite gracious though all of this.

But don't miss Dana Loesch's essay, which just hammers the progressive misogyny that animates the left, and notes that Schultz is the only one to apologize for the hate so far: "Ed Schultz: Sorry For Calling You a Slut."

I wish Schultz’s behavior was more the exception rather than the rule but sadly, it isn’t. The majority of progressive males with whom I come in contact always seem to exhibit a vicious hatred for conservative women, one I can’t explain, one that transcends rational disagreement and goes deeper than the basic chauvinistic stereotypes. It’s disturbing and it’s especially disturbing how our society, for the most part, looks the other way. I could spend a week daily highlighting the various examples here on Big Journalism but the time wouldn’t be enough.

When I heard Ed Schultz’s remarks, I heard an angry, older man lashing out at a woman because she thinks differently about politics than he. I heard in him the voice of the many progressive males who send me hatemail daily, telling me I should suffer any number of indignities, some of which I am obligated to report to the police and the cyber crimes division. It’s not just me – every conservative female of my acquaintance with a voice in politics endures the same political cat-calling. It’s despicable.

Disagreement is par for the course with this business. Sexism and outright neanderthal behavior is not.

MSNBC's Ed Schultz Suspended After Attacking Laura Ingraham as 'Right-Wing Slut'

Here's this from the network: "STATEMENT FROM MSNBC REGARDING ED SCHULTZ." (Via Memeorandum.)

Brian Maloney broke the story, "DEPRAV-ED: Libtalker Ed Schultz Uses Vulgarity to Attack Conservative Host":

Michelle reported on Schultz this morning, before he was suspended, and she's updated, "More misogyny at MSNBC: Neanderthal host attacks Laura Ingraham as a “slut;” Update: Schultz off air one week, apologizes":

In January, I published “The progressive ‘climate of hate:’ An illustrated primer, 2000-2010.”

Review it here.

Part IV was a section on anti-conservative female hate, with tons of links on the sexist rhetoric of the Left.

You’ll recall that the “M” in MSNBC stands for misogyny.

Here’s a new entrant in the race to the bottom, from syndicated radio host and MSNBC talk show host Ed Schultz, via Radio Equalizer Brian Maloney ...

RTWT.

Also, Ingraham's responded quite succinctly on Facebook.

Typical progressives. At least Ed Schultz isn't anonyomous, like the cowards at Sadly No!, who match this misogyny on a daily basis, "sick fuck adult losers."

The 12-Step Plan to Make Amanda Marcotte's Head Explode

And other feminists too, of course.

From Gavin McInnes, at Taki's (via FFOF). The whole thing's riot, for example, "Step 10" to restore femininity:

DON’T CUT YOUR HAIR

As Steve Sailer has made very clear, the traits we find attractive in the opposite sex are based on exaggerating our differences. Men can’t grow hair as long as women can, so prove you’re a woman and let it grow to the floor. American women seem to think that once they give birth, they have to visit Rachel Maddow’s barber for the rest of their life. This is tantamount to rape, because when we have sex with you from behind, we look down and see this weird smirking Boy Scout getting drilled. Thanks for that.

Interestingly, Amanda's Saturday post is inspired by Sadly No!, although it's anybody's guess whether the essentials of McInnes' 12-step plan would bear the slightest bit of interest to Carl "Young & Hung" Salonen, ringleader of the Sadly comment threads. (Yo, that's comedy!)

'Most feminists are feminists because they are marginalized from society to begin with by virtue of being women who aren't attractive'

I've been away from the gender wars for some time, but this shouldn't be missed: "FemCunts."

Jill Filipovic (woman-lawyer hot, manhattanite, woman-lawyer) who blogs for Feministe followed a pingback to my boyfriend’s blog post “Feminism is a Crazy Girlfriend” and tweeted it in mock disbelief. Kate Harding*, a fellow feminist writer who focuses on fat and body issues re-tweeted it [and then] a throng of manginas and single, cat women flocked to the post. I find it amusing that of the three that commented, one is a bearded, beta-male mangina posing with a natural, floral backdrop and the other calls herself “vegina” – a vegan, feminist, academic activist. Fuck.

Man, I'm off my game! This stuff is gold. I'm forwarding to Robert Stacy McCain, who also needs to brush up on his repertoire!

RTWT for the background to the quote at the title. There's something to this attraction hypothesis, but I'd like to see the hard data.

Washington's New Media Elite

David Weigel, seen below at CPAC, gets top billing. But conservatives --- especially middle-aged conservatives like Robert Stacy McCain --- got nothing! And don't get Amanda Marcotte started about the exclusion of radical feminists women from the hot roster of D.C.'s "juicebox mafia"! See New York Times, "Young Pundits Become Washington's Media Elite."

Mike Huckabee Walks Back Natalie Portman Criticism

Huckabee screwed up.



The Other McCain has the story, "Huckabee: ‘Hey, Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Trash-Talked Luke Skywalker’s Mom’" (at Memeorandum and Politico):

We have no reason to believe that Natalie Portman became pregnant with any intention of “making a statement” or “pushing the envelope.” If Huckabee, the former Baptist minister, wishes to condemn fornication and bastardy, or to talk about the societal impact of our nation’s epidemic of fatherlessness, OK. But why drag the Star Wars star into this argument? Portman was already catching grief from the feminist ax-grinders for having declared motherhood “the most important role of my life.”

Good rule of thumb in politics: Find out what side of the issue feminists are on, and get on the other side. (If feminists ever bothered to denounce Islam’s brutal oppression of women, I might have to consider joining the Taliban. But feminists are too busy whining about “pay equity” to notice that Muslims are still stoning women to death under sharia law and forcing girls into arranged marriages.)

More at the link.

And for the "feminist ax-grinders," check Mary Elizabeth Williams, at Salon, "Is Motherhood Natalie Portman's 'Greatest Role'?"